Just-Completed Chinese Bridge Collapses, Tom Friedman Hardest Hit
Plus: The Tenth Annivesary of the Savage Bataclan Attack in Paris

I always hate linking stuff that shows China in a good light in the Cafe. If there's a Chinese foot-bridge connecting two mountains, I'll link it, but say something like "I don't like linking China, but they do some impressive civil engineering." Partly to justify linking anything that might seem pro-China, and partly because I'm wistful about the days of great American civil engineering.

The last time I said that, a few commenters said: No they don't. Alluding to the tendency for these impressive structures to sometimes collapse even more impressively.

(I did also allude to that when I linked a glass alpine roller coaster going down a mountain's side, saying that China's lack of concern for human life allows them to build some fun-but-lethal amusement rides.)

Anyway, my mistake on ever saying China did some impressive civil engineering.

A bridge has collapsed after just one month of being open to the public.

A massive bridge at a hydropower station in southwest China collapsed Tuesday, sending concrete and steel plunging into a river just months after it opened, according to Chinese state media.

Reuters reported that an official from Barkam County confirmed the collapse to the Chinese state-run Global Times, saying no casualties had been reported.

Sure. Sure. Sure sure sure.

Suuuuuuuure.

Sure sure sure sure sure sure sure.

S U R E

There are no casualties. However, dozens of engineers, minor officials. and witnesses have been Reported Missing.

No but seriously, the bridge began collapsing over a period of hours, so they did have time to divert traffic.

Though they don't say they "stopped" traffic, only that they imposed "temporary traffic controls."

The report added that cracks were detected a day earlier on the bridge's road surface and slope, prompting authorities to impose temporary traffic controls.

Footage of the collapse, shared widely on Chinese social media, showed the Hongqi Bridge in Sichuan Province buckling before falling into the river below, kicking up a massive cloud of dust.

...

Local transportation and public security bureaus said the right-bank slope of the bridge showed signs of deformation Monday afternoon, just hours before the collapse.

Authorities quickly shut down the structure to all traffic and issued a public notice warning of potential safety risks.

Fox says "Reuters contributed to this report." I think I see Reuters' influence in vouching for the speedy, decisive action by the wonderful Red China government.

...

According to Times Now, the Hongqi Bridge was located in Sichuan Province's mountainous Maerkang area and completed earlier this year as part of the G317 national highway--an important route connecting central China to Tibet.

I think Tibet would disagree about the importance of being connected to Red China.

The 758-meter-long, cantilevered two-lane beam bridge stood roughly 625 meters above the gorge floor, with piers reaching up to 172 meters in height. It was built by the state-backed Sichuan Road & Bridge Group as part of efforts to expand access to the Tibetan Plateau.

Posted by: Ace at 05:12 PM | Comments (348) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Communist Spy Asset and Adulterer Eric Swalwell Referred to the DOJ for Mortgage Fraud

Imma be honest with y'all, I think this is the weakest such referral yet.

Unless he's did what "Big Tish" James and claimed multiple properties to be his primary residence in applying for reduced mortgage rates, I think he skates.

The basic claim here is that he said his DC residence was his "primary" residence and got a $1.2 million mortgage. The purported inconsistency is that a California representative is supposed to be primarily domiciled in California. But he's claiming his DC mansion is his primary residence, so he's not actually a California resident! And if he's telling the truth about being primarily domiciled in DC, he can't be a Representative from California!

Uhhhh... I mean, kind of? I don't think it will hold up. Again, not unless he is claiming both a California home as his primary residence for mortgage purposes along with his DC house. In that case, there's a clear inconsistency between the representations he's making to banks.

But... yeah I don't know if maintaining a residence in California while claiming primary residence in DC is "fraud."

Maybe his alleged "constituents" in California have reason to not vote for him, given that he legally considers himself a DC resident, but... I don't think he's guilty of criminal fraud based on only this.

Sort of like Donald Trump's "fraud" on Deutsche Bank for giving his collateral properties a supposed over-evaluation is really Deutsche Bank's bitch to pitch, not Soros DA Alvin Bragg's. But then, the left thought that was a perfectly reasonable prosecution, sooooo...

NY Post:

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) was hit with a federal criminal referral for alleged mortgage and tax fraud related to his purchase of a $1.2 million home in Washington, DC, that he claimed as a primary residence, The Post has confirmed.

Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte in a Wednesday letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi requested an investigation of Swalwell based on allegedly false and misleading statements he made about the purchase, NBC News first reported.

The California Democrat was able to secure millions of dollars' worth of loans and refinancing based on the primary residence declaration in DC, a source familiar with the referral said.

The designation could constitute mortgage fraud, insurance fraud and state and local tax fraud, among other charges, the source noted.

In addition to the Department of Justice criminal referral, FHFA's inspector general is probing the alleged mortgage fraud.

"As the most vocal critic of Donald Trump over the last decade and as the only person who still has a surviving lawsuit against him, the only thing I am surprised about is that it took him this long to come after me," Swalwell responded in a statement.

"Like James Comey and John Bolton, Adam Schiff and Lisa Cook, Letitia James and the dozens more to come -- I refuse to live in fear in what was once the freest country in the world," added the California congressman, who is now the fourth Democratic official to be targeted for mortgage fraud by the Trump administration.

Yeah they're all guilty. Saying you're just as innocent as they are does you no good.

Go do anal with a Chicom spook grooming you for intelligence and influence, Fartwell.

What an asshole.

Posted by: Ace at 04:10 PM | Comments (230) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Doctorin' the POTUS: The BBC Aired More Doctored Video of Trump

The BBC didn't just run heavily-doctored video of Trump seeming to urge his supporters to go to the Capitol and riot on the premiere BBC program (or 'programme') Panorama.

They ran similar doctored footage on BBC Newsnight.

That means more editors and "journalists" saw the footage and decided to lie.

In addition, it is now revealed that they were warned about the deceptive nature of the edit, and decided they were fine with it.

The BBC doctored footage of a Donald Trump speech a second time and ignored concerns that were raised about it, The Telegraph can reveal.

Spliced footage of the speech, which aired in an episode of Newsnight in 2022, made it appear that Mr Trump was encouraging his supporters to riot.

The edit was similar to a version aired in a Panorama documentary that was broadcast last year.

...

A former White House chief of staff criticised the BBC on air for "splicing" the footage, but his concerns were ignored by Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark.

A whistleblower told The Telegraph that a further discussion the following day was also shut down.

The revelation risks plunging the corporation further into crisis, after the Panorama edit was disclosed in an internal dossier on bias that was leaked to The Telegraph.

It is also likely to raise fresh questions about the future of Jonathan Munro, Ms Turness's deputy, who has been put in charge of the BBC's overall news operation since her departure.

At the time of the broadcast, Mr Munro was interim director of news and current affairs with ultimate responsibility for Newsnight.

...

BBC insiders have sought to portray the bias allegations as part of a Right-wing coup against its news operation, suggesting that individual errors were not evidence of a systemic problem.

However, the separately doctored Newsnight footage - which was disclosed to The Telegraph by a separate whistleblower who had worked on the programme - suggests issues are more ingrained in the corporation than its defenders claim.

Given that the Newsnight footage was broadcast more than two years before Panorama doctored the same speech, and concerns were raised at the time, it also risks triggering new scrutiny of the claim that Panorama's edits were an innocent mistake.

...

There is no cross-fade or similar device in the Newsnight footage to suggest that the speech has been cut together.

On Newsnight, after the footage was played, Ms Wark interviewed Mick Mulvaney, who was previously acting White House chief of staff for Mr Trump. He resigned from the administration following the storming of the Capitol.

...

