March 17, 2025
Now It Can Be Told: UK "Intelligence" Also Knew Covid-19 Was Manufactured in Fauci's Wuhan Lab, and Also Lied to the World About It
They all knew, they all lied, David Strom says. We just found out that Germany's intelligence services concluded long ago with 80-95% confidence that covid-19 was cooked up in Fauci's Wuhan branch. Now it turns out that MI-6 always knew the truth, too. Not only did they lie, but the "intelligence" services targeted people telling the truth for censorship, debanking, and reputation-destroying smears.
Are these the West's intelligence services, or China's?
Before getting to that, the New York Times now admits the truth: Yes, covid-19 came from the Wuhan lab. Why did they participate in this massive lying psyop against the American people? They didn't, they say! They were "badly misled," you see.Now, the NYT -- and not even in its own editorial voice -- wants to play victim of The Science(R):The Regime is abandoning the China-protecting cover story of a "wet market spillover." The lie just won't hold, and is causing the world's "intelligence" services, leftwing media, and leftwing government officials further losses of credibility they just can't afford. So the truth is being dripped out, slowly.Since scientists first began playing around with dangerous pathogens in laboratories, the world has experienced four or five pandemics, depending on how you count. One of them, the 1977 Russian flu, was almost certainly sparked by a research mishap. Some Western scientists quickly suspected the odd virus had resided in a lab freezer for a couple of decades, but they kept mostly quiet for fear of ruffling feathers. Yet in 2020, when people started speculating that a laboratory accident might have been the spark that started the Covid-19 pandemic, they were treated like kooks and cranks. Many public health officials and prominent scientists dismissed the idea as a conspiracy theory, insisting that the virus had emerged from animals in a seafood market in Wuhan, China. And when a nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance lost a grant because it was planning to conduct risky research into bat viruses with the Wuhan Institute of Virology -- research that, if conducted with lax safety standards, could have resulted in a dangerous pathogen leaking out into the world -- no fewer than 77 Nobel laureates and 31 scientific societies lined up to defend the organization. So, the Wuhan research was totally safe and the pandemic was definitely caused by natural transmission: It certainly seemed like consensus. We have since learned, however, that to promote the appearance of consensus, some officials and scientists hid or understated crucial facts, misled at least one reporter, orchestrated campaigns of supposedly independent voices and even compared notes about how to hide their communications in order to keep the public from hearing the whole story. And as for that Wuhan laboratory's research, the details that have since emerged show that safety precautions may have been terrifyingly lax.
Ahem. "Has since emerged" is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting here. As early as April 2020, those "terrifyingly lax" protocols had already come to light. We also knew at that same time that the State Department had flagged the Wuhan Institute of Virology for violating safety protocols required for the kind of gain-of-function research it was conducting as far back as 2018. We also knew that The Science(R) still had zero evidence for a natural zoonotic leap to humans to explain the outbreak epicentered in the same town as the lab:And yet, the New York Times went out of its way -- as did the rest of the Protection Racket Media -- to spend years treating anyone who questioned the "consensus" around a natural zoonotic leap as either a crank, a racist, or worse. Even when hints that the intel community had its doubts about the "consensus," the media rushed to defend The Science(R) from any scrutiny whatsoever.
"The idea that is was just a totally natural occurrence is circumstantial. The evidence it leaked from the lab is circumstantial. Right now, the ledger on the side of it leaking from the lab is packed with bullet points and there's almost nothing on the other side," the official said. As my colleague David Ignatius noted, the Chinese government's original story -- that the virus emerged from a seafood market in Wuhan -- is shaky. Research by Chinese experts published in the Lancet in January showed the first known patient, identified on Dec. 1, had no connection to the market, nor did more than one-third of the cases in the first large cluster. Also, the market didn't sell bats.
They all knew, they all lied, David Strom says. We just found out that Germany's intelligence services concluded long ago with 80-95% confidence that covid-19 was cooked up in Fauci's Wuhan branch. Now it turns out that MI-6 always knew the truth, too. Not only did they lie, but the "intelligence" services targeted people telling the truth for censorship, debanking, and reputation-destroying smears.
