Mid-Morning Art Thread

On the Mount of Olives
Nikolai Ge

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (363) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Report — 1/14/25

Good morning kids. Wait, what? They're trying to recall Gavin Newsom? Again?

Seriously California, wake up. So, you somehow miraculously recall Newsom and remove him from office. And replace him with who? Surely not Larry Elder or even anyone even a millimeter to the right of Che Guevara? You can blame comrade Stalin all you want for the mass deaths and failures. And then you get Khrushchev who will lead you to the glorious workers paradise you just know is within reach. 100 million souls ground into the earth in just over a century all over the world and still counting says otherwise. Add to it the 24 immolated in Los Angeles since last week (and the poor woman who was set on fire in the NYC subway the week prior).

But unless and until you blame the policies and ideology that Newsom, Bass and all the rest of them believe in, and most crucially who you vote for because tyou believe in them as well, you can rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic all you want but you're all going down with the ship.

And if you all are unwilling to do anything about it to save yourselves, the metaphorical and literal wildfires are not going to recognize state borders and as we know all to well, the cancer of Democrat/Leftist/Socialist/regressive-Progressivism will metastasize and ultimately consume us all. And the longer we wait to contain this conflagration/infection, the more radical and unpleasant the consequences, both in its effects on us and in how we will be forced to deal with it.

Christopher Roach is a sharp guy and a good essayist. But I think he misses the mark in his piece entitled "LA Fires Illustrate a Nationwide Competency Crisis"

California’s fires expose systemic neglect, where poor leadership, declining standards, and ignored maintenance have left a first-world city vulnerable to chaos.

One more time for you Christopher, THE IDEOLOGY IS THE INCOMPETENCE

I think we've beaten this to death, but no doubt long after the last embers have been extinguished, the aftermath and the way forward for residents and all of us alike will be debated well into the future, because there are ramifications for all of us, especially with the swearing in of Donald Trump and his team just one week from tomorrow. Thank God!

And speaking of ideology and incompetence with more than a mere soupçon of dementia and plain old Jew-hatred, we have Israel under the gun yet again as Biden is prepared to be wheeled out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Biden made the puzzling remarks on Monday evening at the State Department alongside Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “I put together one of the most competent foreign policy teams, I would argue, in American history,” Biden claimed.

America-hating, anti-semitic globalist stooges who greased the wheels for Putin to invade Ukraine by first overthrowing its legitimately elected government in a color revolution, bugging out of Afghanistan and leaving Muslim savages in control and gifting them with billions in our weaponry along with still shoveling billions of dollars at them, greasing the wheels for Iran to go nuclear (and they are closer than ever), stabbing Israel in the chest by tying their hands after the bloodiest anti-Jewish massacre since the end of WW2 with the invasion from Gaza, all of this collective signaling to the Chi-coms that invading Taiwan would indeed be tolerated.

As for Israel, it faces enemies on multiple battlefronts but the illegitimate and feral Biden junta has transitioned America from ally to enemy. In an attempt to somehow polish the diseased turd of his reputation and really to hamstring the incoming Trump administration, Biden has got Arafat's Webley pointed at Bibi's head.

The Biden junta is planning a “January surprise” that is “modeled directly on the January surprise of the Obama administration in 2016—that is U.N. Resolution 2334, which basically, to put it a little bit crudely, recognized the Green Line that is the June 5, 1967, ceasefire lines that separated Israel from Jordan as an international boundary,” Michael Doran, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and director of its center for peace and security in the Middle East, said on his podcast on Dec. 31. . .

. . . Speaking with his co-host Gadi Taub, an Israeli historian and writer, Doran said that the Obama administration’s surprise meant that “any development that Israel has made to the east of the Green Line since the 1967 War is recognized by the U.N. as an illegal settlement.”

Trump takes over very soon. January 20 can’t come soon enough.

They'll belch out the lie that Israel is blocking aid to Gaza and use that as a pretext to invoke some bullshit excuse to cut off military aid. The usual commies and commie self-gassers in Congress are pushing this hard, of course. So, it's not a last-second hostage or, sadly likelier hostage corpses deal in exchange for the release of the savage Muslim terrorists (BIR-R-M), it's perhaps trying to shove Israel back to what is correctly deemed the Auschwitz borders of pre June 1967.

How about no way in Hell and Vayr Ge-hargit should be Bibi's response. As for any jailed terrorists, they should be given pagers and cell phones as parting gifts. And or a visit to an Israeli dental clinic to have their teeth filled with fulminate of Mercury and Semtex amalgam with a tiny bluetooth - BLUETOOTH, get it?!!!! receiver installed.

Have a great day. 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
• The New Right sees America in crisis, split between reforming, restoring its foundations, or pursuing revolutionary change to counter perceived moral and cultural decline. (PERCEIVED? RUFKM?! - JJS)
  American Conservatives Should Focus on Reform and Restoration
  
• “Those who will not be governed by God will be governed by tyrants.”
  De Tocqueville On the Difficulty of Freedom (God Bless You Alex D. Toke-ville, by Barry Hu-inSsein Obama - jjs)

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 07:30 AM | Comments (326) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 14 January 2025

Top Story

• The USB Implementor's Foum - USB-IF - has done something that isn't stupid for the first time in years: Cancelled all those version names you can't remember. (PC World)
  
  Gone are USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 and USB4v2.
  
  Now it's just 5Gbps, 10Gbps, 20Gbps, 40Gbps, and 80Gbps. Bigger numbers are better.
  