Mr Mulvaney continued: "Your video actually spliced together the presentation. He said: 'We're gonna go down and we're gonna cheer on our senators and our house members' and then it actually goes on to say 'And some of them we might not be able to' and that line about 'and we fight and fight like hell' is actually later in the speech yet your video makes it look like those two things came together.

"That's the type of messaging here that so many people in my country find frustrating is that it's hard to actually get the facts. If we're going to have a debate about what this was and prevent it from happening again, I think part of that is to make sure we're straightforward in our presentation of what actually happened."

...

A whistleblower claimed that concerns about the footage were subsequently raised during an editorial meeting the following morning, but were dismissed.

...

"One producer said, 'How did that go out'? 'Why did that happen?' And the editorial editor, not the VT [video tape] editor, kind of brushed it off. And I thought that that was extraordinary, that something like that had gone out."
...

An internal memo by Michael Prescott, who spent three years as an independent external adviser to the broadcaster's Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee, said: "Examining the charge that Trump had incited protesters to storm Capitol Hill, it turned out that Panorama had spliced together two clips from separate parts of his speech. This created the impression that Trump said something he did not and, in doing so, materially misled viewers."

Not that you need Joe Rogan to tell you this is f***ed up, but he is telling you that.

In case you didn't know.

Podcast host Joe Rogan called out the BBC on Wednesday over the scandal over the network's deceptively edited video of former President Donald Trump, saying it shows the "deep rot" in mainstream media.

...

Rogan discussed the scandal multiple times this week, arguing on his podcast that it was "not journalism, but, like, full-on lying and propaganda. And it's kinda f--ing dangerous."

"It seems like these people -- this is just my opinion -- felt justified for completely lying, because it would lead to an ultimate good. So they lost all journalistic integrity. And it is the BBC, which is like the height of journalistic integrity," Rogan said.

"If that doesn't show the rot of mainstream, corporate-controlled media, then nothing does. Because that's pure rot," Rogan said. "At the top of the heap, if someone quoted a source, and it was the BBC, I'd think, 'OK, that's like The Washington Post or The New York Times.' It's a very official source, so I'd assume, 'This must be real.'"

Now, he said, things are different: "They turned it into activism, and they turned it into lying -- and they did it in front of everyone, where you could clearly just listen to the full speech and know he didn't say that. That's not how he said it at all."

Posted by: Ace at 03:13 PM | Comments (243) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Michelle Obama: Black Women's "Beauty is So Powerful and So Unique" That It "Demands Respect" and Is "Worthy of a Conversation of Who We Are and What We Are Owed"

Wow.

She just gets worse and worse, and she started off really really bad.

Posted by: Ace at 02:10 PM | Comments (451) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Scotland's Chief Constable: Maybe We'll Start Calling Male Rapists "Male" Again, Even If They Do "Identify as Women"

Ladies: You need to get yourselves under control.

A leading indicator of this age is the unprecedented rise of "women" raping other women, "women" exposing themselves on buses, "women" taking out their penises and masturbating in public, "women" touching female children in public bathrooms, etc.

Starting around, oh, 2018, the rates of "women" committing gross sexual offenses previously the domain of mentally-ill men absolutely skyrocketed.

It was unprecedented -- and yet not a single "expert" in the field of policing or criminality offered any explanation for it. Not a single study, not a single white-paper report.

Equality, bigots. It's called equity. Women can take out their penises and rub them against women standing in front of them on the subway, too.

And yes I started that sentence saying it's "equality" and then stealth-changed the term to "equity" and you know that means? It means you're a transphobic racist for noticing the change in terminology.

Or are you saying women aren't ALLOWED to excel in male areas of achievement, bigot?!

Leading the way for "women" to molest other women on the street has been Scotland, which, until the past ten years, most considered a respectable country and not a nation of basket-case imbeciles and grubby deviants.

From David Strom, Scotland's top law enforcement official apparently noticed the 100,000% rise in sex crimes committed by "females" and dared to notice, "Gor Blimey, I think some of these lasses what are committing acts of gross public indecency are blokes!"

POLICE Scotland has given too many 'mixed messages' on gender self-ID, the Chief Constable has admitted as she pledged that a rapist will always be recorded as a man.

Oh their top cop is a woman. Of course. I'm sure she's ultra-qualified.

Jo Farrell acknowledged that she needed to give further clarity on the issue due to the single police force's approach in the past.

But she also admitted that a biological male who self-identifies as female would be treated as a woman while in custody.

What does that mean?

Thank you for asking. Let me tell you what I think it means.

A "matron" is a woman employed by an establishment to oversee female guests... or prisoners. And do things it would be inappropriate for a man to do, to a woman.

Google's garbage AI, but this is ballpark accurate as far as I Know:

A police matron is a woman in a municipal police department who has charge of female and juvenile prisoners. Historically, this role was a trailblazer for women in law enforcement, as matrons were often not sworn officers but were responsible for tasks like searching female arrestees and guarding female and juvenile detainees until they were released or transferred to the proper authorities.

When a woman is arrested, it's inappropriate for a man to pat her down. Or search for contraband in her vagina or rectum, obviously. Now that police forces are 70% women, they can have a female cop do these things, but if there are no female police, they can have the matron do it.

So when Ol' Jo says that men claiming to be women will be "treated as a woman while in custody," what she means is that she'll have women pat the male rapist down, and have a woman bend the man over to look beneath his (female) testicles and spread his butt cheeks and look into his rectum.

Boy, that'll really teach male sex perverts a lesson, huh?

I imagine it also means that the man will be held in cells meant for female arrestees.

But at least as far as the paperwork goes, male rapists will be recorded as being male.

Or will they? This seems much less definitive than I'd like.

But she went on: 'On reflection, and having observed the intense public debate around gender identification and the at times mixed messages from Police Scotland -- for example in freedom of information responses and correspondence to this committee -- I wanted to provide further clarity and direction in this area.

'It was important for victims to hear from me as Chief Constable that there is no doubt in our practice: a man committing a rape will be recorded as a male.'

See, that still seems deliberately ambiguous to me. She says a "man" committing rape will be recorded as "male," but of course we all know that Trans Women Are Women.

She didn't say someone who is biologically male, or, as they say, "assigned male at birth," would be recorded as male.

She said a man will be recorded as male.

What does this mean? Maybe nothing. Or maybe it means that men who haven't taken the trivial step of applying to the state for an official change in gender will be called "male," but anyone who has undertaken this twenty-minute Sex Change Paper Filing will still be recorded as female.

Trans Women Are Women. I don't know how many times I have to tell you bigots this until it registers.

She told MSPs that a person's transgender status will be recorded 'where relevant' in addition to biological sex for suspects and victims of all crimes.

When pressed on whether Police Scotland's approach had been wrong, she said she felt there needed to be 'greater clarity brought to our position'.

Here was the old rule, which Jo says lacked "clarity." Unlike her new rule, which also lacks clarity.

Police Scotland's previous position in 2019 stated that the biological sex or gender identity of an individual was based on self-declaration unless the sex or gender of a person was relevant to an investigation or further enquiry was necessary on the basis of risk.

The old rule was, then, if you say you're a woman then you're a woman, unless you are so obviously a man that we think you're faking.

The new policy is that "men" will be noted as "male," but "transgender identity" will not be noted "unless relevant."

The new policy sounds "stronger" but I bet in practice it won't be.

See David Strom's article for thoughts about Critical Theory and the endless psyop to change the meanings of all words so that you are confused, demoralized, and thoroughly gaslighted so that you obey the orders of your Masters no matter how nonsensical, destructive, or evil.

