Open Thresd

Major computer problems. Cannot connect to internet no matter if I use my home wifi or my phone hotspot, any ideas? I've rebooted and turned the wifi on and off a dozen times

Posted by: Ace at 12:22 PM | Comments (341) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Open Thresd

Major computer problems. Cannot connect to internet no matter if I use my home wifi or my phone hotspot, any ideas?

Posted by: Ace at 12:19 PM | Comments (105) | Trackbacks (Suck)

THE MORNING RANT: After $32B in Losses, Ford Throws in the Towel on EVs – There Will Not Be a Full-Size Electric Pickup Truck

Ford Motor Company has announced that it is de-transitioning from the “EV Transition.” Specifically, Ford has finally given up on the eco-globalist dream of an all-EV future, and the company will no longer try to cram recalcitrant consumers into electric vehicles.

“Ford Writes Down $19.5 billion As It Pivots Electric Lightning Line of Vehicles” [Fortune – 12/15/2025]

This is a huge victory for liberty-loving Americans. Left-wing zealots had specifically targeted gasoline-powered vehicles in their battle against carbon-fueled freedom. The rejection of EVs by American consumers was a populist political statement, and Ford executives found themselves in the position of having to either remain loyal to the enviro-communists in Davos, which would have killed off the company, or finally accept that consumers will not acquiesce to an unelected green dictatorship.

More specifically, Ford has finally acknowledged that there is just not a market for an all-electric pickup truck. Not only has the Ford F150 Conflagration Lightning been canceled, but Ford will not even attempt to produce another full-size electric pickup. Of note, the gas/diesel F150 is America’s best-selling vehicle.

Ford CEO Jim Farley is quoted as saying, “Instead of plowing billions into the future knowing these large EVs will never make money, we are pivoting.”

Mr. Farley’s catastrophic EV misadventure has now cost Ford over $32 billion in losses. Ford had already lost $13 billion over the past four years on its “Model E” program (or “Model E-dsel” as some have joked), and the company is now about to realize another $19 billion loss in unwinding the EV mess.

To put the magnitude of Ford’s $32 billion EV loss into context, Ford’s total profit over the past seven years was about $31 billion. Some back-of-the-envelope math shows me that Ford will have lost almost $100,000 for every EV it has ever sold.

Some people are arguing that Ford was just a victim of Obama/Biden era mandates, but Toyota and Honda deftly navigated through those years without committing to an all-EV future in the manner that Ford and General Motors did.

This $20 billion write down is above and beyond the $10 billion+ that the EV debacle has already cost Ford. It’s great news that Ford is finally giving up on the EV folly, but this costly disaster didn’t have to happen. Toyota & Honda wisely showed restraint during peak EV hype.

— Buck Throckmorton (@BuckThrockmort) December 15, 2025

To be fair to Mr. Farley, he answers to a weak Board of Directors which is apparently obedient to the Ford family. Meanwhile, the Ford family retains a powerful voting share of the company’s stock. Bill Ford has maneuvered himself into a powerful position within the Ford family voting bloc and on the Board. Mr. Ford is also a hard-left environmentalist who for decades has been trying to make Ford into a green company that would impress his communist friends in Davos. Jim Farley’s commitment to EVs was almost certainly at the direction of Bill Ford.

I can only surmise what is going on within the Ford family as Bill Ford and Jim Farley drove the company into a $32 billion ditch, but I am guessing that some family members have finally said “enough.”

Despite the great news about Ford terminating any future all-electric F150, there are clearly some “green” bones being thrown to Bill Ford. The company is promising at some future date to release an extended range “EREV” pickup that will have a gasoline-powered generator alongside an electric drivetrain. That sounds just as preposterous as the concept behind plug-in hybrids.

Ford has also announced that it is getting into the industrial-scale battery electric storage systems business, also knowns as “BESS.” Let me be the first to confidently predict that there will be a multi-billion-dollar write-off for Ford’s BESS distraction in coming years.

Posted by: Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM | Comments (469) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Mid-Morning Art Thread

Jo in Wyoming
Edward Hopper

[Hat Tip: neverenough caffeine]

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (346) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Report — 12/19/25

Good morning kids. Not to toot my own horn but am I good or what?! In yesterday's Morning Report, I wrote:

we have two separate shootings on two of the nation’s top campuses, Brown University and at MIT. . .Are these incidents all connected somehow. Given the assassination of Charlie Kirk and several failed attempts on President Trump as well as the violent rhetoric and actual violence and acts of terrorism by the Left cheered on and encouraged by the Democrat propagandist media and the Democrats themselves not just in the Trump era but virtually throughout our history. Well anything is possible, and maybe the MIT Professor had links to Academia’s bête noire The State of Israel or was targeted by the Chi-Coms or other foreign state actors? Meh, just spit-ballin’ here. Don’t cost nuthin’. . .  