Posted by: Ace at 03:30 PM | Comments (421) | Trackbacks (Suck)
US Warplanes Pound Houthi Terrorist Camps in Yemen as SecDef Hegseth Promises More;
Trump Warns Iran
This is important, because if the Red Sea passage becomes any more unusual, global shipping will be disrupted and made much slower and more expensive:
Trump Warns Iran
Trump ordered the airstrikes after coming in from a round of golf:
The Houthi rebels attacked over 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two vessels and killing four sailors, from November 2023 until January this year. Their leadership described the attacks as aiming to end the Israeli war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The campaign also greatly raised the Houthis' profile in the wider Arab world and tamped down on public criticism against their human rights abuses and crackdowns on dissent and aid workers. Trump, writing on his social media platform Truth Social, said his administration targeted the Houthis over their "unrelenting campaign of piracy, violence and terrorism." He noted the disruption Houthi attacks have caused through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, key waterways for energy and cargo shipments between Asia and Europe through Egypt's Suez Canal. "We will use overwhelming lethal force until we have achieved our objective," Trump said.
This is important, because if the Red Sea passage becomes any more unusual, global shipping will be disrupted and made much slower and more expensive:
Under former President Joe Biden, the U.S. and the United Kingdom began a series of airstrikes against the Houthis starting in January 2024. A December report by The International Institute for Strategic Studies said the U.S. and its partners struck the Houthis over 260 times up to that point. U.S. military officials during that period acknowledged having a far-wider target list for possible strikes. While the Biden administration didn't go too far into explaining its targeting, analysts believe officials largely were trying to avoid civilian casualties and not rekindle Yemen's stalemated war, which pits the Houthis and their allies against the country's exiled government and their local and international allies, like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The Trump administration, however, appears willing to go after more targets, based on the weekend's strikes and public remarks made by officials. "We're doing the entire world a favor by getting rid of these guys and their ability to strike global shipping," U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told CBS News' "Face The Nation" on Sunday. "That's the mission here, and it will continue until that's carried out." Rubio added: "Some of the key people involved in those missile launches are no longer with us, and I can tell you that some of the facilities that they used are no longer existing, and that will continue." Israel also launched its own airstrikes on Houthi-held sites, including the port city of Hodeida, over the rebels' missile and drone attacks targeting Israel.National Security Advisor Waltz confirmed the elimination of Houthi terror leaders.
National security adviser Mike Waltz confirmed on Sunday that U.S. airstrikes "took out" multiple Houthi leaders in attacks this weekend. Asked how the U.S. attacks this weekend differ from strikes under the Biden administration, Waltz said those "back-and-forth" strikes "ultimately proved to be feckless attacks." "This was an overwhelming response that actually targeted multiple Houthi leaders and took them out," Waltz said in an interview on ABC News's "This Week." "And the difference here is, one, going after the Houthi leadership and, two, holding Iran responsible," he continued. Waltz stressed the negative consequences that the Houthis have had on global commerce. "It is Iran that has repeatedly funded, resourced, trained and helped the Houthis target not only U.S. warships, but global commerce, and has helped the Houthis shut down two of the world's most strategic sea lanes," Waltz said, noting nearly three-quarters of global shipping "is now diverting around southern Africa, adding to the cost of goods, disrupting global economies, adding to -- or shutting off supplies to the United States."
Posted by: Ace at 02:17 PM | Comments (455) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Trump Declares the Presidential Pardons Signed Not by Biden But By His Aides Operating the Auto-Pen to be "Void"
Jake Tapper
@jaketapper At 12:35 am ET, the president decreed that he was nullifying President Biden's preemptive pardons of members of the January 6 committee, an assertion of a power the Constitution does not bestow.
Sean DavisTrump didn't make these unsigned phony pardons void. They were born void because Biden didn't sign them.
@seanmdav Jake Tapper, who a jury declared to be fake news, didn't say a word when Biden claimed to unilaterally amend the Constitution via a tweet. I guess Tapper is also back to claiming Biden was of sound mind despite trying to sell a book absolving Democrats of lying about Biden’s mental state for years.
