Criminal Judge Merchan "Sentences" Trump to "Unconditional Discharge"

Thank God it's Friday! This has been a long week. I've been low-grade sick all week and am looking forward to just relaxing.

How about you? Any plans?

He made sure he got Trump sentenced so that the left's goal of calling him a "convicted felon" would be achieve.

But he sentenced him to nothing.

President-elect Donald Trump has been sentenced to an "unconditional discharge" over his conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records. The sentence imposes no fines, probation, or jail time, with Trump, set to regain presidential immunity after his inauguration, calling the case an "embarrassment" for New York's judicial system.

Trump's sentencing took place virtually, with the president-elect appearing from Florida alongside his attorney Todd Blanche, whom he has chosen as deputy attorney general. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who prosecuted the case, was present in the New York courtroom.

Posted by: Ace at 12:09 PM | Comments (488) | Trackbacks (Suck)

THE MORNING RANT: Periodic Roundup of the EV Follies – 01/10/2025

EV Market Share Stalls at Just 8% of U.S. Vehicle Sales in 2024

EVs have maxed out at a market share of just 8% of the US light vehicle market, and that’s with huge federal incentives. The federal incentives are likely to be going away under the Trump administration.

About 15.9 million cars and light trucks were sold in the United States in 2024, of which 14.6 million were not electric vehicles. The 1.3 million EVs sold in 2024 amounted to an 8% market share. About half of those were Teslas. A significant number of the non-Tesla sales were to various fleets, especially governmental fleets, and not consumer purchases.

In the prior year, 2023, total vehicle sales were a little lower, at 15.5 million. The 1.2 million EVs sold in 2023 amounted to an identical 8% of the US light vehicle market.

There are innumerable examples of how the legacy media is nothing more than dishonest propaganda outfits. We all know this. But still, it is absolutely wearying to me that I cannot read any weather report without getting climate propaganda, nor can I read a report on auto sales without getting dishonest EV propaganda. The New York Times’ report about total 2024 auto sales had this incredibly dishonest headline, “E.V. Demand Leads Automakers to a Strong 2024 Finish.” (I will not provide a link for this level of dishonesty.)

100,000 more EVs were sold in 2024 than in 2023 (and 400,000 more gasoline-powered vehicles were sold) as manufacturers not named Tesla placed massive discounts on their glut of otherwise unsellable EVs to make them go away. Those non-Tesla EV manufacturers also took a financial bath on each unit they sold. But despite the fire sale of excess EVs, their total market share remained at a ceiling of 8% after nearly a decade of “the EV transition.”

After all the years of propaganda and government incentives, EVs have been emphatically rejected by American car buyers, as attested to by the 92% of vehicle purchases in 2024 that had internal combustion (“ICE” engines.

*****

Dear China: Your Terms Are Acceptable

“China to choke West’s supply of electric car battery parts; Beijing considers export restrictions as it prepares for the threat of a US trade war” [The Telegraph – 01/03/2025]

China is set to restrict exports of key electric car battery parts as Beijing gears up for a trade war with the US under Donald Trump. Technology used to process lithium and gallium – critical minerals used in electronics and batteries – is to be subject to tighter export rules under new proposals.

Oh no! Anyway…

China is threatening to choke off the West’s supply of raw materials necessary for EV batteries? OK, China, your terms are acceptable. https://t.co/BTtUWLTQdQ

— Buck Throckmorton (@BuckThrockmort) January 5, 2025

There is plenty of lithium in the United States. Let’s see if all the environmentally-smug EV drivers will advocate for bringing lithium mining and brining home to the states.

*****

The Persistent EV-Slavery Nexus

“Slavery” is word that appears with alarming frequency in discussions about electric vehicles. Whether it is China’s labor practices, or small children digging for minerals in strip mines, EV fans have come to accept that slave labor in foreign lands is something they’re willing to accept in order to drive a virtuous vehicle.

Well, you can take a Chinese company out of China, but apparently you can’t take the Chinese labor practices out of the company…

Posted by: Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM | Comments (359) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Mid-Morning Art Thread

Fire In Woods
Aleksey Savrasov

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (516) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Report — 1/10/25

Good morning kids. While the title of the estimable Daniel Greenfield's essay provides instant fodder to create one of our trademark memes here at the HQ, to wit, submitted for your approval, or not, or embellishment/alteration as is the wont of the Horde:

I had tickets to see Three Lesbians Named Kirsten open for Men Without Hoses at the Hollywood Bowl in '93, but it got cancelled by the Malibu wildfire.

The most important thing to know about Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley is that she is the first LGBTQ fire chief in the history of the Los Angeles Fire Department.

It’s also the only thing worth knowing about the woman in charge while Los Angeles burned.

Crowley’s status as the first LGBTQ fire chief appears at the top of her bio on the LAFD site. It’s what got her on the Kelly Clarkson show under the headline, “Meet LAFD’s First Female & LGBTQ+ Fire Chief” and made her one of the marshals of the Los Angeles Pride Parade (some of whose attendees no longer have homes after the wave of fires.)