  When looking at cables, they are rated with both a speed and a maximum power - either 60W or 240W. 60W runs at 20V and 3A, while 240W runs at 48V and 5A. You can always shift downwards, but running 5A over a 3A cable may not work out so well - or at all.
  

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (136) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Monday Overnight Open Thread - January 13, 2025 [Doof]

(Mystery Click dedicated to Governor Brylcreem)

Howdy Hordelings! So glad you decided to stop by the ONT to end your Monday. Fresh content awaits. Don't be shy -- step on in!

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (453) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Shadows Cafe

Livestock guardian dogs are gentle giants.

Ducklings make a nest on a pit bull's back.

The earth as viewed from the rings of Saturn, captured by the Cassini satellite.

Meowssuese.

please sir hooman, can i have that?

Puppy is afraid of her first bath.

DJ Skritchers.

I think they're surfing down a dam's spilway, but I dunno.

And that little boy's name was Aquaman.

Space Force Close Quarters Combat Training.

Speaking of Space Force...

Rico the Porcupine from the Cincinnati Zoo:

Posted by: Ace at 07:42 PM | Comments (329) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Quick Hits

You probably know that looters are robbing the abandoned homes in LA.

Two men were found lurking around Kamala Harris's LA home. Unfortunately they were "detained" (and then released) before they could rob her.

The left resorts to usual tactics to avoid responsibility for enabling "Asian" Grooming Gangs -- UK groups are banning the term "Asian grooming gangs" as, get this, racist.

Rape area councils brand 'Asian grooming gangs' a racist term

Oxford, Newcastle, Greater Manchester and Calderdale have adopted an Islamophobia definition produced by MPs that condemns 'stereotypes and tropes about Islam'

Council areas where British-Pakistani men raped young white girls have endorsed an Islamophobia definition that views the phrase "Asian grooming gangs" as racist.

Oxford, Newcastle, Manchester and Calderdale are four local authorities to get behind a report that critics believe will silence whistleblowers trying to raise the alarm about child abuse.

The report warned that "Asian grooming gangs" are a modern iteration of "age-old stereotypes and tropes about Islam" of "sexual profligacy and paedophilia, or Islam and violence", concluding that they "heighten the vulnerability of Muslims to hate crimes".

As Orwell described Newspeak and Crimethink: They would take away the words needed to express any disapproval of the state, and therefore your brains will not even be able to conceive a thought critical of the state.

More great news: They want you to know that even though Pakistani Muslims are responsible for a hugely disproportionate amount of underaged rape and sex slavery, that's only a small category of crime, and there are many areas of crime where they don't predominate.

Well, Visas for all of them, then!

Sohail Ahmed
@SohailSNAhmed


Jan 12

Apparently - and I've had many fellow British Pakistanis tell me this - the problem attitudes and behaviours come from within one particular sub-community amongst British Pakistanis: those who hail from a city called Mirpur in Pakistani-administered Kashmir.

I am Mirpuri... 1/n

...by origin myself.

This phenomenon - which seems to be real and true - needs to be studied and understood by anthropologists if we are to get a grip on things.

This is why I am so against political ideology curtailing academic freedom. 2/n

I have heard of academics refusing to study certain issues - sometimes suppressing data - because the conclusions arrived at were 'politically incorrect'.

Rational enquiry must be ideologically blind to be trustworthy. 3/n

We owe progress and development to the pursuit of knowledge regardless of where it took us.

Remember, a man was burned at the stake for going against the geocentric view of the universe advocated by the Church (ie. earth-centrism). 4/n

Now we cower in fear of being cancelled. For shame.

Sorry for the seeming tangent, but all of this is connected. If we were more rational as a species, we'd avoid many of the problems we face today. (5/5)

I forgot to add that most British Pakistanis are mirpuri by origin.

This is because a dam was built where we lived before we all moved to mirpur, and given we were all moving anyway, a lot of us came to the UK.

This was back when Britain was looking for immigrants. (6/5+1)

Perfect:

Posted by: Ace at 06:39 PM | Comments (229) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Semafor: The Washington Post Has Lost 90% of Its Daily Online Readers Since 2021
Update: The Post Lost $100 Million in 2024 Alone -- an Election Year, For Crying Out Loud!!!

Ninety percent?!?!

Even noted NY liberal AllahPundit is impressed.

Before getting to that, MSNBC thinks it's found a way to revived its own collapsed ratings: Maddow's back on five nights a week, baby! Whoo-hooo!

Maddow, who scaled back anchoring duties after the spring of 2022, holding forth only on Mondays, will return to five nights a week at that hour as part of a broader move by MSNBC to draw viewership to its coverage of the first 100 days of the Trump administration. Alex Wagner, who anchors 9 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, will take on a special assignment: traveling the U.S. and overseas in a bid to talk to both newsmakers tied to and people affected by Trump polices during his critical first weeks in office.

It's amusing that MSNBC is selling this -- a "reporter" going outside the office to talk to people -- as some innovation.

In a way, it is -- lazy, socially-dysfunctional, mentally-ill "reporters" mostly do their "reporting" by scanning Twitter and TikTok now.

"The idea is to give MSNBC viewers a full, 360-degree view of what's happening in the country in a way that you don't necessarily get in the studio," says Wagner, during an interview. Both she and Maddow are expected to return to their regular roles after April 30.

Yeah I'm sure you'll be giving your viewers a "360-degree view" on Trump's Second First 100 Days, with all points of view well-represented.