Posted by: Ace at 01:10 PM | Comments (272) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Lumpy Jack: The Loving and Tolerant Left Is Wishing Death Upon Me and Praying For a Lethal Stroke

John Fetterman and his life-partner Lumpy Jack recently spoke with the Free Press about the severe depression he suffered after his stroke and, let's face it, serious damage to his brain. And probably a change in personality. This change in personality resulted in him becoming more reasonable and less Trust Fund Communist.

Fox excerpted the interview.

Fetterman now admits that we were right -- he should have quit the Senate race when he suffered a serious stroke during the campaign:

Fetterman's condition improved, "but in hindsight I should have quit."

He says he was so depressed his wife told him to leave and go live with his parents (seems like old times...), because she didn't want his depression weighing down on the children.

And, he says, he contemplated suicide, at least once that he admits to.

He was constantly mentioned on Fox, or under attack by Dr. Mehmet Oz and his allies: "Uncle Festerman [in an] oversize gym-rat costume," "unfit to run," "the guy can't talk," a "wax dummy," "where does the man end and the machine." And on social media "Vegetable. Moron. Retard."

Yeah those last three were me. My bad.

This got in his head: "a defining quality of depression, the building blocks of which I had probably struggled with ever since I was a kid. My parents were 19 when I was conceived, and I have always felt it was because of me that my parents were unable to follow their own dreams. When your self-image is negative, as mine was growing up, you gravitate toward shame. You gravitate toward feeling unwanted."

"This inclination persisted even as an adult..."

"Is this my life now?"

Then came the debate against Oz. He was awful.

"This was a make-or-break moment that would determine the outcome of the election, and I had wilted. I'd choked."

"For the entire three-and-a-half-hour ride back from the debate, I read reactions on X, shooting myself up with the shame that is too often the sustenance of the depressive..."

"For months, I was suicidal. Paranoid. Not eating. Not sleeping. Not speaking. Not functioning. Resigned. Ashamed. Despairing. Despairing everywhere I was. Up was down, and down was up." He won anyway by 5 points.

"Once, as I lay in bed," Fetterman said, "I asked myself, What would you do if there were a pill on the nightstand you could take and not wake up? I would have taken it."

Gisele told him "I could not come home until I was back to being myself: The impact on our kids was just too great." So the senator moved in with his parents.

"By February, I wasn't eating, and I wouldn't talk to anybody..."

"I began to feel more alive and animated than I had in months. I was present. I felt energy."

"There were still enormous challenges, though. I was terrified to see my family."

"A young therapist-in-training came in to talk to me one day. 'Gisele and the kids are thinking about coming to visit,' she said."

"I don't think that's a good idea." The next day: "The kids are better off without me."

"At that point, she stepped out of her professional mode and said the most important thing that has ever been said to me in my life:"

"Children need their daddy."

The visit at a Wendy's went well. Everyone was relaxed. He needed their love.

I don't want to be Joe Maudlin Manipulator, but here's the depressed stroke victim that the left is currently wishing death on.

Dana Bash pretended to be surprised to hear that her fellow leftists were "praying for [Fetterman's] next stroke." CNN, of course, refused to cover the thousands of angry Democrats celebrating Charlie Kirk's death.

Maybe if she actually covered the news she wouldn't always be surprised by it.

Posted by: Ace at 12:12 PM | Comments (321) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Rant: Minimalist Edition

The progressive movement in America? What a pretty name for communists!

Some of you are too young to remember William Jennings Bryan's "Cross Of Gold," speech, but his populism was thinly disguised leftism and overt anti-elitism. But that began to change, especially with Wilson, and then the equally execrable FDR. The progressives peaked in the 1930s-1940s with the New Deal, failed for 20 years, then came back roaring in the 1960s. But every time, America and Americans said...No!

Eventually. And they didn't roll back the rapidly growing elitist regulatory and administrative state. Which is odd, because it is quite obviously a product of our "elite" educational institutions, carefully cultivates the American version of royalty, and specifically rejects grassroots pressure that isn't linked to Tammany Hall style voting blocs.

And...it's back! But this time the left has found new allies in the 3rd World and Islam. No longer do they seek out American farmers or American unemployed or American students or American blacks. No...they have carefully cultivated an alliance with aliens...both illegal and legal.

That's the difference, and it's a big one. There is no core of patriotism (however weak) among the left's new shock troops. They vote blindly, like all leftists, but they also seek as payment a shift away from the overarching structure of American life, culture, and political institutions. The "Melting Pot" is gone, replaced by a hodgepodge of alien religious and cultural norms that are antithetical to American Exceptionalism, free markets, and the freedom and liberty on which this country was founded. Support for cradle-to-grave government aide is bad enough, but alien political philosophies that are directly opposed to the United States Constitution, in particular the growing number of majority-Islamic cities in America, will mean the destruction of the rule of law, and the loss of religious, economic, and cultural freedom that has created this country.

What they want is nothing less than the end of America. As Barack Obama hoped for:

...we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.

NYC elected a communist Islamist Twelver as mayor.
VA elected as attorney general a man who spoke of murdering his opponents...and their children!
NJ elected as governor a hack politician who wants to bring European-style energy prices to America.

These are fundamental changes that will accelerate until the American people have had enough. But there's the rub.

Have we already reached the tipping point?

[Crossposted at CutJibNewsletter and X/Twitter]. If you folks who are on X/Twitter would follow us it would be much appreciated!

Posted by: CBD at 11:00 AM | Comments (290) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Mid-Morning Art Thread

Embers
Andrew Newell Wyeth

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (329) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Report — 11/13/25

Good morning kids. I feel like a broken record with this shutdown garbage. In any case now that the House has voted the shutdown is actually over.

The net positive of the whole episode is that we can see it exploding in the faces of the Democrats. Proof positive is the bullshit Epstein non-revelation/revelation about President Trump which has been thoroughly disavowed and debunked by the alleged victim. Not that that will stop the media whores and propagandists from trumpeting this as loudly and frequently as possible so as to distract from their paymasters' gigantic own goal with their debacle of the Schumer Shakedown Shutdown Shitshow. Most execrable, only because he's within earshot (God bless my wife who has the TV on in the next room a bit too loud) is the beady-eyed inbred slithering shitstain and credibly accused intern-murderer Joe Scarborough.

Meh, I'm just raising my BP thinking of expletives for that cheap yammering sellout/fraud of a whore (no offense to whores)

The net positive of it all is that the Democrats are now aiming their rhetorical guns on themselves (I can only imagine if a tranny or a Mangione out there got their Irish up about those Democrats who voted with the GOP to end the shutdown) — both with this meshugas and in having to deal with the fact that the bust out open insanity of the takeover by the communist youth brigades of the growing Mamdani contingent is opening a lot of eyes and turning a lot of stomachs in this nation.

To understand what’s now happening inside the Democratic Party, look no further than the historical analogy found in the Russian Revolution. There were some soft socialists, the so-called Russian whites, led by a guy named Alexander Kerensky. They were trying to hold off the Reds, and started off in an unenviable position militarily, but ended up winning because eventually there wasn’t enough systemic immunity to stop them. The liberal mainstream Democratic Party wants to capture what they think is the jet fuel of the radicals. Thus, Gavin Newsom raged against the end of the shutdown. His press office put out a statement: “Pathetic. This isn’t a deal. It’s a surrender. Don’t bend the knee!” . . .California Rep. Ro Khanna says the Democratic leadership is “out of touch.”

Khanna is a psychopathic commie wog. But when he says out of touch, does he mean with the transexual molotov cocktail throwers and Anti-semitic and anti-Christian street goons shooting up synagogues and churches or with normal, decent civilized American-Americans.

Brialliantine stick insect Gavin Newsom, at least at this point, is in my view the likely standard-bearer going into 2028. White male and hetero is usually the kiss of death as a résumé enhancer in Democrat circles, so he better hire Kamala to give him some sword-swallowing lessons.