But DEI wasn’t done with the LAFD just yet. Not until two other lesbian ‘Kirstens’ were also running the LAFD.

Kristina Kepner, the first lesbian Assistant Chief and a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School for Managing Diverse Organizations, was accused of a domestic violence incident involving her girlfriend. Kristine Larson, who has a degree in Sociology, headed ‘Equity on Fire’, an organization complaining that the LAFD was sexist and racist, was then rewarded with the title of the LAFD’s first lesbian Equity Bureau Chief with a $399,000 salary.

Diversity mandates had led to three lesbians named some version of ‘Kirsten’ running the LAFD.

Meanwhile, Jamie Brown became the LAFD’s first lesbian Training Commander. Her accomplishment was being the only one of the four lesbians running the LAFD who wasn’t named ‘Kirsten’.

Many glass ceilings were being broken, but there was no one who actually knew how to fight fires. Unless it was by asking the fire about its preferred pronouns.

If only Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and Red China were run by this kind of lunacy. Meh, their insane asylums and prisons are filled with sane people insane enough to reject glorious socialism and who yearn for liberty. Hell, it was those regimes, especially the Soviets starting in the 20s through the collapse of the Berlin wall and now the Red Chinese infiltrators and our own homegrown traitor infiltrators (Infill Traitors!) in and out of government who have mind- and body-raped three generations of Americans into dismantling and destroying our society from within. As for Nazi Germany, the tragedy is quite a few refugees before and after the Second World War (Theodore Adorno and Hebert Marcuse aka the Frankfurt School) laid the groundwork for all this woke madness that has undermined the foundations of the greatest nation and society in human history by capturing American academia and holding it hostage right up to the present time.

If this is a story, and it's not a one-off. I've had many similar ones over just the last year if not many more over the past four for sure.

The University of Utah’s medical school paid over $75,000 to be a member of the influential Association of American Medical Colleges, the DEI-focused organization that facilitates medical education throughout North America, according to an invoice shared with The Daily Wire. 

The invoice, obtained through a public information request by Do No Harm, an organization opposed to the politicization of medicine, shows that the University of Utah’s Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine paid $75,760 for a year-long institutional membership in the AAMC starting on July 1, 2024. The AAMC counts as members all 158 American medical schools accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), which the organization co-sponsors. 

The AAMC has been accused of harming medical education through leftist political initiatives, including its commitment to DEI initiatives, “anti-racism,” and promoting transgender ideology. A comprehensive report from Do No Harm highlights the full extent of the AAMC’s DEI programs. 

Now take that story and substitute every profession, from janitor to nuclear physicist, and you get what was known as the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, with such individuals as Billy Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and others who from the 60s to the present day fantasized, plotted and committed actual acts of terrorism to overthrow and destroy the United States of America from within and replace it with, let's just say the metaphorical equivalent of what we are seeing in Pacific Palisades, even if it takes a literal inferno that sweeps from coast to coast. Hence the name Prairie Fire.

Founded in 1975, the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee (PFOC) describes itself as “a grassroots activist organization” that works to bring “social change” to an American nation it characterizes as rife with “racism, sexism, homophobia, classism and imperialism” — a land governed by “a capitalist system that favors a select few and oppresses the majority.” PFOC derived its name from a 1974 book published by the Weather Underground Organization. Titled Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism, this screed spurred the creation of radically minded “Prairie Fire” discussion groups in cities across the United States.  Portraying American history as an uninterrupted narrative of brutality and “imperialist expropriation,” PFOC accuses the U.S. of “systematically us[ing] its military, political and economic might to dominate and control the government, people and resources of other nations for its own benefit.” The organization refuses to recognize the United States as an entity with a legitimate right to exist — on grounds that the country’s creation and historical development were steeped in what PFOC views as irredeemable wrongdoing: “The early colonists stole Native American land and killed indigenous people. White settlers enslaved millions of Africans and used their labor to build the U.S. . . The issues of major concern to PFOC include the following:

White Supremacy: “White supremacy remains a dominant ideology in the United States. This country was founded on the belief that white people are superior to people of color. … White supremacy is … a system of privilege that benefits all white people and permeates every aspect of our society … a society that blames people of color for poverty and crime.” As evidence of the degree to which white supremacist attitudes suffuse American life, PFOC cites “racial profiling by the police, extreme bias in the application of the death penalty and in sentencing, and denial of adequate education” for minorities.

If the term White Supremacy seems familiar, it should since that has been the constant drumbeat from the DemoKKKrat-Left since the electrifying victories of Donald Trump in 2016 and 2024, and the equally electrifying persecution of him and us via the theft and its aftermath of the 2020 election.

On that score, the Supreme Court has turned down his request to have his sentencing on sham charges by hack in black Juan Merchan of menace before his inauguration. Donald Trump is America's Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Alfred Dreyfus all rolled into one ORANGE MAN-DELA.

Pivoting back to the LosAngeles wildfires, Climate Change strikes again!!!! This time in the form not of a hockey stick computer model but a Homeless scumbag playing with fire...