The Washington Post doesn't even have a Maddow to push.

Over the last four years, web traffic has cratered. According to internal data shared with Semafor in recent weeks, the Post's regular daily traffic last year sunk to less than a quarter of what it was at its peak in January 2021. That month, the Post briefly reached a high of around 22.5 million daily active users following the attack. But by the middle of 2024, its daily users hovered around 2.5-3 million daily users.

Last year, Washington City Paper noted that the Post had stopped publicly disclosing its traffic numbers in press releases, after a 60% decline in monthly traffic. On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Post's revenue fell from $190 million in 2023 to $174 million last year.

The Post laid off 100 staffers last week.

Vox just laid off another 12 staffers, after a round of cuts just last month.

Note that the Washington Post lost $100 million last year alone.

I've also mentioned this before, but I'll say it again: Although it pleases me that some woke propaganda outlets are firing some woke staffers and trying to rebrand themselves as real journalism, I would advise them: Don't bother. The woman who slept with everyone in town and participated in gangbangs can't reclaim her lost virtue. It's gone.

The Post is trying (weakly) to moderate, but that just results in them losing their woke readers, with no normies to replace them.

The media are partisan whores for the deranged left. There is no coming back from that. There is no redemption for wokeness.

They should just continue playing to their small audience of mentally-ill shut-ins. At least that is some audience. They need to just chop their workforce by 60%-75% and accept that their future life prospects are forever diminished by their 8-year-long period of mental insanity and whoring around.

Posted by: Ace at 05:40 PM | Comments (256) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Judge Knocks Down Biden's Unconstitutional Effort to Rewrite Title IX's Protections Based on Sex to Protect "Gender Expression"

The Senile Tyrant has spent his entire four year fraudulent term attempting to rewrite law-- which the Constitution demands be written by Congress -- with his new laws.

The "watchdog media" has literally never noticed nor expressed any concern over this practice. Indeed, they've championed Biden's kingly presumptions and criticized judges who have struck down his unconstitutional power grabs.

Think they'll let Trump rewrite the laws at his whim?

The Biden administration's Title IX rules expanding protections for LGBTQ+ students have been struck down nationwide after a federal judge in Kentucky found they overstepped the president's authority.

In a decision issued Thursday, U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves scrapped the entire 1,500-page regulation after deciding it was "fatally" tainted by legal shortcomings. The rule had already been halted in 26 states after a wave of legal challenges by Republican states.

President-elect Donald Trump, whose inauguration is days away, previously promised to end the rules "on day one" and made anti-transgender themes a centerpiece of his campaign.

The decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia.

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti called it a rejection of the Biden administration's "relentless push to impose a radical gender ideology."

"Because the Biden rule is vacated altogether, President Trump will be free to take a fresh look at our Title IX regulations when he returns to office," Skrmetti said in a statement.

The Education Department did not immediately comment on the decision.

Good. Now let's severely reform Title IX, too.

National Review explains how brazen this powergrab by the Demented Tyrant Biden was, and how great this victory.

First, what did the Biden Title IX rule do? Among other things, this regulation from the U.S. Department of Education tried to change the meaning of sex in Title IX -- the federal statute that bans discrimination "on the basis of sex" in schools receiving public funds -- to include gender identity.

The rule would have required almost every K--12 school and university in America to allow males into women's locker rooms, restrooms, showers, and overnight accommodations during field trips. It also put a speech code on students and teachers who did not want to speak in favor of gender ideology -- subjecting them to discipline for "sex-based harassment."

The rule arguably affected sports, too, because you can't redefine sex in the law protecting women's sports without affecting those sports. After all, the Biden administration had already told courts that incorporating gender identity into Title IX would require schools to let men compete in women's sports.

So, without any congressional approval, the Biden administration took a law passed in 1972 meant to protect women and girls and re-deployed it to harm them. The federal judge in Kentucky was having none of it.

As the court wrote, "[W]hen Title IX is viewed in its entirety, it is abundantly clear that discrimination on the basis of sex means discrimination on the basis of being a male or female. As this Court and others have explained, expanding the meaning of 'on the basis of sex' to include 'gender identity' turns Title IX on its head."

"Title IX," the court continued, allows "males and females to be separated based on the enduring physical differences between the sexes."

Posted by: Ace at 04:40 PM | Comments (196) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Karen Bass Pledged That, If Elected, She Would No Longer Travel Internationally.
She, Get This, Lied.

I know you're all stunned. If you're hyperventilating, take slow breaths, exhaling each, and then holding your lungs empty for 30 seconds. This will reduce the oxygen in your blood and slow your heart down.

Bass was asked if she would continue her jetsetting if elected mayor. She had a history of supporting Cuba and traveling there often. Voters wanted to know if they were voting for a part-time mayor who spent most of her time campaigning for Castroism.

She promised she would not travel internationally if elected -- she'd stay in LA, except for trips to Sacramento, SF, New York City, and DC. So she left herself room to travel to blue cities in the US, but vowed no more traveling around the world spreading Gospel of Fidel.

She lied.

It's said that Emperor Nero fiddled while Rome burned, but Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass did no such thing -- she just took a taxpayer-funded trip to the Paris Olympics while cutting $17 million from the fire department's budget and ignoring the cries of her fire chief.

Three, actually. Three taxpayer-funded trips to the Paris Olympics that lasted two weeks. But just think of the miles she earned.