Well, the gunman offed himsef and it turns out he was a Portuguese national, as was his victim at MIT. What his connection to the victims at Brown is unclear, except for the fact that he attended Brown at one point. But here's the kicker:

Israeli officials are reportedly investigating a possible Iranian connection to the murder of senior MIT nuclear scientist Prof. Nuno F. G. Loureiro, who was reportedly shot at his home on Monday evening by unknown assailants and died in the hospital a few hours later. Professor Loureiro, 47, was the director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), whose faculty he joined in 2016. He was born and raised in Portugal, earning an undergraduate degree from the Instituto Superior Tecnico in Lisbon and a Ph.D. from Imperial College in London, then spending several years at the Institute for Plasmas and Nuclear Fusion in Lisbon before moving to the United States. . . “The Israeli investigation is being conducted against the backdrop of Loureiro’s sensitive field of research,” JP reported. “However, informed sources have emphasized that at this stage, there is no unequivocal determination or evidence linking the murder to a state or intelligence operation.”

The Jewish magazine Forward on Wednesday sought to debunk social media rumors that Loureiro was killed because he was an outspoken supporter of Israel and Jewish people as unfounded. The rumors appear to be based on some social media posts that were mistakenly attributed to Prof. Loureiro, but actually written by someone else using the same name, along with a photo posted to social media that claimed to show a “Stand With Israel” sign in the professor’s window. . . There has been much speculation about such a connection, since the killer has proven remarkably elusive in both cases, and Loureiro’s home in Brookline is only about 50 miles from Brown University, so it would not be difficult for the killer to get from one murder site to the other in less than two days.

Well about me saying "Am I good or what?" I'll go with the "or what" choice. As I said, given everything going on both at home and abroad and the Venn diagram of events intersects at quite a few points. Almost any day of the week, the links we have can be played almost like that old game called "Mad Libs" no not angry leftists but a play on the expression Ad-lib, although there are myriad Mad Libs/angry leftists that populate virtually every link to one degree or another. Where or how the victims and perpetrator in these killings are connected vis a vis the motive is still unknown, and as President Trump is fond of saying, we'll just have to wait and see. Unless of course the propaganda media and their paymasters in the institutional left deem the truth way to inconvenient and damaging to their narrative.

As in this case:

How bad is the establishment media? How much does it present propaganda disguised as news? How low will it stoop? Here’s a case study.

A “Sioux Falls man” was arrested on Tuesday. It seems that this particular Sioux Falls man was minding his own business, not bothering anybody, livestreaming on Facebook, when he suddenly decided to let the world know that all was not right in the world of Sioux Falls Man. He announced, right on his Facebook livestream, that he was planning to burn a building down. He also brandished a gun and a knife. . . Having thus advertised his intentions to the world, Sioux Falls man was arrested, and the local media covered the story. Yet the way that one Sioux Falls “news” outlet presented the facts has implications that go far beyond Sioux Falls and the story of one local boy who went bad. . . You’d reasonably expect, or even assume, that this was a photo of the Sioux Falls man who was livestreaming and announced his plans to commit an act of arson. Yet not only was it not a photo of the perp, but it was a photo that showed someone who was about as different from the perp as it would be possible to get. . . the real Sioux Falls man who issued this arson threat was not the man in KELO’s photo. Instead, he was a black man named Mohamed Mansarry. Likely because of all the attention KELO received from their false photo (End Wokeness has 3.9 million followers on X), it has taken down the story that it initially circulated with the misleading photo; now all there is at that link is a Page Not Found notice. . .
The story that KELO now has up carries Mohamed Mansarry. But what was going on with that other photo? One X user offered the most likely explanation: “The media operates as a laundering service for the regime’s persistent failures. This visual deception in Sioux Falls is a blatant example of narrative control. KELO News substitutes a stock photo of a white man for Mohamed Mansarry to preserve a hollow multicultural illusion. This is a calculated attempt to sanitize demographic reality. You liberal sycophants swallow this visual poison because you fear the truth more than the fire Mansarry threatened to start. The press functions as the propaganda wing of a crumbling state that relies on your blindness to survive.”

At the tail end of the latest edition of the podcast CBD and I were reminiscing about the good old days growing up in the greater NYC area. For me it was the Flatbush/Midwood section of Brooklyn, having graduated from what was an outstanding example of what the concept of the Melting Pot ought to be: Midwood High School, where whatever your religion, ethnicity or background, we all somehow managed to get along and embraced not only our heritages but our common heritage of being American. Anyway, when we were off the air, CBD asked me about notable alumni:

Unfortunately one of my predecessors was Woody Allen and some years after I ventured as far away as across the street to Brooklyn College, came the truly execrable Hakeem Jeffries. I don't know if fellow alums Didi Conn, Morty Gunty or David Peel collectively offset the latter two.

But sadly, one of my own classmates, who long ago and far away I once considered a friend. I haven't seen nor spoken with him in ages and with this story I likely never will:

Thursday on CNN’s “The Lead,” network medical analyst Jonathan Reiner said the “manic cadence” of President Donald Trump’s White House address raised medical concerns.