How — and why — the fire was started is still not clear, he added, but the blaze is “being investigated as a crime.”The suspect is a homeless man in his 30s, according to Fox LA’s Elex Michaelson, who added that firefighters “appear to have gained the upper hand” on the blaze.

Would not surprise me if this guy was paid to start the fire by the Earth Liberation Front to blame global warming, ditto to be used as cover to light the other fires in the region.

There are quite a number of links speculating that these wildfires are the ultimate mugging by reality that potentially if not likely could turn California Red. My gut tells me that it will likely destroy the political futures of Newsome and Bass. But for people, especially lifelong liberals to look in the mirror, if they can find one in the smoldering rubble of their homes and pull an Alec Guinness River Kwai moment and ask "What Have I done?!!!" is too much for me to expect.

The Democrat/Leftist bench is dark and deep, so likely they will place the blame on global warming and that pair's ineptitude for sabotaging Comrade Stalin's glorious plan and the glorious socialist cause and replace them with two more just like them. Lather, rinse and Napalm again 10 years from now.

As Trump might say, we shall see. I hope he can make political lemonade from this cyanide laced Jonestown flavorade, and Make California normal again.

On a positive note, the moldering corpse of Jimmy Carter is heading for wherever. It deserves a spot in the Marianas Trench, next to his hero, Osama bin Laden.

Have a great weekend, and prayers for deliverance, safety and strength to all of those affected by the wildfires.

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
• Rumors spread after the attack that Islamist terrorists like Boko Haram or the Islamic State had attempted to kill the president, but Koualmallah said the attackers were actually local youths from the national capital of N’Djamena who were either drunk or taking drugs.
  Chad Suffers Deadly Presidential Palace Attack as Chinese Foreign Minister Visits

• Socialists the world over blame everyone but themselves for the problems they cause.
  Socialism update: No lights in Cuba, no water in L.A.

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 07:40 AM | Comments (424) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 10 January 2025

Top Story

• The Pilet 5 and Pilet 7, two handheld computers from another dimension, launched as a Kickstarter project two days ago. There must be a lot of people visiting here from that dimension because the project hit its funding goal in five minutes. (Kickstarter)
  
  They're not cheap because so far they're only planning to make a thousand or so of them, and you have to add a Raspberry Pi 5 yourself, but they do look very cool in a retrofuturistic kind of way.
  
  So far the larger Pilet 7 takes a Bluetooth keyboard and not the physical add-ons that we've seen pictured with the handmade prototypes, but those are planned if the project hits $1 million in funding. And since it's reached $578,000 in just two days that seems pretty likely.
  
  I'll keep an eye on this one. I have a Pi 5 so that expense is already covered.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (215) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The ONT With Terror And Slaughter Returns!

Greetings Horde! Welcome to Thursday's ONT. How's your week been? For some reason, this keeps going through my head.

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

* Looks at California * No idea why, though. Isn't that weird...

Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:00 PM | Comments (555) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Rescue Cafe

Can you spot the Mystery Culprit?

Some very pretty bats, meeping.

Rescued blind squirrel squeaks like a toy when pet.

Rescuing a sickly feral puppy and turning her into the prettiest girl.

Rescued crow imprints on a German shepherd and thinks the dog is its mom.

Dog helps raised rescued baby racoon.

Beagle father and daughter have family summit.

Playing hide and seek with a golden dum-dum. The last part features a magic trick.

When a new orphaned baby elephant is brought to a sanctuary, the other elephants rush over to say hello.

"The dog that no one wanted" is adopted from the shelter, but can't socialize with other dogs, maybe due to past trauma. But this lonesome dog makes friends with some squirrels.

Rescuing an abandoned dog found in a blueberry field.

This is why they say that dogs are hypersocial. They literally want to be frenz with everybody.

Posted by: Ace at 07:32 PM | Comments (374) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Quick Hits

This genius saw the future:

Trump's about to achieve a personal best in popularity: Specifically, he's just become more popular than unpopular for the first time in his political career.

Or, at least, he's on the cusp of that:

From the Department of Yesterday's Conspiracy Theory Is Today's Scientific Fact: a study connects the fluoridation of water with lowered IQ scores in children.

From the New York Times:

A comprehensive federal analysis of scores of previous studies, published this week in JAMA Pediatrics, has added to those concerns. It found a significant inverse relationship between exposure levels and cognitive function in children.

Higher fluoride exposures were linked to lower I.Q. scores, concluded researchers working for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

None of the studies included in the analysis were conducted in the United States, where recommended fluoridation levels in drinking water are very low. At those amounts, evidence was too limited to draw definitive conclusions.

Observational studies cannot prove a cause-and-effect relationship. Yet in countries with much higher levels of fluoridation, the analysis also found evidence of what scientists call a dose-response relationship, with I.Q. scores falling in lock step with increasing fluoride exposure...

For every one part per million increase in fluoride in urinary samples, which reflect total exposures from water and other sources, I.Q. points in children decreased by 1.63, the analysis found.

Sexton notes that RFKJr. is a longtime fluoridation skeptic. And of course, denounced as a conspiracy-addled crank.