Sure, Bass was in Ghana on a White House junket when the fires broke out last week, but that was sheer dumb luck. A New York Times report today indicates that Bass views her position as part-time at best.

"A review of her public daily schedule for the past year shows that Ms. Bass has traveled out of the country at city expense at least four other times in recent months before the Ghana visit," the NYT reported. "Once to Mexico for the inauguration of President Claudia Sheinbaum and three times to France for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris."

It gets worse. Bass had explicitly promised during the 2022 mayoral race to reduce her foreign travel, even though she didn't want to.

...

Bass "spoke candidly," according to the Times, "about what she saw as a potential drawback to the job -- a lack of world travel and involvement in global affairs."

"I went to Africa every couple of months, all the time," she said in a 2021 interview. "The idea of leaving that, especially the international work and the Africa work, I was like, 'Mmm, I don't think I want to do that.'"

...

This was the promise she made then: "Not only would I of course live here, but I also would not travel internationally -- the only places I would go would be D.C., Sacramento, San Francisco, and New York, in relation to L.A."

This is what the NYT published today: "That pledge has been spectacularly broken."

As Robert Sterling put it on X, "The fact that this is the top story in the New York Times means the left is hanging her out to dry. They know she's toast, so they're sacrificing her to protect Newsom, their preferred candidate for 2028."

The LA Times' owner is so desperate he's even willing to criticize Democrat politicians for their failures to mitigate the wildfires.

Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong is the billionaire owner of the LA Times. He's been making news lately for suggesting the paper needed to change to become more balanced and offer opinions from all sides. He plans to add a bias meter to every article to get feedback on how the paper is doing. And true to his word of looking for divergent voices, he even added Scott Jennings to the LA Times editorial board.
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So it's not a complete shock that Soon-Shiong is being criticial of how the Los Angeles wildfires are being managed. Last week he started talking about the importance of competence in elected officials.

Dr. Pat Soon-Shiong
@DrPatSoonShiong

Maybe the lesson we learned out of this catastrophe in California is to now vote not based on left or right or D versus R but perhaps based on competent or no experience in operating a job !! We have to elect based on competence... yes competence matters.

He admits he made a "mistake" in endorsing her:

Posted by: Ace at 03:42 PM | Comments (343) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Israel and Hamas Reach "Breakthrough" on Hostage Deal?

Elections have consequences.

Israel and Hamas reached a significant "breakthrough" in cease-fire talks early Monday in a deal that aims to finally end more than 15 months of war and bring home the remaining hostages.

Talks held in Qatar -- and attended by envoys of both President Biden and President-elect Donald Trump -- went into the early hours Monday, with Hamas teasing the release of many of its terrorists captured by Israel.

Although a final deal has not yet been reached, a source involved in the negotiations told Reuters, "The next 24 hours will be pivotal to reaching the deal."

The talks revolve in part around a list of more than 30 hostages Hamas has said it would be willing to finally release -- without saying how many might be alive.

Hamas, meanwhile, promised the release of its own terrorists while confirming it expects a deal.

"We renew our pledge with our steadfast and patient people and with our heroic prisoners in the prisons, and we affirm that their freedom is near," the terror group said, according to the Times of Israel.

Some are criticizing the "deal," noting that Hamas might just be releasing 30 dead bodies in exchange for living terrorists.

Andrew Fox
@Mr_Andrew_Fox

The reported ceasefire deal is anything but a peace deal. It's a strategic victory for Hamas - arguably the first modern military victory brought about by an information campaign as the decisive action.

All this achieves is more blood and pain further down the line - unless the details differ to those leaked. I hope they do. Otherwise, US foreign policy in the Middle East is looking worryingly similar to Calgacus's analysis of the Roman Empire.

"...the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace."

Marina Medvin
@MarinaMedvin

Hearing murmurs that a hostage deal is imminent. If true, the hostages won't be released right away; they will still have to wait a week after this deal is signed.

Why do the Palestinians need a week? Based on the last release, probably to drug and hydrate the hostages so they can wave and look semi-okay for the propaganda videos HMS will be shooting of the release that they will claim in these videos as magnanimous.

Some Israeli politicians claim it's a bad deal they've been pressured to take due to the media... and Trump.

Tina
@Tina34832552745

Israeli Security officials to Channel 14 with the details sharply criticized the emerging deal, calling it "a clear and total surrender!" "We caved because of Trump, we caved due to media pressure.

They're selling the public a staged deal, but anyone with common sense knows not all stages of the deal will be carried out. This means leaving some of the hostages behind."

We'll see.

Update: More than one thousand terrorist scum will be released.

If the below claims are true. This may be bulls**t.

Posted by: Ace at 02:27 PM | Comments (368) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Jen Rubin "Exits" the Washington Post; Chuck Todd "Exits" NBC

Maybe they can do a show together. Can you imagine the sexual heat that would convect out of your TV?

NBC wouldn't agree to Chuck Todd's terms, so his contract his ending. I assume that NBC wanted him to take a pay cut, because no one's watched him in eight years, and he refused, as he couldn't suffer that indignity.

Chuck Todd's days at NBC News are winding down as the former "Meet the Press" moderator is plotting his next steps in journalism once his contract expires later this year, according to a report.

Todd, who was once a central figure in NBC's political coverage, is quietly mulling his options for life after 30 Rock, according to the Semafor news site.

Todd, 52, has reportedly been meeting with Washington-based media organizations to discuss potential roles outside NBC, including opportunities in broadcast and digital media, Semafor reported.