But, Newsom is a disastrous pick in that he's yet another Californian and his record is well known and disastrous. Speaking of sword-swallowing, he'll go down harder and faster than Kamala did against Trump in 2024, Democrat cheating notwithstanding. A J.D. Vance victory should he, as I imagine, be the GOP candidate will cement in place the MAGA agenda and most crucially the most important domestic political policy agenda in decades: the sealing of our borders, and the continued removal of as many of the tens of millions of illegal aliens already draining and straining our economy and society. For the Democrat Party to continue to have sway over the American political landscape if not survive into the next generation (please God make them go the way of the Dodo) , to whatever degree of anti-American and anti-Westernism it degenerates to, from wherever it stands now, it must win the midterms and then the next election. From there it will no doubt use every instrumentality of government and the courts and its street goon terror brigades to erase the successes of President Trump and then take no chances by using whatever means necessary to seize absolute power as has been its goal for most 200 years. This is it, all the marbles baby.

As you can see from a few of the links, beyond his lack of communist fervor (though a criminal tyrannical despot for sure whatever the party label) and DEI credentials, there are a number of scandals and of course a record of disaster after disaster in California that make him, as I said earlier, toxic to the Democrat base as much as it does to us normal folks in the rest of the nation.

Switching gears completely, I cannot understand why President Trump invited the jihadist Leader of Syria to the White House. Well, Yes I actually do get it and it's not a wise move. He thinks he can rack up a win vis a vis Mideast peace by somehow getting this savage on board with the alleged Gaza peace plan. As if that ever has a real shot at happening given the nature of Islam, as I and others have discussed extensively here and on the podcast as well as elsewhere.

Trump’s invitation to Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa to the White House is a windfall for the former Al-Qaeda leader and a victory for the global jihad. Al-Sharaa has now walked away with a deal that likely surprises even him. He has been escorted into the Western fold with recognition as a legitimate dignitary, no longer sanctioned, and has even signed on to the global coalition to defeat ISIS. It is critical to review the background of al-Sharaa (known, in his days as a jihad leader, as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani) to appreciate the significance of his meeting with Trump — at the White House, no less. Al-Sharaa led the jihad group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTM), which was responsible for former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s fall. The process “essentially began in July 2011, when Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi—then the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI), previously known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)—sent Abu Mohammed al-Jolani to spearhead his group’s entry into Syria.” Al-Jolani would later become the head of HTS, change his name to Ahmed al-Sharaa, and put on a suit to appeal to naive Westerners. He has done extraordinarily well, given how seasoned he is not only at violent jihad, but at stealth jihad as well.

The President is being ill-advised to say the least.

To cap off today's Report, some good essays on immigration, most notably from our friend and Ace cruelty maven Prof. Victor Davis Hanson lamenting what immigration is supposed to be, or was supposed to be.

Yes we need mass deportations of as many if not all illegal aliens and for sure a moratorium on all immigration for at least a generation if not longer and with it, some sort of mass assimilation program for those who are here to inculcate Americanism and dismantle multiculturalism forever. And sadly that applies not only to immigrants legal and otherwise but to native born citizens who now have to be deprogrammed due to years of brainwashing in American academia.

And 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.

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY LINKS
• Victor Davis Hanson: Ellis Island built a nation through law and order; Biden’s border chaos dismantled it with lawlessness, division, and the greatest illegal influx in U.S. history.
  Confronting Anti-Ellis Island Immigration
  
• A victory or defeat for the global jihad?
  Trump Welcomes Syrian Jihad Leader to the White House
  
• A new documentary about the Palisades Fire of January shows California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) touring the Pacific Palisades as it burns behind them — with a contingent of Los Angeles Fire Department firefighters accompanying them instead of fighting the blaze.
  New film leaves no doubt: Gavin Newsom, Karen Bass abandoned LA as it burned

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 07:28 AM | Comments (377) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 13 November 2025

Top Story

• Valve has followed up on its very popular Steam Deck gaming handheld with a desktop Steam Machine and a wireless Steam Controller. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Like the Steam Deck, the 6" black cube called the Steam Machine is at its heart a PC built on AMD components. It has a six core Zen 4 CPU, and a 28 core RDNA3 GPU.
  
  It comes with 16GB of RAM in two DDR5 SODIMMs, 8GB of GGDR6 RAM for the graphics card, and 512GB or 2TB of SSD in an M.2 2230 slot. There's a vacant M.2 2280 slot to add storage of your own.
  
  On the I/O front it has HDMI, DisplayPort, one USB-C port, four USB-A ports, and somewhat disappointingly, gigabit Ethernet.
  
  It also has four built-in antennas for wifi, Bluetooth, and the Steam Controller, and a built-in 300W power supply so you don't need an external brick. It's cooled by a single 120mm fan.
  
  And most importantly it comes running SteamOS rather than Windows.
  
  Give how determined Microsoft is to drive its own users away, I am looking forward to this little device. It's literally half the speed of my current desktop (which has a 12 core Zen 4 CPU and an RDNA3 graphics card with twice the graphics cores and RAM) but for something that sits quietly in the living room attached to the TV it looks ideal.
  
  No prices yet. Shipping "early 2026".

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (166) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Wednesday Overnight Open Thread - October 12, 2025 [Anniversarius Rex]

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (513) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Advanced Pouncing Clinic Cafe

Leopard with heterochromia of the eyes
dhruvpatil_photography

Shutdown update: The House passed a procedural vote to bring the actual CR to the floor. They'll now have a short debate before the final vote.

Dog subtly indicates he'd like some affection.

Figure skating training techniques sure have improved since I silvered at Nagano. I graced the ice to "Alone" by Heart.

Some trucks now have automatic-deployment snow chains. Kind of. The chains don't wrap around the tires, just rattle around under the tires to increase friction.

It's good to be the king.

This dog doesn't know what they're celebrating, but he loves the energy!

Please sir, can I have whatever there is that can be eaten?

Rescuing a street dog.

Visiting hours.

This is the most adorable little animal hoarding situation.

Deer walks up to get some pets and scritches.

Owls are odd birds.

Charging up your cat to 100%.

FAQ: Will a camel eat a lemon? For further review: If not, why not?

Posted by: Ace at 07:25 PM | Comments (369) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Quick Hits

Live voting in the House to end the shutdown.

Lumpy Jack: The GOP isn't "taking away Obamcare subsidies." Those "emergency temporary subsidies" were always designed to expire.

During a portion of an interview with NPR aired on Monday's broadcast of "All Things Considered," Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) stated that the Affordable Care Act subsidies that were at issue in the government shutdown are not being taken away by Republicans, since "Democrats designed those tax credits to expire at [the end of] this year." And Republicans were saying they would take about extending the tax credits.

You know when pay channels offer you teaser rates of $3 per month for three months? And then the price zooms up to $15 per month but they trust you're not paying attention and will keep paying forever to watch old episodes of Hello Larry?

That's every single Democrat spending "plan." They claim the spending will only be for a short period of time and then when that time is up, guess what? It was always intended to be permanent spending until the end of days.

Two major proxy advisory firms -- which I guess analyze corporations and recommend to shareholders who to vote for in corporate board elections -- are telling Cracker Barrel shareholders to dump the Woke DEI marketing executive who drove the stock into the ground.

Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis advised investors to vote against the re-election of Gilbert Dávila, a DEI specialist, at the annual shareholder meeting on Nov. 20 -- slamming his "faulty" board-level marketing expertise.

The proxy firms seemingly implied that Dávila -- also one of Cracker Barrel's top individual shareholders -- played a significant role in the company's rebranding.