Speaking of The Science (TM): A 19-year-old claims that the jab had an unexpected side-effect: It swelled her small breasts into massive G-cup monsters she requiring to breast reduction surgery. Is this a real side-effect or just a case of something odd happening after the jab, but not because of it? I don't know.

The unidentified "healthy young woman" reportedly started experiencing the rapid growth one week after getting vaccinated in September 2022 -- and it worsened after her second dose.

"The patient believed that the vaccine caused her breast growth; however, her concerns were not adequately addressed by her primary care physicians, leading to mistrust in the healthcare system," Toronto-based researchers wrote last month in the Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery-Global Open journal.

The study authors pointed to the so-called "Pfizer boob job" phenomenon -- some women claimed their breasts grew after getting the shot, but there's no evidence that was the case.

The researchers report that while lymph node swelling is a "known side effect" of COVID-19 vaccination, changes to the structure or density of breast tissue are "exceedingly rare."

She reduced them to a dainty DD size.

I am officially against all of this crap now. These people just don't know what the hell they're doing. They're experimenting on us like we're lab rats. If we get cancer or lowered IQs or genetic mutations, they just say "Whoops! Whoopsie!"

Trump returned to Congress for the Jimmy Carter corpse-acknowledgement:

Posted by: Ace at 06:42 PM | Comments (399) | Trackbacks (Suck)

DEI In a Fire: LA's Obese Female Assistant Fire Chief Says, No, I'm Not Able to Carry Your Husband Out of a Fire, But If You Think About It, Isn't That His Fault?

I was going to cover the DEI hiring imperative in California tomorrow, but now I have to cover it today. It just won't wait. This BBW Bouncing Betty just forced my hand.

This is the ultimate in DEI: A morbidly-obese entitled woke woman telling you that if she's not able to perform the tasks required by her job, that's your fault, not hers.

You're the one who got yourself into a burning building, after all. Don't blame her if she's too weak and out-of-shape to carry your husband out of the blaze.

Die in a fire, White Man! Take that, Patriarchy!

Posted by: Ace at 05:35 PM | Comments (433) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Daily Mail: Credibly Accused Gay Rapist P. Diddy Is Angry that Leftwing Assassin Luigi Mangione Is Getting More Attention Than He Is at Their Shared Jail

Could this even be true?

Diddy is furious that alleged CEO murderer Luigi Mangione is seen as a bigger star by inmates at the Brooklyn federal prison where both are locked up, it's claimed.

The rapper, 54, and Mangione, 26, are both awaiting trial at Brooklyn's infamous Metropolitan Center in New York, and Diddy - real name Sean Combs - is reportedly raging that the alleged killer is more beloved than he is among inmates.

'Diddy has been throwing tantrums over the fact that Luigi is getting all of the attention in prison and is being revered as a hero after literally murdering someone on camera,' the source said.

Diddy is reportedly upset because he claims he is innocent of sex trafficking yet he continues getting 'so much hate inside the lock up while Luigi gets so much love.'

'Even in prison, Diddy's ego is bigger than life,' the source added. A spokesperson for Diddy said the claims about the rapper's jealousy were 'false'.

Mangione is apparently 'loved by the prisoners and is not having a difficult time dealing with everything because he has gotten so much support with prisoners who have shared their stories of losing loved ones due to inadequate healthcare.'

'Not to mention the fact that the prison, itself, faces constant allegations of inadequate healthcare to those who are locked up,' the source told DailyMail.com.

...

Brooklyn's Metropolitan Center also holds other high-profile inmates such as Sam Bankman-Fried. It is also the jail where notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein [did not kill] himself.

It is my wish that both of these gentlemen should become very, very popular among the other inmates. I'd like them both to have their dance cards filled.

And by dance cards, I mean "lower colons."

Posted by: Ace at 04:41 PM | Comments (305) | Trackbacks (Suck)

As It Becomes Clear That California's Insane "Environmental" Policies Resulted in the Fires, Media Insists We Are Not Permitted to Talk About the Causes of the Inferno

Other factors to blame: the budget cuts ordered by DEI Mayor Bass and the gonzo push to fill the fire departments with lesbians, who we all know are the equal to men in physical ability. (Which has been proven by women's absolute domination of transgenders who enter their sports at advanced ages with little prior experience.)

But I'll talk about them in a different post. Right now I want to talk about the fact that California's fire hydrants were bone dry during the fires, and that this is due to California permitting millions of gallons of freshwater run into the ocean every year instead of catching that precious water in cisterns and reservoirs.

They're wasting millions of gallons of critical fresh water -- and remember, California is a desert state where water is scarce and precious -- to save the "delta smelt," which I guess does best when fresh water is running into the sea.

How did the smelt become more important than the lives of human beings?

I don't know, but, via David Strom, Jonathan Turley reminds us that the "endangered fish," the Snail Darter, used by the left to stop damming in Tennessee was more than endangered. It was non-existent. They just took a very common non-endangered fish and claimed they discovered a new identical sub-species, which they claimed was endangered.