One of Dr. Reiner's former patients was the late VP Dick Cheney. IIRC way back when when Cheney either had one of his dozens of heart attacks or was diagnosed with a serious heart ailment early on in Dubya's first term, I believe Reiner operated on him, and he became a go-to press source for politician-related medical stories. Anyway, Oh Johnny, my old friend and classmate, it pains me to say this but that you've let yourself descend to the level of being a flaming asshole paid propagandist with an MD shingle is disgusting and disappointing beyond belief. I'm ashamed and embarrassed for you, and I cannot believe we came up together in the same environment.

Perhaps this story is too personal but it is nevertheless illustrative of the nature of both the media as well as how one's personal politics can cloud any sense of ethics and decency, or more frighteningly that their personal politics and blinkered uninformed worldview gives them a sense of moral superiority that they are justified in doing what they do. Lying is truth telling to them. They have gone full Orwellian 1984. Meh, basta cosi.

Elsewhere, shiver me timbers!!!

Patriots of the Caribbean: Sen. Mike Lee Bill Authorizes Privateers to Combat Cartels Outside U.S. Borders — “The Constitution provides for Letters of Marque and Reprisal as a tool against the enemies of the United States,” Lee said. “Cartels have replaced corsairs in the modern era, but we can still give private American citizens and their businesses a stake in the fight against these murderous foreign criminals. The Cartel Marque and Reprisal Reauthorization act will revive this historic practice to defend our shores and seize cartel assets.”

God forbid the Democrats seize control . . . I can imagine them one day deputizing Antifa goons to use deadly force on suspected conservatives! Nous Somme les deux Charlies maintenant - Kirk et Hebdo .

Have a great weekend!

And lastly, a quick shout-out and a huge 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
• Providence police have identified a former Brown University student and Portuguese national as the suspect in Saturday’s shooting at the Ivy League school. 
  Brown, MIT shooting suspect ID’d — after he’s found dead from self-inflicted gunshot wound
  

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 07:20 AM | Comments (399) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 19 December 2025

Top Story

• The unfortunately named Paris Buttfield-Addison bought a $500 Apple gift card at a major Australian brick-and-mortar outlet.
  
  Turns out the card had already been redeemed, and when he tried to redeem it, it was rejected.
  
  The outlet agreed to provide a replacement gift card, so all was well.
  
  Then Apple terminated his account and bricked all of his devices. (Hey.Paris)

  My Apple ID, which I have held for around 25 years (it was originally a username, before they had to be email addresses; it's from the iTools era), has been permanently disabled. This isn't just an email address; it is my core digital identity. It holds terabytes of family photos, my entire message history, and is the key to syncing my work across the ecosystem.
  
  I effectively have over $30,000 worth of previously-active "bricked" hardware. My iPhone, iPad, Watch, and Macs cannot sync, update, or function properly. I have lost access to thousands of dollars in purchased software and media.

  You might be thinking at this point that this guy is an idiot for giving a single company complete control over his personal and work life in this way.
  
  You would be correct.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (201) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Thursday Overnight Open Thread - December 18, 2025 [Doof]

Joyce Bealer (U.S.), 3rd Place Landscape Photographer of the Year

Howdy Hordelings! Thanks for stopping by the Thursday ONT.
Happy Hannukah to those who are celebrating.
Coming up on the shortest daylight day of the year.
Two weeks to get your 2025 charitable donations in.
OK - enough preambling. Let's step inside, shall we?!?

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (509) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Dog Suspense Thriller Cafe

Malin Head, Donegal, Ireland

Baby sheep has a lot to say.

Evil river otters on their day off from Evil.

Very cute little vignette. I'd say it's AI but it looks real to me and I can kinda believe the premise, if I try to.

Superb Owl.

Hamster experiences sympathy injury.

Traveling dog.

Rescuing a fawn from a canal.

Helping the ducks cross the road.

Karma comes in all shapes.

Posted by: Ace at 08:00 PM | Comments (437) | Trackbacks (Suck)

One More Quick Update in Brown Shooter Case

I was going to include this in the Cafe, but that breaks a longtime rule of the Cafe. So I'll just post this brief update as I finish the Cafe.

Posted by: Ace at 07:35 PM | Comments (147) | Trackbacks (Suck)

DOJ Eyes Civil Rights Action Against Biden Officials Who Weaponized Government Power to Punish Political Enemies

Head of the Office of Civil Rights, Harmeet Dhillon, said that the raid on Mar-a-Lago, made without probable cause, might have been a criminal act.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon told Just the News on Wednesday that federal and local officials involved in the prosecutions of President Donald Trump may face legal action if the Department of Justice identifies a conspiracy to deprive him or his followers of his civil rights.

"The Department of Justice is at the heart of considering these issues right now, so I can't really talk about the specifics, but in general terms, yes," she said on the Just the News, No Noise television show.

"The Civil Rights Division and the DOJ generally do have the tool of a criminal conspiracy statute for conspiracy against rights, and this dates back to the start of the Ku Klux Klan, and when the Klan and its predecessors used to go after people, and they could involve, sometimes local law enforcement to do that," she said. "And so we have the ability, if we can prove a conspiracy to violate someone's civil rights, that that could be a criminal matter."

...

"That also goes for lawyers who leak and betray confidence as a breach of privilege, and for people who violate their oath as attorneys, they could also face bar sanctions if there's a bar referral after an investigation like that," Dhillon explained.