"Dávila is highlighted in board materials as one of two marketing specialists among the independent directors. He is also a member of a standing board committee whose purview is to assess social and political risks to the company's business," ISS wrote in a note.

However, the proxy firms did not push for the removal of CEO Julie Felss Masino, who took over the chain in November 2023.

Why?

Let me guess: Because she's a woke white woman with ginormous Attitude Glasses, which give her enhanced powers to Judge You, right? And we can't impose male standards of success or failure on woke women, who are alternately Super-Empowered Girlbosses or Damsels who need rescuing as the circumstances may require.

In more woke corporate news, the new non-woke head of Paramount devised a tricky way to get the woke non-workers to quit: He demanded that they "RTO," or Return to Office, and finally take off their Covid Jammies and put on normal work clothes and go to the office to work like all people have done since... well since people have had jobs.

Six hundred people quit, which I imagine was not unwelcome by the owners.

Fortune, which used to be a business magazine and is now just another woke propaganda outfit, highlights the "cost" to the company of the severance packages.

As if those aren't being paid gladly.

About 600 employees in the company's Los Angeles and New York offices at the vice-president level and below took the buyout, according to company disclosures filed on Monday--and the severance packages set Paramount back $185 million. The filings cited restructuring costs "associated with actions to align the business around our strategic priorities."

I do understand and appreciate the advantages of working from home. (Obviously.) And I know this is a boon to many, and many workers will put in a good day of work from home.

But I've also seen all those "Day in the Life" Tik-Toks of entitled non-workers spending their whole day "at work" drinking Himalayan frog tea or whatever. And if that's what a lot of Millennials and Zoomers are doing at work, I cannot imagine what they're doing at home in their jam-jams.

Musk's AI Grok is based. It refuses to role-play as a transgender, because that would require denying biological fact.

Julie Kelly does not think much of The Blaze's "bombshell" revelation of the J5 bomber based entirely on gait analysis. Actually, her theory is that there is no J5 bomber, and that the video of someone walking around the Capitol on the evening of January 5 does not show that person actually planting bombs. She thinks the bombs -- or "bombs" -- were planted on January 6h. I would guess (but do not know) she thinks that the bombs were planted opportunistically after trouble had started, to sweeten the case against MAGA and the J6ers.

Whatever the merits of that theory, here's her new reporting:

ulie Kelly 🇺🇸
@julie_kelly2

5h

I spoke this morning with the individual believed to be "Person of Interest 3" (POI3) in the FBI's original pipe bomb investigation related to January 6.

I will not name this individual to protect his privacy since he just found out today (by me) that he had been under FBI surveillance for allowing another individual--"Person of Interest 2" (POI2)--to use his Metro card to travel to Washington DC for Stop the Steal events on Jan 5 and Jan 6.

I think this is the Metro card the FBI believes was used by the "bomber." I don't know if Kelly believes that.

POI2, according to a Congressional report published last year, was seen on security cameras on the morning of Jan 5 "photographing a dumpster next to the location where the RNC pipe bomb would later be planted." In the days after Jan 6, the FBI considered "POI2's movements to be 'highly suspicious' and considered POI2 as a 'possible accomplice' to the pipe bomber."

Both POI2 and POI3 were placed under physical surveillance by the FBI's Washington Field Office.

POI2 told investigators in an interview on Jan 19. 2021 that he had "traveled to Washington, D.C. to attend First Amendment activities on Capitol Hill on January 5 and that throughout the day, POI2 photographed 'objects bearing numerals' including doors, dumpsters, and other objects and intended to use these photographs in a book he was writing."

Both men were ruled out as suspects by late Jan 2021.

POI3 is a 66-year-old man currently employed by the Air Force. Here is what he told me today about the use of his Metro card by his friend (POI2) who he has known for more than 55 years.

"I have a friend who came up for the January 6 Stop the Steal protest, he lives out of state. I've known him since 1969, we went to elementary and high school together. He's from my understanding not affiliated with anything illegal or immoral. He is kind of like an evangelist, a religious educator [who] goes all around the world preaching the gospel but he's very Republican, very pro-Trump person.

He is probably 67 [years-old] now. He was probably 63 on January 6.

He came up a day before or a couple days before the January 6 date and I took him to the Metro. He stayed at my house. I took him to the Metro and I let him borrow my Metro card. I have an extra Metro card, I have one that I use to ride the Metro every day and one that I keep [as] my personal thing.

This was during the pandemic so I was working from home the entire time. So he went downtown the day prior to January 6 and he was downtown on January 6. I know he was doing some type of journaling for this event. I know he posted some stuff on Facebook. He was keeping a log telling everybody about all the events and activities that took place.

And then I think on the 7th of January, I took him back to Dulles to catch his flight. He came up again for the inauguration [this year] and I let him stay at my house again.

Now that relates to my friend who I've known since elementary school who I grew up with.

I lived next door to this individual who supposedly is identified as the pipe bomber from everything that I've heard. I've lived in this house [in Falls Church, Virginia] since 2003. So in 2021, they had moved in the year before, her and a gentleman. I knew them purely in passing exchanges, pleasantries on the street. I never went into their house so I don't have any idea of their political leanings in any way, shape, or form.

I've been contacted and I did look into the paper and when a picture of this supposed person came up, I said, yes that looks like her.

All I can say is there's two people involved in this that I know--my friend who I went to elementary school and high school together who asked for a favor to let him stay at my house during the January 6 rally.

As it relates to this lady, this policeman, other than her living next door to me, I have no involvement with her in any way shape or form. It was my understanding they worked for the Metropolitan Police Department, that's all I know and they were not here that long.

They just lived next door to me."

I will have much more to say on this shortly.

She does not think much of The Blaze's "scoop" or of Kyle Seraphim's various accusations.

Julie Kelly
@julie_kelly2

The allegations in The Blaze, the deceptive (and inconsistent) framing by Seraphin and his acolytes--which I will get to soon including his suggestion POI2 was the alleged pipe bomber's boyfriend lol--and this so-called "whistleblower" report promoted by Tom Massie all rely on the notion that the FBI pulled surveillance of these two men to cover up for the "pipe bomber" neighbor.

But as this man told me today, the true account of what happened is very straightforward. And I can tell you after speaking with him, he is extremely sincere, talked very plainly about what happened over those few days, and had no idea he (or his friend) had been a subject of the initial pipe bomb investigation.

That is why surveillance of both men ended--not some batsh*t conspiracy theory promoted by the likes of The Blaze and the "Suspendables" that somehow the FBI KNEW the neighbor was the pipe bomber and pulled the agents off the case.

More about her take on Seraphim's claims here. Seraphim is now saying he was actually surveilling the suspect publicized by The Blaze much earlier, and was pulled off that surveillance detail. I don't know. I believe it when I hear someone else confirming this.

Posted by: Ace at 06:25 PM | Comments (197) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hmm: GOP Senators Snuck a Provision Into the Shutdown Deal Granting Them the Right to Sue Over "Arctic Frost" Invasions of Privacy/Weaponization of Government

The GOP did something sneaky that is not at the direct expense of their voters?

What is going on? What madness is this?

Some may say they engaged in self-dealing here, but I think there's plenty of positive public policy here. We need the Deep State exposed, and moreover, exposed to legal process.

Sue. Sue like the wind.

A new provision was quietly inserted into Congress's shutdown deal as part of a broader appropriations bill late Monday, giving lawmakers the right to sue the federal government over the FBI's "Arctic Frost" surveillance campaign that targeted Republican senators and conservative organizations.

Under the new language, senators whose phone records were seized during Special Counsel Jack Smith's probe into the 2020 election can take the government to court -- and claim at least $500,000 per violation. The move comes after revelations that Smith's team, operating under former President Joe Biden's Justice Department, subpoenaed cellphone metadata belonging to GOP senators between January 4 and 7, 2021, as part of the so-called "Arctic Frost" investigation.