And voila -- instant victories in corruptly-arranged settlements. The scam has two parts: Outside "environmental" extortionists that file lawsuits, and corrupt insider bureaucrats who want to create their own laws through settlements with litigants rather than doing what ordinary citizens do, which is to petition their representatives for legislation.

In the annals of environmental law, no creature is more famous than the Snail Darter, the endangered species that shut down completion of the Tellico Dam in the 1970s. It required congressional legislation to allow the dam to be finished after years in the courts where judges maintained that the species had to be protected under the Endangered Species Act. According to the New York Times., the species may turn out to be as mythical as a unicorn.

The controversy began in 1967 when the Tennessee Valley Authority started constructing a dam on the Little Tennessee River, roughly 20 miles outside Knoxville. Environmentalists and locals opposed the project and, in 1973, a zoologist at the University of Tennessee named David Etnier went snorkeling with his students and found a possible solution. He spotted a small fish and called it a "snail darter" because of its movements and eating habits. He reportedly announced "Here's a little fish that might save your farm."

Dr. Zygmunt Plater, an environmental law professor at Boston College, represented the snail darter before the Supreme Court. He did an excellent job and, in 1978, the Supreme Court ruled that "the Endangered Species Act prohibits impoundment of the Little Tennessee River by the Tellico Dam" to protect the endangered snail darters.

That was then.

The Times now quotes Thomas Near, the curator of ichthyology at the Yale Peabody Museum who leads a fish biology lab at the university, that "there is, technically, no snail darter." Worse yet, it was actually just another member of the eastern population of Percina uranidea, or stargazing darters, which is not considered endangered.

In other words, years of litigation and millions of dollars were spent on what was a false claim, and the courts accepted the claims hook, line, and sinker.

"Environmentalists" rigged the #FakeScience for political purposes, inventing a new endangered species out of thin air, and their corrupt co-conspirators in the government accepted the #FakeScience as "proof."

It wasn't an "endangered" minor variant -- it was the same fucking fish all along.

Trump's been telling California to stop wasting its limited supply of water -- and noting that California is causing wildfires by wasting water -- since at least as early as 2019. He also slammed Newsom for failing to clear forested areas of deadfall, which of course is the kindling that sets woods on fire. I guess "environmentalists" object to cleaning forested areas. They want them au naturel, so that they can be more au flambé.

Posted by: Ace at 03:27 PM | Comments (540) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Obama Bros Admit All the Talk of "Democracy" and "Institutions" Was Just Pure Political Posturing; Now That the Public Has Told Them They Don't Care (or Don't Believe Them), It's Time to Stop Pretending We're Saving Muh "Sacred" Democracy

We need a welfare check on Allahpundit. He'll be crushed!

The liberal hosts behind "Pod Save America" trashed President Biden's Washington Post op-ed about January 6 as "feckless" and blasted the Democrats for "performing virtue" after Vice President Kamala Harris certified Donald Trump's election Monday.

"There's like an entire language that Democrats just need to f--king throw in the trash about like 'institutions,' 'democracy,' 'sacred this,'" said Jon Favreau, who served as one of former President Barack Obama's speechwriters.

LOL. They're admitting the NeverTrump preening about Muh Sacred Democracy was all a neocon op.

Biden warned on Monday that America risks a repeat of the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot if the history of the day is forgotten, and called on the country to "commit to remembering" the incident annually.

"But we should not forget. We must remember the wisdom of the adage that any nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it. We cannot accept a repeat of what occurred four years ago," Biden wrote.

Podcast co-host and former Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett claimed Biden misunderstood the quote about repeating history, coined by philosopher George Santayana, and went so far as to liken Biden to a "stubborn old man."

"If you're too mired in the past, if you become, this is from the original philosopher, stubborn like an old man, you also become doomed to repeat yourself," Lovett said.

"That's pretty on the nose," co-host and former Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said.

The hosts savaged the op-ed as being out of step with the American electorate, conceding that the majority of voters "didn't care" about the events of January 6.

"Biden's op-ed didn't say anything," Favreau said. "An op-ed about Jan. 6 is the perfect encapsulation of how feckless everything feels in this moment."

So it was all just empty talk? And now that that empty talk is proven to be an electoral loser, it's time to drop the empty talk?

I think that's what they're saying.

Either Trump is Hitler and is about to stage an autogolpe, in which case AllahPundit and these little fembots need to head to the hills and create a real, armed #LiberalResistance, or else they're just a bunch of mewling faggots who routinely lie to manipulate their emotionally-florid audience.

...

Clinton campaign alum James Carville called on Democrats to tone down the "idiotic NPR jargon" when talking to voters in an interview Sunday with MSNBC host Jen Psaki.

"Let's just be authentic and to the point," Carville said.

...

"Our party is one sad op-ed," Vietor said.

"Democrats performing virtue, explaining over and over again why the insurrection is so terrible, did not work. This style of politics is not working," Lovett said.

They don't think much of Biden's demented claim that he could've beaten Trump if not for the coup.

...

In a November episode of the podcast, Favreau claimed that Biden's internal polling had him losing the election by "400 electoral votes."