His contract with the Comcast-owned news outfit is set to expire this year, and Todd has signaled his intention to leave the network, according to the report.

Meanwhile, Jen Rubin is finally leaving the Washington Post. She demanded other journalists resign in protest when their owners made decisions prioritizing profit and sales over wokeness, but didn't resign herself.

She's finally resigned. Except, of course, I don't believe she "resigned." I would bet any amount of money that the Washington Post, losing money and readers at such a pace the paper's existence is literally in danger, looked at its staff and decided to fire the non-performers.

She literally has no constituency at all. Almost no NeverTrumper does. Almost every single NeverTrumper in the country has a high-paid media gig despite having no audience or constituency. They have been paid simply for loyal service to the Democrat/Progressive Cult, and to astroturf a propaganda front against Trump.

Now that all of this money has been shown to have been wasted without effect -- turns out the "Nikki Haley voters" turned out to be only Nikki Haley and her cuck husband -- the entire corrupt corporate media is re-evaluating how much money it spends on NeverTrump nobodies.

But Brian "Love Spud" Stelter is championing her new Substack and claiming it's got the potential to be huge.

Despite, again, the fact that no one reads her now.

The result is a new venture called "The Contrarian," which was first reported Monday by another media anti-Trump figure, CNN media hall monitor Brian Stelter:

Rubin is partnering with former White House ethics czar Norm Eisen and launching something new: a startup publication called The Contrarian.

The startup's tagline, "Not owned by anybody," is a pointed reference to billionaire Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and other moguls who, in Rubin's view, have "bent the knee" to President-elect Donald Trump.

"Our goal is to combat, with every fiber of our being, the authoritarian threat that we face," Rubin told CNN in an interview ahead of the publication's introduction.

Among the fantastic writers that Rubin will feature on "The Contrarian:" Kellyanne Fitzpatrick's cuck ex-husband George Conway. Gee, where would I get my George Conway otherwise?

Also featured: deranged woke lawyer "former FBI agent" (DEI Division) Asha Rangappa.

And, of course, disgraced corrupt prosecutor Andrew Weissman.

Again, where would I see these important commentators if not for this new "Contrarian" substack? I mean, they're just on CNN literally three times a f***ing week saying the same things over and over again.

The Contrarian joins a growing group of publications -- like The Bulwark and Zeteo, to name two -- that are built on the Substack newsletter platform. Starting Monday, it will publish some content for free but will charge $7 a month for complete access to columns, podcasts, and videos.

Oooh, podcasts! I need to see Jen Rubin, with her face-made-for-radio and body-made-for-mobility-scooter, and I'm eager to spend $84/year for that privilege.

This is going to be big, guys. So big.

Posted by: Ace at 01:21 PM | Comments (390) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Politico Panics: Trump Set to Unleash "Shock and Awe" Executive Orders

Hello, everyone. It's the last week of the Biden Usurpation.

Aww. Is this like Joe Biden tyrannically changing the actual law at his whim, or just rolling back Joe Biden's executive orders?

resident-elect Donald Trump will issue "a blizzard of executive orders" as soon as he inaugurated Jan. 20, Sen. John Barrasso predicted Sunday.

Speaking on CBS' "Face the Nation," the Wyoming Republican said: "When President Trump takes office next Monday, there is going to be shock and awe with executive orders. A blizzard of executive orders on the economy, as well as on the border."

Executive orders, for better or worse, allow a president to bypass Congress. But Barrasso, the new Senate majority whip, said that he expects Trump to also rely on the narrow Republican majority in the Senate and even more slender one in the House to get his agenda enacted.

"When we met with President Trump earlier this past week," he told host Margaret Brennan, "what President Trump said the No. 1 goal for the Senate needs to be to get his team in place. I've met with just about all of them. I support every one of these nominees. As the whip, my job is to make sure they get across the finish line. Get on the job, and President Trump deserves a team early."

Meanwhile, the incoming National Security Advisor wants the entire current staff to submit their resignations by 12 noon on January 20.

He wants them physically out of the offices by 12:01 PM, too.

Incoming National Security Advisor Mike Waltz told Breitbart News exclusively that every intelligence official from the various departments and agencies across the federal government currently detailed to the National Security Council (NSC) at the White House under outgoing President Joe Biden will be expected to vacate the premises by 12:01 p.m. Eastern Time on Inauguration Day when President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated again.

Waltz, in a phone interview earlier this week, told Breitbart News that he is making sure everyone understands that it's "crystal clear what the agenda is."

"Everybody is going to resign at 12:01 on January 20," Waltz said. "We're working through our process to get everybody their clearances and through the transition process now. Our folks know who we want out in the agencies, we're putting those requests in, and in terms of the detailees they're all going to go back."

The way the NSC works is the National Security Advisor oversees a team of political appointees from the president who oversee a wide range of what are called "detailees"--people who work at the various agencies and departments across the federal government who are assigned, or detailed, to work at the White House for a period of time on the NSC in a portfolio in which they demonstrate expertise. These career intelligence officials come from places as wide-ranging as the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the Pentagon, and other law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and report up to the political appointees atop each major portfolio in the NSC. The NSC has various issue-specific portfolios like counterterrorism and cyber policy as well as regional portfolios focused on things like the western hemisphere or the Middle East or Europe or Asia. The detailees then help coordinate back to the various agencies and departments so the whole federal government executes on the decisions that the president makes.