"It's designed to put real teeth into federal law that prohibits the executive branch from surveilling the Senate," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told the Daily Caller News Foundation. "Arctic Frost was a grotesque abuse of power. It was Joe Biden's Watergate." Cruz added that the measure is "a common sense provision to ensure that no Department of Justice -- Democrat or Republican -- ever does that again."

Cruz, who said last month that AT&T refused to hand over his records but was barred from notifying him due to a court order, is among several senators whose data were secretly subpoenaed. Judge James Boasberg, then chief judge of the D.C. District Court, approved the nondisclosure orders that kept lawmakers in the dark. The new provision would now make such secrecy illegal, requiring service providers to immediately alert a Senate office if its data is requested by federal authorities.

Notably, the measure applies retroactively to 2022, meaning those affected by Smith's subpoenas can pursue damages.

...

Democrats, however, were quick to protest the late addition. "I'm shocked that a huge change in policy would be dropped into a bill at the last minute, and the first that most senators learn about it is in the press," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) complained. "That's not lawmaking at a way that representatives can be informed."

Of course.

I know the GOP is supposed to be "against lawsuits" but here's how that's worked out in actual reality: The left writes every law to grant a private right of lawsuit to vindicate left-wing fake "rights," and the right never responds in kind.

Meaning the real policy is: Liberals can sue for everything, conservatives can sue for nothing.

If we're going to be sued for everything, then I want the reciprocal right to sue for everything myself.

"Sue everybody!" as noted Legal Whiner Saul Rosenberg advises.

And speaking of Ted Cruz --

and speaking of "Judge" Boasberg --

and speaking of impeachable behavior by left-wing rogue "judges" --

Ted Cruz has scheduled impeachment hearings for "rogue judges," including "Judge" Boasberg, who illegally ordered phone companies to not alert the victims of an illegal search that their records were being illegally searched.

Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action and Federal Rights Chairman Ted Cruz on Monday scheduled a hearing on the possibility of impeaching "rogue" federal judges.

The hearing comes after Republicans complained that some judges have intervened with President Donald Trump's executive orders. Several lawmakers have introduced legislation this year that seeks to curb rogue judges, after multiple judges issued nationwide injunctions on some of Trump's agenda, instead of focusing on the people in the specific case.

Yeah I know "nothing will happen" but at some point you just need to start taking shots on goal.

I'm making no factual assertions,
but this is the face of a man who volunteers
to coach youth soccer because he's a fan
of energetic ball-play

More:

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) asked Attorney General Pam Bondi Thursday to unseal some "grand jury materials" from the FBI's Arctic Frost probe that would reveal special counsel Jack Smith's reasoning for seeking her and other Republicans' personal phone records.

Smith obtained call logs for at least 10 GOP lawmakers -- including Blackburn -- and the Tennessee senator wrote to Bondi requesting her "to use every tool ... to uncover a key component of the weaponized, Biden-era Arctic Frost investigation," according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Post.

That "key component" is an application for a non-disclosure order signed by DC US District Chief Judge James Boasberg, forcing phone carriers keep secret for one year Smith's subpoenas for the documents, which included the Republicans' addresses, inbound/outbound call and text records, and payment information.

"It is our understanding that this application is currently under seal in the Arctic Frost grand jury materials," Blackburn said. "We urge you to immediately unseal and provide this application that accompanied the gag order."

Boasberg has been a thorn in the side of the Trump administration's immigration policies after he issued a court order blocking deportation flights of alleged gang members to a Salvadoran mega-prison in March.

Posted by: Ace at 05:26 PM | Comments (230) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Analysis: The Transgender Tulip Bubble Has Popped

Eric Kaufman, writing at Skeptic:

A few weeks ago, I published results from six waves of the massive Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) annual survey of undergraduate students. The data were unequivocal: the share of students identifying as a gender other than male or female--that is, as non-binary--peaked in 2023 and has halved in the two years since. This is a stunning reversal in the culture that will reverberate through society and politics in the coming years.

The survey captures over 50,000 students per year from nearly 250 leading American universities. Its size guarantees statistical power and enables us to look at small subgroups like trans or queer people. FIRE data is a random sample, a small percentage of each university's student body, and I wanted to be sure it triangulated with two surveys capturing a much greater share of the total. One comes from the elite Andover Phillips prep school near Boston; the other is run by Brown University's student newspaper. Both interview a far higher share of their target pool than FIRE surveys (up to 50 percent for Brown freshmen, and 75 percent in the Andover case). As Figure 1 shows, these surveys corroborate the "peak trans" pattern in the FIRE data, revealing a rapid decline since 2023.

Note that chart actually shows students saying their neither male nor female -- i.e., "non-binary" -- and is not about transgenderism per se. But transgenders would claim to be of the other sex, so it's hard to find them in these surveys. The author argues (plausibly) that the "non-binary" delusion is closely correlated with the trans delusion, but some, like pro-life/anti-groomer activist Billboard Chris, think it's an error to conflate the two.

The article also responds to technical criticisms like claims that these figures aren't weighted by demographics. That's both above my pay grade and below my threshold of actual interest.

Make up your own minds. I'm not your daddy.

Or... am I...?

Son?

...

I expand more fully on these findings in my University of Buckingham Centre for Heterodox Social Science report, which also found that the decline in non-binary identification was matched by a 10-point drop in unconventional sexual identification. Namely, in students identifying their sexual orientation as something other than heterosexual or homosexual--such as pansexual, queer, questioning, bisexual, or asexual. Many students who identify as neither male nor female also identify as sexually non-conforming, so the correlation trend is unsurprising.

Sexual orientation has been measured in more youth surveys for longer than gender identity has been. While gay and lesbian share remained flat through 2020 to 2025, Figure 2 shows that the broader non-heterosexual group--covering bisexual, queer, pansexual, asexual, questioning, and other labels--rose steeply to 2023 and then fell across a wide range of surveys.

See the link for the chart. Preposterously, identification as non-heterosexual rose to 40% at some schools. It's so depressing I don't want to reproduce the chart here.

Here, in my digital home. My home!

The non-heterosexual proportion peaked at around 30 percent overall, reaching as high as 40 percent at progressive-leaning Ivy League schools like Brown and 50 percent in liberal arts colleges such as Smith College. Importantly, the decline in non-conforming sexual orientation parallels the decline in non-conforming gender identity, suggesting a common underlying dynamic.

Well, Smith is famously Finishing School for Lesbians.

Identification as non-heterosexual has also fallen, though not as dramatically as identification as "neither male nor female."

Classic pattern of social contagion or viral mental illness.

...

Why is the trans curve bending downward? Are young people becoming more conservative and religious? No. The same FIRE student surveys that show non-binary gender and queer sexuality dropping like a stone find no shift to the political right over time, and no rise in the share affiliating with a religion. Students are also no more supportive of free speech, and no more opposed to shouting down speakers, than they were in 2020. They are as woke as ever, just less trans and queer.

Oh well that's just great.

Peter Heck at NottheBee is a high school teacher and he says these stats match his direct-but-anecdotal observations.

While it's purely anecdotal, I can testify that from my own vantage point as a public high school teacher that the researchers are not imagining things. Not long ago, many schools across the country became pronoun battlegrounds, with students cycling through new "identities" every semester, and teachers instructed to oblige and rat out their colleagues who refused.

Today, pronoun announcements have all but disappeared. The once-growing cluster of self-identified non-binary students has shrunk dramatically. Whatever once felt like an unstoppable cultural wave now looks like what many warned it was all along: a disastrous social contagion.