Posted by: Ace at 01:00 PM | Comments (584) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Judge Orders Trump To Turn Deportation Plane Around and Bring the Illegals Back to America; Trump Pulls the Old "My **dio Is Break*** **, Can You Re***?" Gag
Trump sent a planeload of illegal alien criminals to be held in El Salvador's vibrant and diverse prisons. A federal judge decided he's the Commander in Chief now and ordered the plane to return.
Trump said "whoops, the plane's gone too far, can't call it back now, gee willickers sorry." And the left is having a nervous breakdown.LOL. They thirst for a constitutional crisis like they thirst for racism and "white supremacy."
Exclusive: How the White House ignored a judge's order to turn back deportation flights The Trump administration says it ignored a Saturday court order to turn around two planeloads of alleged Venezuelan gang members because the flights were over international waters and therefore the ruling didn't apply, two senior officials tell Axios. Why it matters: The administration's decision to defy a federal judge's order is exceedingly rare and highly controversial. "Court order defied. First of many as I've been warning and start of true constitutional crisis," national security attorney Mark S. Zaid, a Trump critic, wrote on X, adding that Trump could ultimately get impeached.
The White House welcomes that fight. "This is headed to the Supreme Court. And we're going to win," a senior White House official told Axios. A second administration official said Trump was not defying the judge whose ruling came too late for the planes to change course: "Very important that people understand we are not actively defying court orders." State of play: Trump's advisers contend U.S. District Judge James Boasberg overstepped his authority by issuing an order that blocked the president from deporting about 250 alleged Tren de Aragua gang members under the Alien Enemies Act of 1789. The war-time law gives the executive extreme immense power to deport noncitizens without a judicial hearing. But it has been little-used, particularly in peacetime. "It's the showdown that was always going to happen between the two branches of government," a senior White House official said. "And it seemed that this was pretty clean. You have Venezuelan gang members ... These are bad guys, as the president would say." ... "There was a discussion about how far the judge's ruling can go under the circumstances and over international waters and, on advice of counsel, we proceeded with deporting these thugs," the senior official said. "They were already outside of US airspace. We believe the order is not applicable," a second senior administration official told Axios.More from Fox: Karoline Leavitt blasted the judge for attempting to encroach on the president's sole power to conduct foreign policy.
"The order, which had no lawful basis, was issued after terrorist [Tren de Aragua] aliens had already been removed from U.S. territory," Leavitt said. "The written order and the Administration's actions do not conflict." "Moreover, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear -- federal courts generally have no jurisdiction over the President's conduct of foreign affairs, his authorities under the Alien Enemies Act, and his core Article II powers to remove foreign alien terrorists from U.S. soil and repel a declared invasion," Leavitt added. "A single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft carrier full of foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from U.S. soil." On Sunday, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele responded to Boasberg's order by joking, "Oopsie... too late," in an X post. He also shared footage of heavily-armed Salvadorean authorities escorting the alleged gang members off the planes, shaving their heads and rounding them up in their prison cells. A total of 261 illegal aliens were deported from the U.S. to El Salvador yesterday -- 137 of which were through the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, 101 others were Venezuelans removed via Title 8 and another 21 were Salvadoran MS-13 gang members. Two others were MS-13 ringleaders and "special cases" for El Salvador. A senior Trump administration official confirmed the numbers to Fox News on Sunday, explaining that the migrants' alleged crimes included kidnapping, sexual abuse of a child, aggravated assault, prostitution, robbery and aggravated assault of a police officer.
Posted by: Ace at 12:00 PM | Comments (474) | Trackbacks (Suck)
THE MORNING RANT: The Conservative Milestone of Canceling Your Wall Street Journal Subscription
In his substack, Mr. Carter writes not only of the WSJ’s wokeness and anti-Trump bias…
…but also about how it is incapable of even engaging in traditional journalism on non-political subjects.
Most disturbing, the Wall Street Journal has become a propaganda outfit staffed by politically indoctrinated zealots.