"So, I would say all of those things are on the table for lawyers and DOJ officials and others who conspired with them at the state level, state prosecutors, state police and so forth, who conspired to violate civil rights. And it could also include executive branch officials from the first administration who knowingly conspired and orchestrated a violation of federal civil rights."

The four Republicans who signed on Wednesday morning and pushed it to 218 were Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., Rob Bresnahan, R-Pa., and Ryan Mackenzie, R-Pa.

All four of them represent competitive districts that could make or break the GOP's narrow House majority. Democrats have been slamming each of them as complicit in the impending lapse of the funding, which first passed in 2021 under President Joe Biden in a bid to cap premiums for "benchmark" plans at 8.5% of income. ...

"House leadership then decided to reject every single one of these amendments," Fitzpatrick said. "As I've stated many times before, the only policy that is worse than a clean three-year extension without any reforms, is a policy of complete expiration without any bridge. Unfortunately, it is House leadership themselves that have forced this outcome."

It's possible this was Failure Theater from Johnson.

Update: I assume this is the car rented by the shooter, found abandoned in New Hampshire.

Posted by: Ace at 06:41 PM | Comments (275) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Updates on Brown Shooter: Federal LE, Not the Bumbling State and City LE, Identified the Suspect; the Person of Interest "In Proximity" to the Shooter Is a Homeless Man Who Provided Details About Killer

i didn't think the witness would be able to add much here. The shooter was wearing his Covid Coward Crime mask, after all.

But Jordan Schachtel's sources say he helped identify the shooter.

Note it's federal agents who cracked the case, not the bumbling Brown security officials or the multicultural disaster of the Providence PD.

Jordan Schachtel
@JordanSchachtel

1h

Hearing from govt sources that there is a major breakthrough in the Brown shooting case and a person of interest has been ID'd by federal law enforcement. Apparently it's NOT the Hamas encampment leader Mr Mustapha. Nobody has been ruled out but they have a hard ID on one person.

Local news reports that LE is also investigating any connections btwn the Brown incident and the targeted killing of an MIT professor two days later an hour down the road.

Sources believe the Brown attack was not targeted, though the MIT incident clearly was. Very strange.

Compilation of sources and reports say: the "person of interest" is reportedly a homeless guy who lives in the area, but he provided critical info on the shooter. Police have a DNA match and there should be news re arrest very soon on this front.

Jordan Schachtel
@JordanSchachtel

5m

The shelter-in-place order for Brown University was lifted on Saturday. That same day, just an hour down the road, the suspect on the loose reportedly murdered renowned MIT prof Nuno Loureiro.

I don't know how the president of Brown stays in office after this tragic debacle.

Update: Car rented by Brown shooter also seen near slain MIT professor. Or at least a car of the same make and model (and one assumes, color, which is a good bet because every stupid car is silver now).

Posted by: Ace at 05:29 PM | Comments (366) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Australian Counter-Terrorism Police Ram a Vehicle Containing Five Islamic Men Heading Towards Site of Sunday's Hannukah Slaughter

Authorities believe two cars loaded with Islamic men were headed to the scene of the Hannukah slaughter to commit further terroristic violence.

They rammed the car because, it is reported, they believed they had to stop the car immediately.

An unmarked police car rammed a vehicle carrying a group of men believed to be travelling towards Bondi beach, possibly planning a "violent act".

New South Wales police said there was no connection between the counterterrorism operation and the investigation into the Bondi terror attack on Sunday, in which a father and son opened fire on Chanukkah celebrations, leaving 15 dead.

No connection, huh? None at all?

You're ready to declare that so soon?

Well, that's standard practice in Australia now. One of their top "journalists" declared that the attack on a Hannukah celebration, attended by Jews, by a pair of bearded Muslim men "had nothing to do with religion."

The Super-Karen "journalist" is full of "facts" that she knows without any need for investigation.

The ABC's global affairs editor has sparked controversy by claiming Sunday's deadly attack on a Jewish festival at Bondi Beach had 'nothing to do with religion'.

Speaking on the ABC Politics Now podcast on Tuesday, veteran reporter Laura Tingle insisted the terrorists' actions were unrelated to their faith.

Her comments came despite mounting reports Naveed Akram, 24, and his father Sajid, 50, specifically targeted the Jewish celebration, and that homemade Islamic State flags were found in their silver hatchback.

The ABC itself reported that Naveed had previously been investigated by ASIO in 2019 over alleged links to an ISIS cell in Sydney.

Podcast host Patricia Karvelas said the pair 'absolutely are radicalised... they were targeting Jews. It is antisemitic, but we are ascribing all sorts of things, right?'

Tingle hit back: 'Their actions are not based on their religion'.

The veteran journalist also dismissed claims by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Australia was targeted for recognising Palestine.

'I don't think that really stacks up,' she said.

'I can't quite see how recognising Palestine leads to greater antisemitism, because if you think about it, it reduces the anger in the pro-Palestinian lobby I would have thought, and thus should actually reduce the temperature.'