One of the major problems Trump faced in his first term came from inside the NSC with some of these detailees, as the person who spearheaded the first impeachment of Trump--Alexander Vindman--was one such person. Waltz told Breitbart News that he is taking very serious steps to ensure that there are no more Vindmans. From this point forward, he said, anyone who gets a detailee position on the NSC will be on board with the president's agenda.

"The issue with Vindman wasn't during transition--the issue with Vindman was he was already slated to transfer but didn't come in until the summer or fall after," Waltz said. "So that's one, number two--the folks that we're bringing in are 100 percent aligned with the president's agenda. Hell, the entire world seems to be aligned with his agenda if you just look at the outreach from world leaders and everybody who wants to come to Mar-a-Lago. So, there's a little bit of a difference in that everybody was reflexively just against him [the first time] just for the sake of it and the Trump Derangement Syndrome was out of control in 2017. Now, after seeing and feeling four years of progressive governance under Biden and seeing the world come unglued, we're not even seeing the levels of resistance to his agenda--that's just a broader point. But also the folks we're bringing in, the key members of my team, have relationships out in these agencies and we know who is completely on board."

More from Breitbart's Matthew Boyle at the link. Interestingly, Waltz says he's considering a new way to combat Russian and Chinese hacker operations against the US: Going on offense and unleashing our own hackers against Russia and China until they are deterred from further cyber attacks.

The criminal Christopher Wray will be out before Trump's in office.

In somewhat-related news, lawyer and director of the Article III Project Mike Davis has a "dark warning" for the criminal prosecutors and judges who have unleashed lawfare on their political opponents:

Posted by: Ace at 12:15 PM | Comments (514) | Trackbacks (Suck)

THE MORNING RANT: Major Federal Court Ruling - Corporations Allowing Their 401(k)s to be Used for ESG Purposes Are Engaging in Illegal Fiduciary Misconduct

News is breaking fast as woke corporations are facing consequences for their foray into left-wing political activism.

On one front, there are many recent headlines about corporations stepping back from their DEI (Diversity Equity Inclusion) initiatives, as the indefatigable Robby Starbuck continues to present woke corporations a simple offer - terminate their discriminatory DEI policies, or prepare to have their racist policies exposed, and then enjoy being the next Bud Light or Tractor Supply.

But another major front is opening up on the war against woke capital. Corporate DEI has an evil twin brother, ESG, or “Environmental Social Governance,” in which corporations use their power, money, and influence to advocate for the globalist, anti-carbon agenda of the World Economic Forum and other enemies of freedom. Well, there is some great news on this front too.

Thanks to a lawsuit by some pilots at American Airlines, a major federal court ruling just put corporations and money management firms on notice that it is a violation of federal law to misappropriate employees’ investment accounts to pursue the radical ESG agenda.

“American Airlines broke the law by focusing on ESG in 401(k) plans” [NY Post – 01/10/2025]

A federal judge in Texas on Friday said American Airlines violated federal law by basing investment decisions for its employee retirement plan on environmental, social, and other non-financial factors. The ruling by US District Judge Reed O’Connor appeared to be the first of its kind amid growing backlash by conservatives to an uptick in socially-conscious investing.

According to a Bloomberg Law report, “An expert witness for the pilots testified that BlackRock’s May 2021 proxy vote at ExxonMobil, which focused on ESG priorities, devalued energy stocks and caused the airline’s 401(k) plan to suffer more than $15 million in losses…”

This is significant. Because of BlackRock’s decarbonization agenda, it cast anti-energy proxy votes on behalf of the investors whose money it managed, causing a politically-motivated financial loss to those investors - a loss that was a predictable consequence of that proxy voting, and which was apparently intentional. And American Airlines knowingly let Black Rock financially harm its employees, in service to the ESG agenda.

Here is the actual ruling, with a hat tip to Steve Milloy (@JunkScience) for the link, and for noting this money quote from the federal court ruling:

“The facts here compellingly established fiduciary misconduct in the form of conflicts of interest and the failure to loyally act solely in the Plan’s best financial interests. BlackRock’s ESG influence is evident throughout administration of the Plan. The belief that ESG considerations confer a license to ignore pecuniary benefits is mistaken. ERISA does not permit a fiduciary to pursue a non-pecuniary interest no matter how noble it might view the aim. Plaintiff therefore proved by a preponderance of the evidence that American [Airlines] disloyally acted with an intent to benefit a party other than Plan participants and in a manner that was not wholly focused on the best financial benefit to the Plan."

Think about the magnitude of that final sentence. American Airlines chose to use the personal savings of its employees’ 401k plan “to benefit a party other than the Plan participants.” Misuse of money by a custodian to which it has been entrusted is a form of theft, and that is what American Airlines and Black Rock did to American Airlines employees. The same is true for every other company allowing Black Rock to mismanage money in service to its anti-freedom political agenda.

There need to be criminal consequences for the individuals at these firms who chose to allow employees’ savings to be illegally misused. (Attention Ken Paxton.)

Will Hild is covering this story well, noting that “Damages have yet to be awarded and the legal fight here is likely far from over, BUT this legal precedent *most definitely* has BlackRock scrambling... The court found that American Air used BlackRock for their retirement services — and BlackRock prioritized ESG metrics over generating financial returns — thus American Airlines was in violation of its fiduciary duty. If this holds, *any company* that used BlackRock (and thus their funds were used to advance ESG) could be held liable in the same way.”