There was one other publication in the ‘80s and ‘90s that I valued as much as the Wall Street Journal, and my act of canceling that subscription also felt like breaking up with an old friend. That magazine was Forbes. Under editor James Michaels, its journalists could condense so much “what, why, and how” into less than 1,000 words, and it had a right-of-center leaning. I was such a fan that I supported Steve Forbes in the 1996 presidential primaries. After Mr. Michaels retired in 1999 and the magazine went primarily digital, it became an unfocused mess that leaned hard to the left. Forbes is now dead to me, as is The Wall Street Journal. The digital publications now carrying their names are a disgrace to those once-great journalistic institutions. [buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]
Most of the legacy media had a terrible left-wing bias my entire adult life, with one very prominent exception – the Wall Street Journal. Upon my graduation from college in the 1980s, I subscribed to the WSJ. It was not only a valuable resource on all matters related to business and economics, but it also reported politics and other news with a commitment to journalistic impartiality. And most importantly, its editorial page was an oasis of conservative thought.
As we rolled into the 21st Century, the journalistic controls lapsed, and the reporting started to mirror the left-wing propaganda you could find in the New York Times. When the Trump era rolled around, the editorial page announced its obsolescence by becoming an unhinged haven for NeverTrumpism. Whether it was shilling for overseas wars, or acting as a leading voice for the uniparty, every page of the WSJ was now aligned with the Washington morass. When I canceled my Wall Street Journal subscription in 2016 it carried an emotional punch. It was like terminating a long-time friendship with a person who had once been so important in your life. The substack of former commodities trader Jeffrey Carter (@pointsnfigures1 on Twitter) is a must read for me, as he is always informative and educational. Last month he wrote about his decision to cancel his Wall Street Journal subscription.I started reading WSJ in college (1980s) & I finally cancelled my subscription in 2016. For me, it too was a sad milestone, reflective of not only bias, but how the opinion page was stuck in an era that had passed & and its journalists were no longer investigative, or very smart. https://t.co/8W81UBo7cb
— Buck Throckmorton (@BuckThrockmort) February 6, 2025
In his substack, Mr. Carter writes not only of the WSJ’s wokeness and anti-Trump bias…
I have been reading the WSJ daily since I entered college in 1980. That’s 45 years of reading one paper. The WSJ used to be very good. It still has some good writers. However, much of the paper has lost its objectivity. It’s either gone woke, or the Trump Derangement Syndrome of the writer is so bad it is impossible to get decent information.
…but also about how it is incapable of even engaging in traditional journalism on non-political subjects.
I don’t want to know the stuff about Palantir that I can find using a simple web search. I want to know why Palantir does what it does, what kind of people it hires, and what kind of corporate culture it has. I want insights I can’t get from numbers. The same goes for any other company.
Most disturbing, the Wall Street Journal has become a propaganda outfit staffed by politically indoctrinated zealots.
The younger writers weren’t taught journalism in Journalism School. They were taught indoctrination, which is how they write. They are also kind of dumb when it comes to understanding how businesses operate.
There was one other publication in the ‘80s and ‘90s that I valued as much as the Wall Street Journal, and my act of canceling that subscription also felt like breaking up with an old friend. That magazine was Forbes. Under editor James Michaels, its journalists could condense so much “what, why, and how” into less than 1,000 words, and it had a right-of-center leaning. I was such a fan that I supported Steve Forbes in the 1996 presidential primaries. After Mr. Michaels retired in 1999 and the magazine went primarily digital, it became an unfocused mess that leaned hard to the left. Forbes is now dead to me, as is The Wall Street Journal. The digital publications now carrying their names are a disgrace to those once-great journalistic institutions. [buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]
Posted by: Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM | Comments (314) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Mid-Morning Art Thread
Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper
Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (445) | Trackbacks (Suck)
The Morning Report — 3/ 17 /25 
What Are the Left’s Solutions for the Problems They Created?