Uh-huh. Either that or it convinces they that their low-level insurgency is a winning strategy, given the cowardly appeasement offered to them, and encourages them to ramp the jihad up still further.

Either/or.

An ABC spokeswoman defended Tingle, saying her role is to provide analysis.

'Laura Tingle is a senior and highly experienced journalist whose role as ABC Global Affairs Editor includes providing her assessment and analysis,' she said.

'The conversation on the podcast concerned terrorism and radicalisation and the comment was about separating religion from radicalisation.'

The two terrorists had ISIS flags -- Islamic State flags, that is.

Nothing to do with religion, huh? The actual terrorists say different.

Heavily-armed tactical officers in an unmarked police Land Cruiser drove into a white Hyundai hatchback carrying several men who were travelling from Melbourne in the direction of Bondi beach, local media said.

Police said tactical operations officers had contained two cars in the Sydney suburb of Liverpool after a tip-off that a "violent act was possibly being planned". Seven men were detained.

Posted by: Ace at 04:30 PM | Comments (388) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Person of Interest Sought in Brown Shooting
Claim: Brown Disabled Security Cameras Because Left-Wing Groups Complained Their Criminals Were Being Photographed
UPDATE: Link to MIT Physicist Slaying?

Crimes which could then serve as a basis for expelling foreign-born terror-activists from the country.

So, the allegation goes, they pressured Brown into simply turning off their cameras, and Brown, of course, complied.

Before that: Supposedly they are searching for a specific person of interest in the terror shooting.

Of course they won't tell the public who they're looking for. It's standard police practice to withhold information during a manhunt so that the public cannot help you find the suspect.

Wait a minute, no, that's not standard police practice at all, is it?

A person of interest has been identified in the deadly mass shooting at Brown University, multiple sources familiar with the investigation told CBS News on Thursday.

Law enforcement has identified a person, and a search for that individual is underway, the sources said.

Remember, they put out a picture of a man seen "in proximity" of the actual suspect, asking for tips about who he was. Their hope was that this man might be a witness who could offer a description of the actual suspect, I gather.

So when they say "a person of interest" has been identified, they might just be referring to this witness, not the killer. The photo of this "in proximity" person of interest was a lot more useful than ones of the killer, because we continue to allow people to wear masks in public because Taylor Lorenz will cry if we don't.

Meanwhile, there is a claim that Brown deliberately disabled many of its cameras because left-wing criminal "activists" didn't want the police having videotaped evidence of their crimes, and their foreign-born Islamic agitators didn't want to be expelled from the country.

And then this literal wilful blindness enabled the killer to (so far) walk away from his crime, unidentified.

I don't know if this is true. Brown the cops claim that it's not suspicious that there are only a couple of videos of the terrorist killer because this building was on the edge of the campus, bordering on a residential neighborhood with no camera coverage.

Uh, okay, that's plausible.

What's the excuse for their being no cameras inside a school building? At the doors?

Posted by: Ace at 03:27 PM | Comments (335) | Trackbacks (Suck)

HHS Moves to Block Hospitals From Performing Sex Change Mutilations on Children;
House Moves to Ban

HHS wants to stop the Jack-to-Jill Ripper surgeries.

The Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday announced a series of proposed regulations to block hospitals from performing myriad gender-related treatments on children.

The regulations would block surgeries, puberty blockers, and hormone treatments, which the department said "cause irreversible damage, including infertility, impaired sexual function, diminished bone density, altered brain development, and other irreversible physiological effects."

"Under my leadership, and answering President Trump's call to action, the federal government will do everything in its power to stop unsafe, irreversible practices that put our children at risk," HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said.

The House wants to criminalize the barbarous genital mutilation.

The House of Representatives passed legislation Wednesday night that makes it a felony for doctors to perform transgender surgeries and procedures on minors, despite heavy opposition from over 200 House Democrats.

The legislation, titled the Protect Children's Innocence Act, passed in a 216-211 vote, which saw 207 House Democrats and four moderate House Republicans object to it. Three House Democrats joined with their Republican counterparts to pass it.

The four House Republicans to vote with the Democrats are Reps. Mike Lawler of New York, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Mike Kennedy of Utah, and Gabe Evans of Colorado, while the three Democrats are Reps. Don Davis of North Carolina, Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, and Henry Cuellar of Texas, according to the Daily Signal.

I think three of those defecting RINOs also defected to join the Democrats in forcing a vote on extending the "temporary COVID Obamacare subsidies" by another three years. At which point, the "temporary subsidies" will be extended again, unless Democrats have big majority, in which case they'll drop the "temporary" lie and officially make them permanent.

Posted by: Ace at 02:25 PM | Comments (259) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Annoying Drunk Woman Harasses and Assaults Bar Staff Until She's Bodyslammed and then Ejected

Women didn't used to be like this.

Women didn't just violently assault men and expect to have some kind of Feminist Force Field that would protect them from retaliation.

San Francisco police revealed the identity of the woman whose booze-soaked rampage at an upscale eatery went viral this week -- and her tech employer confirmed she's been canned for the humiliating scene.