BREAKING: This is HUGE ⬇️

A federal judge in Texas has found that @AmericanAir violated both federal law and their fiduciary duty to their employees by using the company's 401(k) plan to push ESG. pic.twitter.com/oZKoHvJHUZ

— Will Hild (@WillHild) January 10, 2025

Every corporation that uses Black Rock (and State Street, etc) better start taking a hard look at how those money managers are using proxy votes to illegally advocate for ESG.

Black Rock and its diabolic CEO, Larry Fink, should start lawyering up, since a federal court is now acknowledging that the company deliberately abandoned its fiduciary responsibilities to pursue a political agenda that negatively affected the retirement accounts and savings of millions of victims.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

Posted by: Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM | Comments (310) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Mid-Morning Art Thread

Automat
Edward Hopper

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (481) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Report — 1/13/25

Good morning kids.

So, let me get this straight. I've seen quite a few stories about how Newsom is supposedly going to be ruthless on looters taking advantage of the wildfires. Looking back just four-and-a-half short (yet interminable) years ago, one wonders what was his attitude on the looters who took advantage of fires that they themselves set in the wake of fellow lowlife criminal George Floyd winning a stupid prize for death by eating his crystal meth stash, after passing a counterfeit Jackson at a convenience store, while resisting arrest. Not just LA, but several dozen cities across America were given the Lemay treatment and the Left excused it as an understandable and even laudable behavior because of the blood libel of institutional racism and white supremacy. To arrest and prosecute anyone would undermine a bedrock foundation of Democrat/Leftist political power and influence.

Try to disregard that nakedly obvious disgusting phony moralizing from the hack propagandist who scribbled this dreck in the LA Times and just look at what Newsom is quoted as saying in light of the present circumstances.

“You’ve lost patience. So have I. You are right to feel wronged. You are right to feel the way you are feeling,” Newsom said to protesters, adding that “society has a responsibility to you to be better, and to do better.”
Newsom said Monday that outside groups were seeking to “create havoc,” but he declined to name specific groups. Residents of Los Angeles complained of lawlessness and a lack of police presence, while others said law enforcement had escalated violence toward peaceful protesters. In Oakland, police arrested three people early Monday in a shooting at Police Department headquarters, and a woman was shot in the suburb of Walnut Creek in connection with the unrest, police told the Chronicle.

. . .Newsom largely remained quiet over the weekend and after he held a news conference on Friday. The governor released a statement late Saturday on the deployment of the National Guard and commented again on the protests midday Monday. Hours earlier, President Trump spoke with governors and called for a harsher police crackdown. Asked several times about the president’s comments, Newsom declined to directly respond to Trump or criticize him. In videos from the front lines of the protests, organizers decried the looting and sought to distinguish their groups from the bands of vandals and thieves that shattered windows and made many Californians fear public security was spinning out of control.

Newsom said Monday that outside groups were seeking to “create havoc,” but he declined to name specific groups. . .

The governor began his Friday news conference with a monologue that delved into his own privilege, his children’s response to Floyd’s death and their attempts to understand what it all meant. “We’ve got to fundamentally change who we are and recognize what we’re capable of being,” he said.

The governor echoed that message Monday. “You’ve got to change hearts, minds,” Newsom said. “You’ve got to change culture, not just laws. And we have to own up to some very difficult things. The black community is not responsible for what’s happening in this country right now. We are. We are. Our institutions are responsible. We are accountable to this moment.”

Meanwhile, back to present day in the smoldering ashes of Pacific Palisades and the smoldering ruins of a significant chunk of our society and culture. Here is the totally unsurprising headline of the day for a number of reasons I'm sure you can see, unlike probably the overwhelming majority of Democrat true-believers and run of the mill generational/reflexive/low information Democrats and Dupes.

A reported illegal immigrant was arrested by police after California residents feared he would use a blowtorch to start wildfires in Los Angeles. . .

. . . Per ICE sources, the man seen in a viral video being subdued by residents & arrested by police w/ a blowtorch near the #KennethFire in West Hills is an illegal alien from Mexico named Juan Manuel Sierra-Leyva. He is in custody on a probation violation & has NOT been charged w/ arson. I’m told ICE will place a detainer request on him with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, but they do not expect it to be honored due to California’s Sanctuary State law. I’m told Sierra-Leyva will have a court appearance tomorrow. . .

. . . The arrest comes as California legislators debate legislation that would provide another $25 million to help the state’s large population of illegal evade deportation during President Donald Trump’s second term.

Like New York City, the government of Los Angeles welcomes migrants because they serve as cheap labor, apartment-sharing renters, and welfare-aided consumers.

So a wetback with a blowtorch sets LA ablaze not one week after a fellow traveler across the Rio Grande, also invited in by Joey Sponge-Brain Shits-Pants and the Dems, immolates a sleeping subway rider in NYC. At least the latter was charged for what I have read, but his ultimate disposition is TBD.

There has been much speculation that LA's transformation into Dresden on the Pacific might very well be a tipping point that turns the state Red, politically. Aside from the fact that the political machine that controls the electoral process will simply not allow that to happen, even if for just one future election there is a critical mass of voters that could put a Republican back in Sacramento or even LA city hall.

Let's say for argument's sake, that LA and even all of California flips red. It is worth noting that this past election has seen much of the state flip red than at any time in the past 40 or so years. The big obstacle of course are the large metropolitan Sodoms & Gomorrahs that have a stranglehold on the rest of the state. Historical anecdote: Ironically enough, Operation Gomorrah was the RAF's codename for the firebombing raid on Hamburg in 1943 that wiped out the city and which Albert Speer declared a few more like that would cause the collapse of Nazi Germany.