But now must come The Great Reckoning:

While the trend may be reversing, the damage remains. Adults who have been entrusted with the well-being of our children, who should have been a bulwark of stability and truth, instead bent the knee to ideas that were, from the start, patently unscientific and philosophically incoherent. Administrators, professors, teachers, board members, and counselors all treated biological reality as hateful. Feelings were elevated above facts, and the ideological whims of a political crusade were permitted to rewrite human nature.

But, like the Japanese soldiers at the end of World War II -- and I still do not know which side I wanted to win that war; Demon Attack Survivor Tucker Carlson teaches me that both sides had heroes and villains, like Winston Churchill and also Jews -- they are still fighting to the last man for the last beach on the last island.

Posted by: Ace at 05:20 PM | Comments (343) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Federal Judge May Sanction Gavin Newsom's Transgender Government For Lying in Legal Filings About California's Determination to Trans Children Behind Their Parents' Backs

Gavin Newsom is playing hide-the-salami.

I mean, you already assumed that, but I mean he's playing it in court.

The state of California knew it would lose a case involving transing children behind their parents' back. So the state claimed they had changed the policy, thus "mooting" the case. Judges can't rule on moot cases, usually, so the manuever was designed to take the case out of the judge's hands before he could rule and establish precedent.

And then---

Whoops!

Whoopsie!

-- the supposedly "changed" policy popped right back up in teacher instruction materials, again telling teachers to trans children behind their parents' backs.

The judge is, how you say, arribiato.

Federal judge threatens to sanction California for 'misleading' him in 'gender secrecy' case

"Forced outings," when students are already publicly identifying as the opposite sex in school and demanding others use fake pronouns to them.

They're already "out" to everyone in the world -- except their parents.

Scott Penis just doesn't want their parents to know.

Groomers and pedophiles always tell children to keep special secrets from their parents.

State claimed lawsuit over muzzling teachers, hiding students gender identity from parents was moot because it removed FAQ page with challenged policies, but they secretly popped up again in required teacher training.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has repeatedly slurred a federal judge by name, echoing President Trump's history of diatribes against judges even before the current Democrat started copying the former Democrat's social media style and insulting nicknames.

The perceived contender for the 2028 Democratic nomination for president may cluck his tongue again when he sees the latest order from U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez in a lawsuit against The Golden State's alleged mandate on school districts to hide from parents their children's asserted gender identity at odds with sex.

The President George W. Bush nominee ordered state Attorney General Rob Bonta and the California Department of Education to "show cause" on why they should not be sanctioned for "misleading" Benitez so he would remove them from the suit by teachers who allege their school district muzzled them and parents of "gender incongruent children."

The state defendants' motions to dismiss and opposition to the plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment claimed that CDE had "withdrawn and conclusively replaced" an FAQ page that contained the challenged policies, which they claimed was the "only basis" for being named defendants and thus made the case moot, Benitez wrote.

"However, evidence demonstrates that the CDE may have merely moved the challenged content of the FAQ page to a new, required 'PRISM' training module," as documented by the plaintiffs' lawyers at the Thomas More Society, the judge said, ordering state defendants to explain their behavior Nov. 17 in court.

"From day one, officials from the local school district all the way to the governor's mansion have tried to deflect responsibility" but "have now been caught not only lying to California taxpayers but attempting to mislead the Court to escape accountability," TMS Executive Vice President Peter Breen said in a statement.

...

It's the latest setback for state leaders in the case, in which Benitez has repeatedly sided with the plaintiffs.

...

The society filed an application for sanctions Friday, pointing to a California Family Council article Nov. 3 on the new PRISM teacher training that includes a screenshot of a slide with "language very similar to the FAQ page" that the CDE took down.

The article links to a recording of a PRISM training, which it dubs an "LGBTQ 'Loyalty Test,'" that CFC describes as part of a curriculum mandated by the California Safe and Supportive Schools Act, developed in consultation with LGBTQ advocacy groups including the ACLU, Trevor Project and California Teachers Association.

...

It makes explicit that school staff cannot tell parents if their children identify as the opposite sex, because they still have "a reasonable expectation of privacy" even if they are open about their gender identity at school. Schools can only disclose this to parents in "limited circumstances" such as "issues involving safety or wellness."

CFC said the training also falsely characterized the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act in a test at the end of the training, claiming it forbids schools from sharing a child's gender identity with parents when FERPA actually "protects parents' right to access their child's records, not the state's right to withhold them."

In other words, they claimed the law required the exact opposite of what it required. It transformed a parent's right-to-know into a teacher's duty-to-conceal.

And then, while maintaining that the "law" required a teacher to have a duty-to-conceal, they claimed that no such duty exists so the case should be thrown out because it's a moot issue.

There is a law. There isn't a law. There is a policy. There isn't a policy.

Whatever Gavin Newsom's Transgender Government identifies as at any stage of the lawsuit.

While taking down the FAQ page left school districts "in a state of ambiguity" rather than confirming they could disclose gender identity to parents without student permission, the state defendants tried to play it both ways, "affirmatively telling school districts that Parental Exclusion Policies were legally required, while arguing mootness to this Court."

Very much related: An update to the dude in lipstick wagging his pickle at women in a women's changing room at Gold's Gym.

There's a Transgender Cinematic Universe cross-over later in the tale.

The story, which you mostly know from last week:

Posted by: Ace at 03:15 PM | Comments (337) | Trackbacks (Suck)

New Democrat-Media Hoax Drops: Shock Emails Prove Trump Knew Epstein Was Recruiting Underaged Girls! And Knew One of the Victims!
Unmentioned: Yes, We Knew He Knew, He Kicked Epstein Out of Mar-a-Lago. And the Victim Absolves Trump.

Just more defamation and lies from the Lugenpress.

Not the Bee has a good recap. The charge made is that it is now "proven" by emails that Trump knew Jeffrey Epstein was recruiting underaged girls.

Except we already know that, because we already knew that Trump caught Epstein trying to recruit girls from Mar-a-Lago, and kicked him out of the club permanently for it.

The Democrat-Media Party attack deliberately omits to mention that (though the emails "revealed" by the Democrats also point that out -- again).

This isn't just old news -- it's old, exculpatory news, altered and fabricated to look like new, inculpatory news.

Posted by: Ace at 02:12 PM | Comments (307) | Trackbacks (Suck)

DEI Ding-Dong Kamala Harris: I Campaigned Brilliantly Against Donald Trump and Played a Keen Game of Three Dimensional Chess Against Him (Which, If You're Being Fussy, I Lost)

I can hear the naysayers neighing -- they're saying:

"Ace, you are linking this story because it is ludicrously easy content where you don't even have to write a single word, the story tells itself and the objections to Kamala Harris are so obvious that you don't even have to mention them. This is just an easy lay-up post where the commenters will provide all the commentary so you can blow off work for an hour and just watch Office re-runs."

YES.

OF COURSE.

Duh, naysayers.

What, are you gonna narc on me?

That's against the Bro Code, you know.

Bro's don't narc.

Bro's snark but they don't narc.

Jason Cohen of the Daily Caller:

Former Vice President Kamala Harris said on "Storehouse & Friends" Sunday that she was determined to prevent President Donald Trump from beating her at "three-dimensional chess" during her 2024 presidential campaign.

Harris lost all seven swing states and the national popular vote to Trump in 2024. The former vice president said on the show that she recognized the Trump campaign's strategy and sought to ensure it did not affect her own.

"I was aware of my opponent's strategy. And I wasn't about to fall prey or fall into those traps," Harris said." And part of his strategy, and those around him, was to try and take me off our game and message."