Her employer may be a tech company but she's no coder. She's just another idiot DEI hire.

Police identified Shireen Afkari -- listed as a marketing manager for the fitness app Strava and former employee of Credit Karma on a now-scrubbed LinkedIn profile -- as the woman who was caught on video taunting and pummeling staff at Hazie's before being body-slammed by a bartender and later tripping and face-planting on the sidewalk in the Hayes Valley neighborhood, according to KRON.

Officers arrived at 9:41 p.m. Saturday after Afkari, who was accompanied by a male companion, was dragged out of the restaurant after taking a swing at staff and violently knocking a phone out of another person's hands.

"He's f--ing harassing me," Afkari shouted at a bartender off camera before being hauled outside by Miguel Marchese, a staffer who later shared video of the incident on Instagram.

"Ooooh, he's a liar."

Afkari was arrested for public drunkenness and sent to county jail, according to cops.

She was fired. She was not charged with assault because the bar's staff, for some reason, declined to press charges.

I don't know what started her angry drunken rampage. If I were forced to guess, I would guess that she was cut off and decided this was "harassment."

Update: That guess was right. From Judge Elric the Blade:

Ace, that is exactly correct. From some more recent reporting:

Speaking to San Francisco's KRON4, Miguel Marchese, a bartender at Hazie's, who was at the centre of the ordeal, said the couple came in at around 9 pm and staff rapidly raised concerns about their level of intoxication.

"The night was quite chaotic, the couple came in, they were requesting dinner service," Marchese said.

"Initially, the server verbalized to me that she could tell that her table was not only intoxicated, but perhaps on some other substances and they were giving her quite a rough time and being quite verbally abrasive with her and then I do believe after that [the server] asked for the manager to intervene."

Marchese said the manager then removed cocktails from the couple's table and asked them to leave.

"He retracts her cocktails from the table, because I just made them, he brings them back and he simply tells me, 'they've had enough to drink, we shouldn't serve them anymore.' And then later, it just kind of spiraled into chaos," he said.

Posted by: Ace at 01:21 PM | Comments (396) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Inflation Rate Falls As Trump Promises a New "Golden Age"

I turned off Trump's speech because it made me anxious. He was rushing through the script so fast he tripped over words and didn't emPHAsize key points to drive the message home.

But he did hit the points. The speech was about 20 minutes. I think he should have taken maybe 28 minutes to give the speech, adding in emphasis and pauses.

A fiery President Donald Trump on Wednesday night promised Americans a shock-and-awe push for affordability, offering a glimpse of his 2026 agenda to overhaul Democrat policies that have left housing and health insurance increasingly out of reach for working Americans.

"Tonight, after 11 months, our border is secure, inflation is stopped, wages are up, prices are down, our nation is strong, America is respected, and our country is back - stronger than ever before. We are poised for an economic boom, the likes of which the world has never seen," he declared in a nationally televised address from the White House.

In tone and delivery, Trump brought optimism to the 20-minute address and vowed to voters that they would soon see lower prices, higher wages and a brighter future. He also made clear he intends to inject himself onto the midterm elections ballot when Americans will choose which party will control Congress in 2026.

Woven throughout the speech were assurances that while many foreign issues have captured the Trump triage, America's kitchen table issues are his main focus.

At many points in the speech, Trump reflected back on a year prior, and the near-anemic economy Americans were suffering with, emphasizing that they can't afford to go back to the era of Democratic policies.

The speech was markedly and definitively "Trump." Senior White House aides confirmed to Just The News that shortly before the speech, the president tinkered with it and added his own fiery flair.

Maybe that's why there was stumbling over some words -- because he had just edited it.

...

Democrats lead Republicans on the 2026 generic ballot 48 to 45, but a change in prices could convince 74% of them that inflation and costs are no longer a problem, according to a new Echelon Insights poll.

Here's the first twenty seconds of the speech.

Trump may or may not have had advanced information that today's report on inflation would be a favorable one. (I assume he did.)

Not even CNN could spin it.

Inflation came in at 2.7%, the lowest in four years -- in other words, the lowest since Biden's policies began driving it sky high -- down 0.3% from the 3.0% mark in September.

"Experts" "expected" the inflation rate to be higher than 3%. They expected rising inflation, not falling inflation.

Posted by: Ace at 12:23 PM | Comments (328) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Rant: Inflation!

Inflation is a cold-hearted bitch. It steals our paychecks, and we will never recover the loss. Sure, compensation eventually catches up (mostly), but the gap between rising prices and rising wages is significant.

And inflation destroys any possibility of planning for many companies. How do you budget for next year or next quarter if you simply do not know how much your raw materials are going to cost?

Pricing competition becomes insanely difficult too! Revenue from today pays for product you sell tomorrow, but if inflation suddenly increases by more than you planned, how do you restock? You simply buy less, and...hope!

So this is good news. How the rancid whores in the media are going to spin this is anyone's guess, but decreasing inflation is a very good thing for the economy, and no matter how much they huff and puff and bullsh*t with the numbers, Americans are better off.