Meanwhile, the propaganda mills are still pounding out the same garbage about mythological "Climate Change" while no doubt ready to either bury completely the illegal alien angle or otherwise continue the hoary old theme of racist bigoted xenophobia and not open borders being the real problem.

Despite all of this as well as the documented criminal negligence and malfeasance of everyone from Newsom and Bass down the line to the incompetent hoseless fire chiefs, remember that mission #1 is protect the movement, "Even if it short-dicks every cannibal in the Congo" as Gunny Hartmann famously said.

As I have pondered on these pages and on our podcasts about this and every other failure and catastrophe we have experienced with the Democrats in charge, over the last four years and indeed the past century and longer, incompetence vs. ideology.

I think I have settled on this sentiment, suitable for a Rosie Grier macrame in a frame on the mantlepiece:

THE IDEOLOGY IS THE INCOMPETENCE

So as to this mass deprogramming of Leftists, I can't see it, despite what's going on right in front of their eyes. Replacing a Newsom and a Bass is the path of least resistance for the traitorous, murderous Democrat Left. To accept the facts on the ground, that 20 -plus years of banning controlled burning, not damming rivers and building reservoirs, allowing criminal illegal aliens to run wild and to hire police, firefighters and other critical vocations dealing with public safety and security based on the most trivial of criteria as opposed to ability and competency would be to create a crisis of conscience in every Leftist that would shatter a worldview they've held perhaps since childhood and certainly over the past several generations because of indoctrination in schools.

Remember, Nikita Kruschev denounced Stalin. He did not denounce Communism. As evil as Stalin was, it was the system he promoted and used as cover to butcher countless millions.

To tweak the lyrics of Billy Joel . . . Democrats Didn't Start the Fire — Democrats ARE the Fire!!!

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
• Michael Goodwin: A common thread from California to Great Britain, France and Germany is that liberal underpinnings have morphed into sloppy socialism, unchecked immigration, cultural clashes and restraints on critical speech. 
  The world has now seen the ‘Trump Effect’ on full display

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 07:33 AM | Comments (346) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 13 January 2025

Top Story

• The metaverse will soon be more popular than the real world. Will reality disappear? No. (HackRead)
  
  The thing about reality is that it is real.
  
  It doesn't disappear when you stop believing in it.
  
  You do.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (137) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sunday Overnight Open Thread - January 12, 2025 [Doof]

(Mystery Click dedicated to Los Angeles fire chief Kristin Crowley)

Howdy Hordelings, and a happy Sunday night to you all! Are you fully ensconced in 2025 yet? Are your holiday decorations down and back in storage? No matter how you answered those questions, we're glad you stopped by tonight's ONT. Let's see if anything fun or interesting awaits you tonight.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (470) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gun Thread: January 12th Edition!

Damnit, dates at the bottom of the boxes again!

Howdy, Y'all! Welcome to the wondrously fabulous Gun Thread! As always, I want to thank all of our regulars for being here week in and week out, and also offer a bigly Gun Thread welcome to any newcomers who may be joining us tonight. Howdy and thank you for stopping by! I hope you find our wacky conversation on the subject of guns 'n shooting both enjoyable and informative. You are always welcome to lurk in the shadows of shame, but I'd like to invite you to jump into the conversation, say howdy, and tell us what kind of shooting you like to do!

Holy Shitballs! How in the ever-loving hell did it get to be Sunday again? It's going to be a quick thread tonight, hombres and hombrettes. Your old pal Weasel is a wee-tad occupied with work stuff right now, putting in three, and sometimes even four hour days! With any luck things will calm down soon and return to normal. Other regular features will return soon. Thanks for understanding!

With that, step into the dojo and let's get to the gun stuff below, shall we?

Posted by: Weasel at 07:00 PM | Comments (263) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Food Thread: Nuts, Pork, And Bourbon...

What to do with extra nuts? I used to buy raw almonds and then roast them, mostly because they tasted a lot better than the roasted ones from the market. I could control the salt and the fat, and of course that meant more salt and more fat!

But I got bored with roasted almonds, and still had a bag of the raw version. Actually, they are steamed, not raw, because raw almonds will often contain some unpleasant compounds like cyanide!

So I poked around and found some recipes for spicy almonds, and damn! They were tasty! Of course that is a rabbit hole, and there are thousands of variations, and most that I have seen are actually spicy/sweet, which makes them even more delicious and difficult to resist.

I even tried them with pecans, of which I had tons for pecan pie. They were good too, although a friend recently gave me some excellent pecans from Texas, and trust me, they are a lot better than the commodity ones I bought at Costco.

I tuned up a recipe that Bluebell sent me, and that's the one I use. I posted it a long time ago, and have made it many times, but recently I have been cutting back on the cumin.

And peeling the almonds helps a lot, or is a time-consuming affectation that you should probably ignore.

Not sure which, but try them both ways and report back!

Posted by: CBD at 04:00 PM | Comments (335) | Trackbacks (Suck)

First-World Problems...

It's copper. It's a sink. And it tarnishes in a matter of a few days. So the question is: Should I polish it twice a week so it looks like... you know... copper? Or let it go for a rustic look?

What? No! Of course I rarely use the damned thing. It's a bar sink whose planned function has been lost in the mists of time!

PS. Has anyone ever died from blood loss from shaving cuts?

Posted by: CBD at 02:00 PM | Comments (307) | Trackbacks (Suck)