Food Thread: The Blog Is Wonky Edition

The classic Sunday Roast is at home, surrounded by friends and family (or just your POSLQ), or perhaps in a wonderful neighborhood pub that has a great roast and delicious cask ales.

But...we were in central London and had a decidedly non-traditional roast, and we are all the better for it! The restaurant was hip and modern and did not have that lovely neighborhood feel of a pub Roast. But...it did have spectacular food, so they are forgiven.

Everything was excellent, including the plating. Instead of piling everything onto the plate, they served a communal bowl that gave the main course a chance to shine. And shine they did!

The bottom one is a pork belly, but it was made in the style of Porchetta. What a good idea, and it was delicious! The other was a simple filet, but the restaurant bragged about the beef, which they claimed was dairy cow. I have read about it, but as far as I know have never had it. Which is a shame, because it was delicious. Rich and beefy and reasonably tender.

But the star of the show may have been the rutabaga mash. Or maybe it was butter and rutabaga. Or cheese and butter and rutabaga. But whatever it was it was delicious.

And those potatoes were damned good too! Hell...even the carrots and green stuff (kale, I think) were great. And that gravy boat? The gravy/sauce was superb.

Posted by: CBD at 04:00 PM | Comments (220) | Trackbacks (Suck)

First-World Problems...

I figure the most efficient way to deal with this is to jack up the foundation so everything is nice and plumb.

Posted by: CBD at 02:00 PM | Comments (262) | Trackbacks (Suck)

It Is Time To Reintroduce The Concept Of Patriotism And National Pride Into College Athletics

The United States has always been a powerhouse in Olympic competition, and perhaps our best sport is swimming. We have dominated for many reasons, but a big part of it is our superb college swimming tradition. The competition at the top of the college ranks is ferocious, and combined with a vibrant club team network makes American swimming the best in the world.

Except...a lot of those coveted slots in the elite club teams and collegiate teams are taken by foreign swimmers! According to the NCAA's data from 2022 (the most current I could find), about 14% of the Division 1 collegiate swimming ranks are foreign. That means that America's taxes and tuition that paid for the facilities and the coaching and the biomechanical and physiological research go to support foreigners who take that largesse and whip our asses at the Olympics!

I do not expect the NCAA to do anything. They are, after all, one of the most breathtakingly sleazy organizations on the planet. They care not a whit about their student athletes, America, patriotism, or national pride. They care about one thing...money. If the NCAA makes more money subsidizing foreign athletes, then that's what they are going to do.

But our taxes paid for most of the vast athletic infrastructure that is used by these foreign swimmers when they come to America to train. Why should the American people fund the athletics of other countries? We already pay for much of their defense; we take in the scum from their jails via our lax border policies; we fund much of the basic and applied scientific research; so maybe it is time that we told them to pound sand and pay for their own athletics.

Why? Because for better or worse, there is a huge amount of national pride embedded in the success of our athletes on the world stage. It is important for our national self image that we are competitive, and it is blatantly obvious that our geopolitical adversaries understand this. Why else does China spend a huge amount on their athletics, including bribing the international drug testing organization so that their athletes can compete without worrying about pesky little things like positive drug tests?

Will restricting foreign athletes diminish the competitiveness of our athletes? Possibly. Or...it will open up opportunities for American athletes who were not able to take advantage of the structural superiority of our collegiate athletic systems because of the slots taken by foreign athletes.

The facile arguments that we should be open to all fall on deaf ears. We have spent generations supporting the rest of the world...it is time to focus on America and Americans. Globalism should be a dirty word, and if that means reserving American athletics for Americans; then so be it.

Posted by: CBD at 12:00 PM | Comments (384) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sunday Morning Book Thread - 08-04-2024 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading. Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...

So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, sharpen those #2 pencils, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:00 AM | Comments (402) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 4 August 2024

Top Story

• Should we try cooling the planet with sulphur dioxide? (Japan Times)
  
  I mean, we know that it works. What's the catch?

  "The whole notion of spraying sulfur compounds to reflect sunlight is arrogant and simplistic," Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki said. "There are unintended consequences of powerful technologies like these, and we have no idea what they will be."

  Yeah, we have no idea what would happen if large amounts of sulphur dioxide were suddenly released into the upper atmosphere because such a thing has never happened before.

  Raymond Pierrehumbert, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Oxford, said he considered solar geoengineering a grave threat to human civilization.
  
  "It's not only a bad idea in terms of something that would never be safe to deploy," he said. "But even doing research on it is not just a waste of money, but actively dangerous."

  I'll just pause here to say that this is a wonderful case of nominative determinism, because this is precisely what you would expect to hear from someone named Raymond Pierrehumbert.

  Opponents of solar geoengineering cite several main risks. They say it could create a "moral hazard," mistakenly giving people the impression that it is not necessary to rapidly reduce fossil fuel emissions.

  In other words, I don't want to solve the problem. I want global communism.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (237) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Overnight Open Thread (8/3/24)

*****

The Saturday Night Joke

A blonde walks into a bank to get a loan. “I need to borrow $100 for a month,” she says.