Inflation Cools to 2.7 Percent in November, Lower Than Expected

Price pressures may be cooling across the economy, with the 12‑month inflation rate slowing sharply in November.

The annual inflation rate eased to 2.7 percent last month—the lowest level since July—from 3 percent in September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Economists had penciled in a reading of 3.1 percent.

The core consumer price index (CPI), which excludes volatile energy and food prices due to their noisy signals, also cooled to 2.6 percent from 3 percent in September. This represented the lowest reading since March 2021.

But even better than moderating inflation is this little nugget of pure golden deliciousness!

Tariff-sensitive items were little changed over the past 12 months.

The apparel index is up 0.2 percent year over year, while the new-vehicle index has risen 0.6 percent over the 12 months ending in November. Additionally, on an annualized basis, appliances have increased by 0.5 percent, smartphones have declined by 9.4 percent, and footwear has dipped by 0.1 percent.

And weren't we told by our betters that tariffs are inflationary? You know, those 26-year-old "journalists" who took one economics class in college and never attended because it was at 8:00AM and they were usually still high! The "journalists" and pundits confidently claimed that a one-time increase in the wholesale price of tariffed products would continue to push their prices up indefinitely. Of course no modern country has ever shifted revenue to tariffs so quickly, and the data simply aren't there to make anything more than a wild-assed-guess!

But they did it anyway, and it looks like they were just a little bit off in their predictions.

Nobody knows whether a tariff-based economy will function as well as President Trump has proclaimed, but the early indications are good, and the naysayers are being proven incorrect. Revenue from the tariffs is robust, which is also proving the President correct.

Last night's presidential address is an excellent start to the administration's focus on communicated to the American people what the President is doing to address inflation, employment, the return of manufacturing to America, the vanishing possibility of home ownership for many young Americans, and other economic challenges that we face.

I hope he keeps hammering home his efforts to redirect our economy toward Americans, and away from illegals, and the leeches of Europe. It is long past time!

[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 (287) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Mid-Morning Art Thread

Caucasian canyon
Lev Lagorio

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (233) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Report — 12/18/25

Good morning kids. First we have reports of wildfires with near hurricane force winds spreading in the high plains. Prayers for the safety of all of those affected as well as for the firefighting crews and first responders who will hopefully be able to get the situation under control as rapidly as possible.

Elsewhere in the news, we have two separate shootings on two of the nation's top campuses, Brown University and at MIT.

At Brown, two students were slain, one of them was evidently a prominent conservative on campus. And that the Providence RI PD cannot or will not confirm that the shooter shouted that popular phrase that all the hep cats dig Hold that Tiger! Allah Akbar it means that he probably did and so as not to offend the delicate sensibilities and cause "backlash!" they have kept it dark.

Meanwhile up in the Boston area, an MIT professor was shot and killed in his home. He taught nuclear science and engineering.

Are these incidents all connected somehow. Given the assassination of Charlie Kirk and several failed attempts on President Trump as well as the violent rhetoric and actual violence and acts of terrorism by the Left cheered on and encouraged by the Democrat propagandist media and the Democrats themselves not just in the Trump era but virtually throughout our history. Well anything is possible, and maybe the MIT Professor had links to Academia's bête noire The State of Israel or was targeted by the Chi-Coms or other foreign state actors? Meh, just spit-ballin' here. Don't cost nuthin'. . .

And then of course, in the wake of the Islamic butchery against Jews celebrating Chanukah in Australia, this happened just the other night in the most Jewish neighborhood of America's and perhaps the world's most Jewish city outside of Israel itself.

A Jewish New Yorker described Tuesday how he was stabbed just centimeters from his heart by a hateful sicko — who made a chilling promise before lunging at him on a Brooklyn street.

“I’m going to kill a Jew today,” the knife-wielding goon seethed before launching the antisemitic attack, said victim Elias Rosner, 35, in an interview with The Post on Wednesday.

Rosner, a member of the Lubavitch Hasidic community in Crown Heights, had just left the temple on Tuesday afternoon when he came across the still-at-large attacker spewing antisemitic slurs.

“I was waiting in a crowd of Jewish people and this guy started spouting stuff,” Rosner recalled. “I’m going to kill Jewish people, I’m going to kill a Jew today, I don’t give a f–k … We wouldn’t be in this mess if the Holocaust had happened,” the unhinged man ranted, according to Rosner.
The man “looked very serious” — but Rosner refused to cower in the face of the ugly threats, he said. “I guess I was the one guy that had the bravery to look him in the eye,” he said.

“So, he was waiting. He set a trap up for me a block ahead. He came around the corner and it just started happening.”

Rosner was stabbed once in the chest, at the corner of Kingston Avenue and Lincoln Place around 4 p.m., by the madman, police said, adding the NYPD was investigating the attack as an antisemitic hate crime — on the third night of the Hanukkah Jewish holiday.

The Brooklynite only narrowly escaped with his life — miraculously saved by his sweater, he said.. . Rosner said the attack was part of the uptick in antisemitic sentiment following Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, with the anti-Jewish hate trickling down to Big Apple neighborhoods, including on college campuses and in the subways.