"And I wasn't about to be distracted by those flames that he was trying to throw to get me away from one of my highest priorit[ies], which was talking to people about the economy and their well-being, in terms of their financial well-being," she added. "I understood the game that was being played and I made a decision that I wasn't going to get played."

Harris then cackled for several seconds while at least one of the hosts said, "Chess, not checkers."

"Yeah. Three-dimensional chess," Harris responded.

Posted by: Ace at 01:20 PM | Comments (290) | Trackbacks (Suck)

UK PM and Effeminate Pussy Keir Starmer Vows He Will "Fiiiiiight" Any Move to Depose Him

Before that: This Effeminate Pussy just reduced the formerly "special relationship" between the UK and the US by announcing that the UK will no longer share "some" intelligence with the US... to protect his communist ally Maduro in Venezuela.

This is a major breach of our alliance.

The United Kingdom has suspended some intelligence sharing with the United States, its close ally, over the U.S. military's lethal strikes against alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean, since London thinks the attacks are illegal and does not want to be implicated, multiple outlets reported on Tuesday.

The decision to halt intelligence sharing, which took place earlier this fall, highlights the range of skepticism regarding the Trump administration's legal justification for the vessel strikes, which so far have killed at least 76 people.

The U.S. garners intelligence from a variety of sources, including the UK, which oversees some territories in the Caribbean and offers information that assists the U.S. in identifying boats suspected of smuggling narcotics in the region.

The gathered intelligence is normally delivered to the Joint Interagency Task Force South (JIATFS), based in Key West, Fla., which works on monitoring and detecting suspected illegal trafficking targets and conducting counter-narcotic operations.

More than a dozen countries, including close U.S. allies, have liaison officers based at JIATFS, which is led by Coast Guard Rear Adm. Jeff Randall.

The British have radar bases and listening stations in the Caribbean. You've seen James Bond movies. They're like all set in the Caribbean. It's kind of stupid.

So this isn't nothing. The British are denying us intelligence collected at Jamaica, the Bahamas, etc.

If you missed it, Argentina is talking tough again about seizing the Falkland Islands from the British, and this time, I say we side with Argentina.

Not that these ponces will care much. They just signed over the nearly-unhinhabited but strategically useful Chagos Islands to Mauritius... which is very friendly with expansionist Red China.

These are the islands where the US maintains an absolutely vital base at Diego Garcia. The US will continue to have access to that base, for a while, as the UK negotiated a 99 year lease (on something they formerly owned)... but China will build its own base right next to ours soon enough. (The British negotiated a 24-mile buffer zone around Diego Garcia. Pretty sure a Chinese base 25 miles away would still be a threat.)

Back to the headline story:

Even the effeminate pussies at the Guardian admit that their ally Keir Starmer is the most unpopular PM in UK history.

However, they put a Happy Spin on it.

Yes, Keir Starmer is Britain’m's most unpopular PM ever. That could liberate him

Amazing. Hitler similarly felt liberated as the Wehrmacht dissolved. He felt so liberated he decided to YOLO a bullet into his own temple and liberate his cerebral cortex from his brain stem.

Forget the public vitriol and use the next four years to get things done -- first and foremost, whatever it takes to stop Reform

Somewhere in Greater Britain, a chicken cries out, "Help! I'm being sexually assaulted!"

(That is a real old-school reference.)

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As often, Wes Streeting dares say what all can see: that there is "deep disillusionment in this country at the moment" and "a growing sense of despair about whether anyone is capable of turning this country round". The "change" Labour promised is not yet visible; we still lack a guiding light towards better things to come.

Note that name "Wes Streetling" for later.

Yet, even so, the current vitriolic state of public opinion is perplexing and alarming. Keir Starmer is the most unpopular prime minister ever.

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As prime minister, he's short on charisma, they say: more seriously, he lacks political agility, ingenuity or instinct for where the wind blows.

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Polling guru John Curtice warns them to stop chasing Reform voters: they've gone.

Labour's leader is failing; there's no denying it when pollsters suggest no leader could ever return from these unplumbed depths.

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Unsurprisingly, panic on the back benches will make talk of leadership change rife if May's elections go as badly as predicted -- or, some suggest, sooner. I see aficionados reaching for the Labour party rulebook, reminding one another of a little-noticed but key change made at last year's conference. It's now easier to challenge a sitting leader at any time of year with a nomination backed by 20% of Labour MPs -- currently, 80 of them. Before, a leader was safe except in a brief pre-conference window.

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Here's ministers' paradox: Labour's only hope lies in despair. Assume they will be wiped out whatever, so use this massive majority for four more years to follow their natural social democratic instinct: make radical tax reforms, raising plenty. Expect to lose the next election, so do everything now. Forget opinion polls and focus groups; let voters see sincerity in their purpose. The only way to restore some respect is to do transparently what they think most right and fair.

Well that's a plan. As with Hitler: YOLO it.

Remember how Labour got this huge majority: It was emphatically not because the public craved more feckless IngSoc communism and control. Just a few years before, the public handed the "Conservative" party an enormous majority, one of the largest in history.

No, Labour only won because the "Conservative" continued allowing hundreds and hundreds of thousands of immigrants, many "boat people" criminals escaping justice in their own home countries, and absolutely would not change this policy no matter how much their own voters demanded it.

Their own voters were not yet ready to embrace the "extremism" of Reform, so they choose the path of self-harm -- political cutting -- of voting for Labour to send a message.

A message Labour itself didn't get either, though they make insincere claims about wanting to "stop the boats."

There was never any desire for a return of IngSoc. People just wanted the boats stopped. Now they have more destructive socialism and more boat criminals.

The General Electios won't take place for a while. I think that Guardian scrunt mentioned May. We'll get to the May elections below.

But members of Keir Starmer's disaster-party are scheming to depose him before the scheduled party leadership vote.

Keir Starmer, the most demasculated man in the world -- even Justin Castreaux at least uses his left-wing effeminancy to smash mish -- vows he will "fight" with every atom of male strength he has, which is three. Three atoms of male strength.

Allies of the prime minister are making it clear he would fight any challenge to his leadership from Labour MPs.

There are fears from those loyal to Sir Keir Starmer that his job might be under immediate threat, perhaps as soon as shortly after the Budget in a fortnight's time.

Critics say it is evidence that Downing Street is "in full bunker mode" which "won't help the government out of the hole we're in."

You know who else went into full bunker mode?

I'm not the only one thinking about Hitler. Me and Important Conservative Thought Leader Nick Fuentes have Hitler on our minds.

Friends of Sir Keir are deeply worried about what they see as plotting going on to try to replace him and are seeking to make clear what they see as the grave risks of a leadership challenge.

You don't want none of this smoke, Friend-O.

Posted by: Ace at 12:10 PM | Comments (438) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Wednesday Morning Rant

Goodbye, Mister Lincoln

In my day-to-day commerce, I usually pay cash. If I am not doing something for which I need plastic, I usually don't use it. I get some odd looks sometimes, but it's my preference. It also makes splitting the bill at restaurants easy. Recently, I've noticed that some computerized cash registers stopped reflecting reality. If the bill came to $15.02 and I put in a $20 bill, the computer changes the total deposited to $20.02 and then returns $5.00 even. Or if the bill comes to some other fraction - say $5.27 - the bill changes to $5.25 as soon as I put in cash.

I missed it, but the US Mint has decided to stop producing pennies. They ordered their last set of blanks this year and have apparently finished - or are about to finish - the final run of pennies. The reason is cost. Pennies cost nearly a nickle to produce and the Mint expects to save in excess of $50 million per year by ceasing penny production. But the oddity to me is how rapidly stores are front-running penny scarcity.

Posted by: Joe Mannix at 11:00 AM | Comments (298) | Trackbacks (Suck)