Posted by: Ace at 02:29 PM | Comments (440) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Floppy Cooch Hangar Fani Willis Ordered to Pay $20,000 for Attorney's Fees to Judicial Watch for Hiding Documents

Judicial Watch lawfully used Georgia's FOIA laws to request documents, the bulbous female John Fani Willis hid them. A judge has ordered her to pay $20,000 in legal costs to get the documents she illegally refused to disclose.

Unfortunately, it seems that the judge ordered her office to pay the $20,000, so it's really the taxpayers who are once again damaged by this rotten DEI criminal perjurer.

She brings more than an "Odor of Mendacity" whenever she enters the room. She's bringing the stink of fromunda cheese and Stage IV swampass.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis faces financial penalties for her handling of an open records request from Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group. The watchdog organization had requested records related to possible coordination between Willis and Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith, who investigated former President Donald Trump's actions surrounding the 2020 election and the January 6 Capitol incident.

Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled that Willis's office violated Georgia's Open Records Act by failing to properly respond to the request. Judicial Watch had been told that no such documents existed, but it later emerged that the documents were categorized as exempt, prompting a lawsuit.

"Even if the records prove to be just that -- exempt from disclosure for sound public policy reasons -- this late revelation is a patent violation of the ORA," McBurney stated in his ruling. He ordered Willis to pay $19,360 in attorney fees and $2,218 in additional expenses.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton praised the ruling, stating, "Fani Willis flouted the law, and the court is right to slam her and require, at a minimum, the payment of nearly $22,000 to Judicial Watch."

Posted by: Ace at 01:18 PM | Comments (415) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Huffington Post To Lay Off More than One Quarter of Its Propagandists

Alexander C. Kaufman
@AlexCKaufman

In the coming weeks, HuffPost is going to ax upward of one-quarter of our newsroom.

Under @gzornick's leadership, my team won awards, broke major stories and beat our monthly traffic goals by threefold.

How does dismantling us serve long-term business or journalistic goals?

Alexander C. Kaufman
@AlexCKaufman

Before any MAGA folks reply to smear mine or my colleagues' work as partisan, I'm proud to note that Republican political and industry leaders have routinely shared and praised our coverage of things like nuclear power, mining, and the electrical grid over the past year.

Sure.

This isn't just about Learn to Code. The leftwing propaganda media has done everything it could to starve right-leaning writers of advertising income. They've deliberately worked to make us essentially unemployed.

We should celebrate their own unemployment.

Posted by: Ace at 12:04 PM | Comments (549) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Rant: Minimalist Edition

The Babylon Bee had better up their game, because the state of New Jersey, led by its chinless champagne socialist governor, has relaxed the standards for teachers to a point where it is absolutely laughable. No longer will teachers have to read at a sixth grade level!

Yeah... you read that correctly. Even before this insulting DEI gift to previously barely unemployable sub-wits, NJ teachers were not held to impressive standards. But now? How will a teacher who can't read at a sixth grade level prepare students for anything more than learning numbers and letters? And that's assuming they can read at all!

DEI: New Jersey has joined New York and California in eliminating literacy tests for teachers in an effort to meet the state's diversity objectives. Previously teachers were required to read and write at a 6th grade level. pic.twitter.com/yazf6KBt2w

— @amuse (@amuse) January 5, 2025

Of course this has nothing to do with the education of our children, and most state and federal education regulation is intended to purchase votes -- mostly for Democrats -- or reward favored businesses like publishers or food production or construction, etc. But the big one is the teachers unions.

The NEA, AFT, and the various big state teachers unions are nothing more than advocacy groups for federal and state education spending, which translates directly to increased revenue for their bloated pensions. The idea that they advocate for THE CHILDREN is a sick joke. Adding highly-paid administrators and teachers and teachers aides, and pushing for more paid time off and technology in the classroom has nothing to do with education, and everything to do with money. They sell their votes to the politicians, and the politicians pump up education spending without any link to actual success in the classroom. And because many school districts mandate membership in the union, teachers are captive, and the selection process weeds out candidates who would normally go into teaching, but choose not to because of the coerciveness of union membership.

Add in a rabid leftist cant to everything they advocate for: transgender insanity, no parental notification, mandatory vaccinations (Covid anyone?), teaching their personal brand of America Hate like the 1619 Project, and plain old dumbasses tasked with teaching our kids, it's no wonder that we are rapidly falling behind much of the world!

Yes...I said it. Lots and lots of teachers are barely capable of functioning in modern society. They are the dumbest of the college lot, taking ridiculously easy classes to get a Klown Kollege degree in education. And then, to pump up their salaries, they go back to schools of education for a Masters, and then a few years later get the holy grail of sub-wits: an EdD. But a cursory examination of the curricula will show that these are merely paper degrees. There is nothing remotely challenging in the course work, and the programs are designed for maximum ease rather than rigorous academics.

I've known a few teachers in my day. Most of them are intellectual pygmies. Oh...wait! There is one who is quite bright! He's a high school teacher in NJ. And one hell of a shot with a pistol. Yup...he is a member of my local shooting club.