If the neighborhood of "Crown Heights" sounds somewhat familiar to some of you, it was the scene of a car accident back in 1991 involving a young black child who was hit by a car being driven by a Hassidic man. Sadly with tensions already (historically) running high between the long-standing Hassidic community and their black neighbors, Al Sharpton was on the scene faster than you can say "White Interlopers and Diamond Merchants" and a near full scale race riot and pogrom broke out resulting in the beating death, at the hands of a mob of black youths of one Yankel Rosenbaum, an orthodox Jewish student who was visiting the US from, of all places Australia!! For three straight days and nights Jewish homes and shops were attacked, and two weeks later, another man was killed by the mobs, who wasn't even Jewish but mistaken for one, having been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Crown Heights pogrom and the sheer ineptitude of then mayor David Dinkins in allowing it to happen by handcuffing law enforcement, ultimately led to his ouster two years later and the temporary reprieve of the Big Apple from doom with the glory years of Rudy Giuliani. Yet, here we are 34 years on and the city has decided that a Muslim Communist is what NYC needs.

Quite a few of Australia's Jews have decided that the land down under will send them six feet under so they have decided that enough is enough after witnessing Bondi Beach.

The attack has left Sydney’s Jewish community shaken, with some members now considering emigrating to Israel. Chavi, a 27-year-old mother who was at the event with her baby, described using her body as a shield to protect her child during the attack. “I love Australia, I was born here, and I know [Israel] is in the Middle East… but we were just sitting ducks here,” she told the Sydney Morning Herald.

And yet New York and far too many of its Jews by birth only just shoved a thermonuclear enema up its collective keister.

But you better not complain!

British authorities sentenced a Dorset man to 18 months in jail for inciting hate and violence on X in the heated aftermath of the 2024 Southport stabbings that left three children dead and another 10 people injured. . . There's no denying the nasty nature of Yarwood's posts, sent to X before the identity of the killer — 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana — was known, but was widely misreported to have been a Muslim immigrant. Rudakubana was born in Cardiff, but his parents were evangelical immigrants from Rwanda. . . Even a veteran of intemperate tweets like myself would never post anything like Yarwood did, but still, 33 views? This guy barely incited more racial hatred than Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh in all three Lethal Weapon movies combined. See, that's funny because one is black and the other is white and they're basically family and race hardly comes up. I miss movies like those. 

But oh no, President Trump said nasty things about Rob Reiner. As CBD and I discussed on the latest episode of the podcast, linked here and in the sidebar and posted on the usual outlets listed below, there are far more crucial things the President can and should be communicating to the American people than his personal animus towards the late Mr. Reiner.

In any case as VIctor Davis Hanson notes, we are (are we?) in danger of heading towards a new dark age.

Contemporary Americans do not believe that our current civilization could self-destruct a third time in the West, followed by an impoverished and brutal Dark Age.

But what caused these prior returns to tribalism and loss of science, technology, and the rule of law?

Historians cite several causes of societal collapse—and today they are hauntingly familiar.Like people, societies age. Complacency sets in.

Meh, professor, in the immortal words of Nick Lowe, "You've got to be cruel to be kind!"

Have a good day.

And lastly, a quick shout-out and a huge 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
• Rapidly spreading wildfires have triggered evacuations in South Dakota and Wyoming, fueled by hurricane-force winds from a widespread storm system affecting the entire country.According to the FOX Forecast Center, wind gusts reaching as high as 70 mph have been recorded in the Pennington County region of South Dakota, driving the rapid expansion of the wildfire.
  South Dakota, Wyoming See Evacuations Due To Wildfires Erupting From Hurricane-Force Winds

• Victor Davis Hanson: History suggests civilizations fall when complacency, debt, and tribalism replace unity, discipline, and reform—prompting fears the West may be nearing a familiar decline.
  Can the Dark Ages Return?

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 07:15 AM | Comments (344) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 18 December 2025

Top Story

• Micron says the memory shortage will get worse before it gets better, and also that it won't get better if they have anything to say about it. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Micron has two factories under construction in Idaho due to come on line in 2027, and another planned in New York to be operational in 2030.
  
  Even with those three new factories churning out chips they only expect to meet half to two thirds of demand.
  
  In the meantime, though, the company posted a revenue increase of 57% over last year, so they don't really care about you and your money, as indicated by them shutting down their Crucial consumer brand after nearly 30 years.
  
  
  
• And the second of my two new mini-PCs arrived today. I set up the first one last night - just plugged it in, turned it on, lied and told Windows I didn't have internet, and it works. It's pretty fast too, with none of the lag I get with my laptop.
  
  Partly because the CPU is nearly twice as fast as the one in my laptop, partly because it's a clean install of Windows and doesn't have about 200 different applications installed yet. I'll fix that.
  
  It really does have 64GB of RAM. 64GB of Crucial RAM, apparently, which is now a collectors item.
  
  It's available for sale now on Minisforum's US store, but the price is about 70% higher than in Australia even after a 20% discount, so it's no bargain.
  
  Update: Unnamed computer #2 is plugged in and working.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (114) | Trackbacks (Suck)