The fly in the ointment is while the Democrat Left lives by the mantra "By Any Means Necessary," what are we who desperately want to restore and preserve our nation, society and heritage willing to do, and can do to stop them. And voting harder as we all know is not the answer. Somehow, Donald Trump prevailed last November, and if you can believe the polls, The Democrat Party is at historic lows in popularity while, despite the constant propaganda barrage, Trump and what he is delivering is skyrocketing. Considering what the courts have done to Trump, anti-abortion protesters, vocal parents at school board meetings and the J-6 victims of the Garland Archipelago, and now what the courts are doing to Trump's legitimate actions in deporting criminal illegal aliens and firing goldbrick federal bureaucrats, the options in fighting and winning the counter-counter-American revolution are whittled down to that which we do not want to contemplate, but that the other side have eagerly embraced, from molotov cocktails, to pre-positioned pallets of bricks to bullets and Swatting. To name but a few.
Meanwhile, as the Democrat Party seems to be tearing itself apart from within as the Left hand battles it out with the Far Left hand to see which one comes out on top, as we have seen most recently with the battle over voting in favor of the continuing resolution. The epicenter of that shitstorm was Chuck Schumer:
The strike came two days before Trump ordered “decisive and powerful Military action against the [Iran-backed] Houthi terrorists in Yemen” on Saturday for their “unrelenting campaign of piracy, violence, and terrorism against American, and other” assets. Trump warned the Houthis their time was up and warned Iran to stop supporting the Houthis or else “America will hold you fully accountable and, we won’t be nice about it!”And you'll be shocked, shocked I say to learn that he dared do this on UN Islamophobia Day! Oh the humidity! At least it wasn't during transexual goat bestiality pride month. The optics would've been terrible. And speaking of unhinged, thuggish, revolting terrorists, we have the Democrat Party and leftism right here. Esteemed lurker extraordinaire and Ace cruelty fan-boi Victor Davis Hanson posits the question:
What Are the Left’s Solutions for the Problems They Created?
The U.S. faces mounting trade deficits, immigration crises, and endless foreign wars, while critics of Trump's policies offer no viable alternatives to Biden-era failures.Well, as I assume he and I know we all know, it's not just Biden-era, but Wislon-era, FDR-era, JFK/LBJ-era, Carter and Clinton, and unless the leopard changes tts spots, whoever God-forbid may be the future Democrat occupants of the Oval Office. And the answer is, the solution is always to exacerbate the problem by borrowing, spending and regulating more and more of our wealth and freedoms away from us as the means for them to destroy whatever is left of our Republic as founded that yet still has a pulse and seize absolute power. All the while blaming those who oppose them for causing the problems and seeking the destruction of "our precious democracy" (Vomit!).
Democracy? They rig it! Don’t fall for their “save democracy” tears. The Journal of Democracy reported that 20% of Democrats supported violence in 2021 — less than the GOP’s 30%, but still despicable. They cheered the riots of 2020. Harris tweeted support for bail funds — then cried when Trump defeated them in 2024. Now Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) proposes his Electoral College “reform” bill in 2025, a blatant power-grab aimed at eliminating red states like Texas. Trump won big; they can’t stand it. . . The 2024 election proved one thing: Trump flipped Nevada, according to Newsweek, as voters nationwide turned away from Harris’s woke rhetoric. Pew Research reported Democrats at 31% approval in 2023 — lower than a snake’s belly. From Schumer’s amnesty to AOC’s disdain for law enforcement, their actions reflect contempt for America. Texas feels the strain at the border, but this is a battle for every patriot — our kids, our flag, our future. Trump is draining the swamp again; Republicans must leave these traitors behind. No mercy, no retreat.
The fly in the ointment is while the Democrat Left lives by the mantra "By Any Means Necessary," what are we who desperately want to restore and preserve our nation, society and heritage willing to do, and can do to stop them. And voting harder as we all know is not the answer. Somehow, Donald Trump prevailed last November, and if you can believe the polls, The Democrat Party is at historic lows in popularity while, despite the constant propaganda barrage, Trump and what he is delivering is skyrocketing. Considering what the courts have done to Trump, anti-abortion protesters, vocal parents at school board meetings and the J-6 victims of the Garland Archipelago, and now what the courts are doing to Trump's legitimate actions in deporting criminal illegal aliens and firing goldbrick federal bureaucrats, the options in fighting and winning the counter-counter-American revolution are whittled down to that which we do not want to contemplate, but that the other side have eagerly embraced, from molotov cocktails, to pre-positioned pallets of bricks to bullets and Swatting. To name but a few.