Charter schools, home schooling, private religious schools, and some non-sectarian private schools provide an alternative to the catastrophic failure of most of our public schools. But until the power of the unions and the education academy is broken, too many American children will be sentenced to a miserable and pathetic education that does nothing for them, except indoctrinate them into a culture of failure.

President Donald Trump understands this, and chose an outsider to lead the Department of Education. Hopefully Linda McMahon destroys the department from the inside, but even modest changes will improve the sad lot of America's youth.

[Crossposted at CutJibNewsletter]

Posted by: CBD at 11:00 AM | Comments (399) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Mid-Morning Art Thread

Dispatch
Gerard Terborch

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (356) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Report — 1/9/25

Good morning kids. Whether it's a burning cross on a lawn, or burning cities (either from BLM/Antifa molotov cocktails or the ideologically-driven incompetence that's now burning LA to the ground) or immolating sleeping subway riders, the match that set them off were all struck by Democrat/Leftists.

DEMOCRATS — Now they have become DEATH, the destroyer of worlds. All of the misery, the suffering, needless death, destruction, dislocation and waste of blood, treasure, economic and most crucially human potential since the founding of this nation until the present moment is directly the fault of, or have been made exponentially worse by Leftists, Socialists, Progressives and their political epicenter in the Democrat party. An ocean of blood and tears over the past 200-plus years has been spilled and continues to flow because of them.

And it's not because they are merely wrong and/or have good intentions. No, It is all for their evil eternal quest for absolute power. I defy anyone to try and refute that because it simply cannot be refuted.

And with that preamble, I give you the shambling, corrupt, amoral, soulless humanoid atrocity known as Bernie Sanders:

“80,000 people told to evacuate. Blazes 0% contained. Eight months since the area has seen rain. The scale of damage and loss is unimaginable,” the senator began before blaming the devastation not on poor fire management but on climate change. . . Sanders made no mention of the fact that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) — who was not in LA but on a trip to Ghana when the blaze took off — cut roughly $20 million from the city’s budget for fire services. Perhaps what is more, she proposed even higher cuts.

In a way, this self-gassing, criminal commie scumbag is sort of correct. For sure the climate in California has indeed changed. In a mere two generations, he and his ilk have lain waste to what used to be the world's 6th largest economy, and made what was a shining paradise and beacon of freedom, free enterprise, promise and unlimited potential into a literal flaming communist hell on earth. One merely has to look at Cuba or Zimbabwe to see where this nation was headed, and may yet head if Donald Trump's miraculous RE-re-election is merely a speed bump on the road to hell and not the slamming on of the brakes and the throwing of the machine into reverse at flank speed.

Anecdotally, from a friend who lives on the West Side of LA, which could go up next. . . he said that the water bombers and other aircraft that dispense fire retardants were grounded, not because of what was reported as dangerously high winds but so that Joey Sponge-Brain Shits-Pants could fly in and hold a press conference at a fire station with Governor Noose 'em so he could belch out how wonderful the government response has been.

President-elect Trump nailed it.

“Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social Wednesday.

“He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!), but didn’t care about the people of California. Now the ultimate price is being paid,” Trump added.

The president-elect said he will “demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA! He is the blame for this.”

"Newscum." Trump himself or someone on his team must lurk here! The salient point is that the Red Green commies, along with preventing the damming of certain rivers as well as construction of reservoirs that would have collected rainwater and snow melt to be used in case of wildfires and also to avoid the expense of relying completely on the water from the Colorado River. But no, we have to protect the Delta Smelt, the and the Snail Darter. On top of this, California many years ago banned the controlled burning of dead sections of forest which would have mitigated if not prevented wildfires over the past 20 or so years, especially the Malibu wildfires of '93 that I remember when I lived in LA back then. All to prevent the release of evil Carbon. We got Carbon in the atmosphere now out the wahzoo, eh Greenies? In any case, Carbon is life. Meh, it's like banging your head against a wall to try and tell them.

You'll also see from the links that all kinds of firefighting equipment was sent to Ukraine! And that Karen Bass in her wisdom cut millions of dollars of funding from the LAFD. All while partying with the Mugu scammers in Ghana!

Ah yes, DEI strikes again, Dissolution Evil and Incineration!

It's not all bad news for the 64% of Los Angeles County who voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. As they flee the brutal wildfires in terror, watching everything they own turn to toast, they can take comfort in knowing that their Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) -- which is powerless to stop the inferno -- overfloweth with sweet diversity, as planned.

The Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Bureau will focus on building and fostering a Department committed to engaging the voices and respecting the humanity of all its members, reflected in how it handles recruitment and hiring, workplace conduct, retention, and promotion. The DEI Bureau will be up and running and fully staffed by January 2023. It will be led by Deputy Chief Stephen Gutierrez, the Department’s first Chief Equity Officer. Thank God. I'm sure Californians would hate to be pulled out of a burning house by a fire department rife with filthy "toxic masculinity" and sorely lacking men in panties.

Marxism hates many things, including beauty, private property, success, self-sufficient people, and that "racist" meritocracy. 
If nothing else, LA can burn with pride knowing the feckless fire chief checks a box...

... The fire engulfing L.A. shouldn't be a surprise. Every institution, whether it's our airlines, a basketball team, or a fire department, will crumble once the DEI animals spread through them like cancer. And the LAFD is one of those institutions taken over by Marxists.

And then there's this item that no doubt will make your head explode:

Despite the widespread devastation left behind in the wake of Hurricane Helene, Buncombe County, North Carolina property owners were expected to cough up their property taxes earlier this week.

Midnight on Monday Jan 6 was the deadline for property owners to pay their taxes as Public Information Officer Stacy Woods told residents, “North Carolina law does not permit property tax waivers or exceptions for natural disasters, including hurricane Helene.”

The thought of collecting taxes on property that has been destroyed or that no longer exists, is shocking to residents who are still in the process of recovering from the unprecedented destruction caused by the storm.

. . . Meanwhile, the question remains as to whether the county will move to seize properties from residents for non-payment of taxes, as allowed by law.

I'm going to take a wild guess and state Buncombe County NC likely went 100% for Trump in the past three elections and that Los Angeles County CA DID NOT.

Wow, I stand corrected, per this from commenter The Lower Depths:

11 Buncombe County NC voted against Trump all three elections. In fact, since it's full of upscale trendies (there's a college town there, I think?), it's one of the few places in the whole country where Dims are better off now than they were in 2008.

Dim percentages by election in Buncombe:

2004 - 49%
2008 - 56%
2012 - 55%
2016 - 54%
2020 - 60%
2024 - 61%

And yet FEMA still leaves them to twist in the wind. Were it not for the Amish community that came in to help with providing/building shelter, Appalachia would be much worse off.

How much do you want to bet that Gavin New-world-order-some is not going to demand the payment of taxes for destroyed homes. That is, unless the State's IRS can determine the voter registration political affiliation of the affected residents. And they can and likely will.

After all, what better pretext to seize property and turn it into housing for migrants or other regime supporters. Let's see if Pelosi ups her positions in Blackrock and Vanguard. Remember again that California's state coffers are in the red by multiple billions. And I do NOT think The incoming Trump administration is going to give a shit that the LA Times will run the headline "Trump to LA: DROP DEAD."

Frankly, maybe a bail out, and a rebuilding plan but on TRUMP's terms might be a shrewd move politically.

All that said, as we all knew at the time of the hurricane, FEMA apparatchiks specifically were directed not to provide assistance to any homes that had Trump signs on their lawns or that they likely knew or correctly assumed were registered GOP families or pro-Trump.

As I have good friends and some acquaintances and a cousin in two of the affected areas, their politics is irrelevant to me. I want to know they are safe and sound. Compare and contrast with the actions of the junta in the wake of Helene.

Lefty Angelenos, pucker up because you can kiss Trump's ass in Macy's window as he is not going to abandon you. While I do not want money thrown around willy nilly, like a high speed rail boondoggle. But some form of rebuilding plan is both the moral and politically astute thing to do. All done without the graft, wastage and bullshit regulatory garbage, especially the environmental madness that added fuel to these fires, literally and figuratively.

Prayers for strength, courage and above all safety to all affected and for the firefighters on the front line.

Have a good 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
• Kennedy’s tenure could mark the beginning of the end for an industry that has bled Americans dry through patent abuse, price gouging, and relentless advertising.
  RFK vs Big Pharma is the battle that will define America's future
  
• Outstanding documentary aboutTrump attorney, and political persecutee John Eastman
  Can a justice system that punishes individuals more harshly based on their beliefs truly be considered just, or has it devolved into a tool for ideological enforcement rather than a guardian of equal rights?
  
• Victor Davis HansonEurope may soon quietly rejoice that Biden is gone, Trump is back, and they have a strong, loyal, and rowdy friend rather than a simpering enabler.
  America and Europe Can Hang Together—Or Hang Separately 

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 07:30 AM | Comments (425) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 9 January 2025

Top Story

• Can the Nvidia RTX 5070 deliver 4090 performance for $549? No. Are you stupid or something? (The Verge)
  
  The Verge clearly pays its writers by the word, because it takes a very long time for this piece to come to the obvious conclusion that Nvidia is lying about everything.
  
  
  

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (165) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Wednesday Overnight Open Thread - January 8, 2025 [TRex]

Good evening Horde. The time has come for mid-week shenanigans of the overnight variety.

This is the Wednesday night ONT.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:55 PM | Comments (806) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Diary of a Working Dog Cafe

Adoption day!

This mom really knows her daughter.

Easy rider.

Surfer rides monster wave.

Cute little flying squirrel.

Victoria crowned pigeon and her little chick.

Golden guardians.

Steve Inman:

Toxic, mentally-ill leftwing women can't stop putting their hands on men and men are starting to treat them like the unhinged thugs they are. I know there's a question about what the kid might have done to provoke this woman, but, given that she's the first person that crosses the line into actual violence, I feel comfortable assuming her generally-low level of executive function and self-control and assuming further that therefore, it was her own mental illness at fault here.

Posted by: Ace at 07:30 PM | Comments (388) | Trackbacks (Suck)