Meanwhile, as the Democrat Party seems to be tearing itself apart from within as the Left hand battles it out with the Far Left hand to see which one comes out on top, as we have seen most recently with the battle over voting in favor of the continuing resolution. The epicenter of that shitstorm was Chuck Schumer:
Fresh off defending a Hamas supporter, Sen. Chuck Schumer spoke to the New York Times to promote his book about antisemitism. Topping that howler, Schumer claimed that the Democrats are authentic. “We are the party of working people. We feel that very, very strongly. That’s who we have always been.” Sen. Schumer is a millionaire Harvard grad. After graduating from Harvard, he went into politics. His party’s last presidential graduate spent her entire life in politics. Pretty much the case for the party’s past nominees who spent their entire lives in politics. That’s one definition of “working people”, but not one that actual working people have. Schumer blathers about billionaires, but that’s who funds his party. The Democrats are a party of political ideologues who work for billionaires and then claim to be ‘working class’. And that’s politics for you.Sadly, anti-Semitism has been around for millennia. But if Martians landed on earth and the first person they encountered was Chuck Schumer, they'd be waving Swastikas and Korans all the way back to the red planet. Ugh. 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. Have a great day.
- ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
- The Democrat party is not simply irrelevant. Rather, it is America’s greatest adversary.
The Democrat Party: The Enemy Within?
- Victor Davis Hanson: The U.S. faces mounting trade deficits, immigration crises, and endless foreign wars, while critics of Trump's policies offer no viable alternatives to Biden-era failures. (and Wilson/FDR/LBJ/Carter/Clinton - jjs)
What Are the Left’s Solutions for the Problems They Created?
- Roger Kimball: Trump’s DOJ speech called out corruption, promised justice reform, and sent the media into a frenzy over his bold rebuke of the establishment.
Trump’s DOJ Speech: A Reckoning for the Deep State and a Media Meltdown
Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 06:31 AM | Comments (480) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Daily Tech News 17 March 2025
Top Story
- The LibreWolf developers are insane. (Reddit)
So is Reddit, but leave that for the moment.
There's this guy named Bryan Lunduke. He's a Linux journalist and YouTuber who comments extensively on the fallout of wokeness in open-source software projects - like the Godot game engine, which woked itself to death last year.
He has spoken out against software codes of conduct - what I call codes of cancer. His name is one of the handful that ChatGPT would sooner die than speak aloud.
And his name has been banned from the LibreWolf forum. (LibreWolf is a fork of the Firefox browser.)
And if you ask why, you will be banned.
Ask why someone was banned, and you will be banned.
They haven't gone full Mullenweg yet, but the clock is ticking.
"Libre" does not here mean "Congress shall make no law"; it means "Join the glorious revolution or die, and we don't care which".
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (168) | Trackbacks (Suck)
March 16, 2025
Sunday Overnight Open Thread - March 16, 2025 [Doof]
Cliffs of Moher - Among the 10 most beautiful views in Ireland
Howdy Hordelings! A happy St. Patty's Day eve to all ye lads and lassies. Is your green beer ready? Have you already started partying? However you are spending your Sunday evening, thanks for making time to visit the ONT. Step on in and tell everyone what's on yer mind!
Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (455) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Gun Thread: Third March Edition! 
Posted by: Weasel at 07:00 PM | Comments (252) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Food Thread: Fatty Bones From Six Time Zones (Away)!
Posted by: CBD at 04:00 PM | Comments (213) | Trackbacks (Suck)
First World Problems...
political parties that chose a mean, molesting, senile fool, and then replaced him with a drunken retard... bank tellers who can't count... etc!
Posted by: CBD at 02:00 PM | Comments (263) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Government Spending? No! Government Borrowing... or Government Stealing
Government Spending. Except that is a misnomer. We should be calling it Government Borrowing, because that is exactly what it is. On the other hand... maybe it should be called "government stealing," because they are stealing our grandchildren's livelihood! It is impossible to become wealthier by borrowing every year for generations, and yet the central bank and our brilliant bar-tending, foul-mouthed elites in Congress seem to be convinced of the positive effects of government borrowing, or more accurately, government creation of inflated dollars. I don't think that even John Maynard Keynes imagined never-ending deficit spending, yet here we are!
American families that become wealthy spend less than they earn, and save what they don't spend. Yet the prevailing argument is that government is immune from those basic tenets because it can create demand with monetary policy, and that will grow the economy. Obviously government can't run out of money, but that pesky little thing called inflation is the unavoidable and economy-destroying result of running the printing presses or, nowadays, simply creating more digital funds. Secretary Bessent on 'Reprivatization' of Economy: 'We Are Laser-Focused on Getting this Deficit Under Control'Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Breitbart News exclusively that President Donald Trump’s administration is “laser-focused” on cutting the deficit and getting spending “under control,” part of his larger vision of “reprivatization” of the U.S. economy so economic growth is no longer dependent on government spending but instead on private sector growth. Bessent said he joined Trump on the campaign trail last year and later joined his cabinet because he was “so alarmed” by the “high level of government spending” that had taken hold in recent years.This is why President Trump and his team are disruptors. They are not content simply to slow the rate of increase of government spending/borrowing. They understand two things. First: the size of the government budget requires borrowing...forever! That is ultimately untenable, and will destroy our economy. The budget must be cut. There is no other option. Second: Government spending is inherently less efficient at growing economies. In fact, based on our experience over the last two generations, it is obvious that government spending retards organic economic growth, by crowding out investment and inserting a chaotically inefficient system that rewards rent seeking and outright fraud. Government must shrink, and be removed from competition for investment dollars. Getting control of the budget will yield immediate results, as the financial markets recognize that more private investment funds will be available. Will there be short-term shocks? Of course. Those financial markets are dependent on a constant stream of government dollars created to fund the deficit and pay bond interest. And there will be uncertainty as the Trump administration formalizes its tariff plans. But when future government spending and borrowing is better understood, and the tariffs are set, business will be able to plan for the future with much more certainty. But the biggest change will be that government will not be competing as much for investment dollars, and will not be crowding out innovation and entrepreneurialism. Simply unleashing Americans from the tethers of a huge and all-encompassing government will go a long way toward correcting the imbalance of government vs. the private sector.
Posted by: CBD at 12:00 PM | Comments (275) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Sunday Morning Book Thread - 3-16-2025 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]
Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:00 AM | Comments (358) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Daily Tech News 16 March 2025
Top Story
- Amazon has announced Alexa+, which updates the existing voice assistant to... Something something generative AI something. (Liliputing)
What's the catch?
- The option to have your smart devices not transmit everything you say straight to Amazon HQ will be removed on March 28. (Ars Technica)
George Orwell did not dream of this.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (225) | Trackbacks (Suck)
March 15, 2025
Saturday Night "Club ONT" March 15, 2025 [The 3 D's]
Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (500) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Saturday Evening Movie Thread - 3/15/2025
I've gone through the work of one other Russian filmmaker, Andrei Tarkovsky, who was more of a religious dissident than a loyal propagandist for the Soviet regime. However, there's one Soviet filmmaker that stands above them all: Sergei Eisenstein.
Born in Tsarist Russia in 1898 (technically, the Governorate of Livonia), Eisenstein entered film through the theater. Working experimentally on stage, he had the perfect mindset for a nascent Soviet film industry looking for ways to break from Western traditions in art but also to keep costs low. His first film, Strike made in 1925, told the story of a workers' strike in 1905, part of an ambitious plan to make six films detailing the workers' revolution from 1905, the first Russian Revolution (which failed), through 1917 and the October Revolution that saw the Bolsheviks overthrow the Provisional Government. Strike wasn't a huge success, but the second film Eisenstein made, came out less than a year later.
Battleship Potemkin is one of the most influential movies ever made. It goes well beyond the well-known Odessa Steps sequence (directly inspiring things like The Untouchables) and into how to create coherent sequences through non-linear editing. The dominant mode of editing in film had been much more influenced by Melies and, mostly, D.W. Griffith: editing shots in sequence that logically cut together to convey a string of events. Eisenstein, instead, built sequences, in particular the final sequence of two naval vessels steaming towards each other, out of disparate parts (engine pistons moving, earnest looks from sailors, deck guns with flags waving above them) which put the effects that he had first attempted in Strike in a much more popular film.
And yet, both those two first films, and the next five completed films, are 100%, unquestionably propaganda for the Soviet Union. Eisenstein's career lasted from 1925 to 1945 with the screening for Ivan the Terrible Part II: The Boyar's Plot for Joseph Stalin (Stalin hated the film, refused to allow its release, Eisenstein never completed a film again and died three years later). That creates two main themes to me when discussing his work: the revolutionary aspect of his approach to storytelling and the changing needs of propaganda.
Sergei Eisenstein
I've gone through the work of one other Russian filmmaker, Andrei Tarkovsky, who was more of a religious dissident than a loyal propagandist for the Soviet regime. However, there's one Soviet filmmaker that stands above them all: Sergei Eisenstein.
Born in Tsarist Russia in 1898 (technically, the Governorate of Livonia), Eisenstein entered film through the theater. Working experimentally on stage, he had the perfect mindset for a nascent Soviet film industry looking for ways to break from Western traditions in art but also to keep costs low. His first film, Strike made in 1925, told the story of a workers' strike in 1905, part of an ambitious plan to make six films detailing the workers' revolution from 1905, the first Russian Revolution (which failed), through 1917 and the October Revolution that saw the Bolsheviks overthrow the Provisional Government. Strike wasn't a huge success, but the second film Eisenstein made, came out less than a year later.
Battleship Potemkin is one of the most influential movies ever made. It goes well beyond the well-known Odessa Steps sequence (directly inspiring things like The Untouchables) and into how to create coherent sequences through non-linear editing. The dominant mode of editing in film had been much more influenced by Melies and, mostly, D.W. Griffith: editing shots in sequence that logically cut together to convey a string of events. Eisenstein, instead, built sequences, in particular the final sequence of two naval vessels steaming towards each other, out of disparate parts (engine pistons moving, earnest looks from sailors, deck guns with flags waving above them) which put the effects that he had first attempted in Strike in a much more popular film.
And yet, both those two first films, and the next five completed films, are 100%, unquestionably propaganda for the Soviet Union. Eisenstein's career lasted from 1925 to 1945 with the screening for Ivan the Terrible Part II: The Boyar's Plot for Joseph Stalin (Stalin hated the film, refused to allow its release, Eisenstein never completed a film again and died three years later). That creates two main themes to me when discussing his work: the revolutionary aspect of his approach to storytelling and the changing needs of propaganda.
Posted by: TheJamesMadison at 07:45 PM | Comments (223) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Hobby Thread - March 15, 2025 [TRex]
[Photo: Fabric of the Air Force Quilt, National Museum of the US Air Force, Dayton, Ohio]
Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the Horde in this little corner of the interweb. This is the mighty, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread.
We gave the Ace of Spades Wheel of Hobbies(TM) a spin. Turns out, the Wheel is fond of fabric. It said QUILTING. It wasn't done though. It also said that quilting skills often get shared and passed down from others, so we should honor those who taught us hobbying or skills (not just quilting).Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:30 PM | Comments (150) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Ace of Spades Pet Thread, March 15
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Good afternoon and welcome to the almost world famous Ace of Spades Pet Thread. Thanks for stopping by. Kick back and enjoy the world of animals.
Would you like a treat?
Let's relax a little with the animals and leave the world of politics and current events outside today.
Posted by: K.T. at 03:18 PM | Comments (77) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, March 15
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A few weeks ago it was -10℉. Yesterday it was 80℉. Perhaps it’s now spring, but I don’t quite trust the weather.Anybody else have that kind of a weather swing?
Posted by: K.T. at 01:15 PM | Comments (35) | Trackbacks (Suck)
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