The banker frowns, but takes her information anyway. He runs her credit but can’t find a report. “I’m sorry,” he says, “but in the absence of a credit record, we’ll have to charge 20% interest on the loan, and you’ll need to put up collateral.

“What does that mean?” the blonde says.

“It means,” the banker says, “you’ll have to repay us $120, and you’ll need to give us something more valuable to hold onto until you pay us back.”

“Something more valuable?” The blonde says. “How about my Ferrari?”

The banker nearly snorts his coffee all over his desk, but he prides himself on customer service so he soldiers on. He runs the title on the Ferrari and what do you know, the blonde owns it free and clear. “Okay, he says, “I’ll print out the papers.”

“Just so I understand,” the blonde says, “I give you my Ferrari and you give me a hundred dollars, right? And then in a month, I give you $120 and you give me my Ferrari back?”

“Yes,” the banker says, “that’s the deal.”

She signs the paperwork and hands him the keys. He counts out $100 for her and watches her saunter out the door.

A month to the day later, he’s sitting at his desk when the blonde saunters back in. She hands him $120 and says “I get my car back, right?”

“Yep, he says as he hands her the keys. She turns to go but he stops her. “Miss, I really have to ask, why did you use a $140,000 car as collateral on a $100 loan?”

“Oh!” The blonde says. “I got called out of town unexpectedly on business. How else can I park a Ferrari for a month in Manhattan for only $20?” (H/T Kathy)

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 09:00 PM | Comments (498) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hobby Thread - Aug 3, 2024 [TRex]

Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the horde. Spin a yarn about your hobby adventures. A spin of the Ace of Spades wheel of hobbies has come up with a theme of textile artistry for this week. With that decided, let's begin hobbying.

Do you crochet or knit? Do you do needlepoint or cross stitch? Are you a quilter, sewer or tailor? Do you reach for a needle and thread or yarn when on a trip? Is your home filed with boxes of thread, balls of yarn, boxes of bobbins, and pattern books? Do you follow patterns or do you chart your own path? How did you get started? Do remember sitting with an older relative when you were younger, watching them stitch by the fireside or listening to a ballgame on the radio? Do you pick up antique quilts or samplers at estate sales or auctions?

TRex has limited knowledge of this world and certainly has no skills (little arms are not good for knitting). Looking for horde help to make this work in the comments. We're here to talk about those who make textile-related things with their hands. As usual, keep this thread limited to hobbies. Politics and current events can wait for other threads. Play nice. Don't feed the trolls. Pants are optional.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:30 PM | Comments (269) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ace of Spades Pet Thread, Aug. 3

Courtesy Hrothgar

* * *

Good afternoon and welcome to the almost world famous Ace of Spades Pet Thread. Thanks for stopping by. Kick back and enjoy the world of animals.

Would you like a treat?

Let's relax a little with the animals and leave the world of politics and current events outside today.

Personal note: We seem to have a surprise new kitten at our house.

Haven't seen one this small show up in a long time. Grey.

* * *

Posted by: K.T. at 03:34 PM | Comments (76) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, Aug. 3

Happy August, everyone! Don't you love the photo above?

I spotted this little cutie a while back near our front doorway, and it let me get pretty close up for this iPhone 15 picture. The purple coneflower it's supping from is a native prairie plant that is both perennial and self-seeding, so it can take over a good-sized flower bed in just a couple of years, but they're easy to control - you can just yank them out with an easy pull. But when they turn to seed in the fall, they attract the most strikingly-beautiful goldfinches, bright yellow bodies set off by black wings with white streaks. Unfortunately, there's no way you can get close enough to get a good photo of them, and we usually get at least two mating pairs gorging themselves all day.

I'll send a different picture of the coneflowers in a little bit, along with a picture from my(our) backyard gardens, but right now Mrs. Jimm is calling me for dinner.

Many thanks -

Mr. Jimm

Well, now it's good evening, Katy!

(Ummm, ummm. Ravioli, Italian bread, and freshly-picked cucumbers for dinner. Wife of 43 years takes good care of me...).

I'm sending a slightly different picture of the coneflower bed which might better illustrate the 'they take over everything' description I gave in my commentary; I'll let you decide which one should get posted.

Nice.

Posted by: K.T. at 01:41 PM | Comments (55) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Perfect Candidate

There is something special about Kamala Harris

You just have to figure out what it is for yourself.

She really is the perfect candidate:

zero depth, adjustable identity

You're black? She's is, too.

You're Caribbean? She is, too.

You're Asian? She is, too.

You're Indian? She is, too.

You're a mom? She is, too.

You don't have kids? She doesn't either.

Posted by: K.T. at 11:05 AM | Comments (345) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Classical Saturday Morning Coffee Break & Prayer Revival

^^^TRUTH^^^

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 08:38 AM | Comments (433) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 3 August 2024

Top Story

• Intel shares are down 30% overnight. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Oops. How did that happen?
  
  And down 50% for the year so far.
  
  This helps explain why AMD delayed its biggest CPU release in years over a much smaller problem. They basically did exactly the opposite of Intel: Catch the problem before selling the CPUs and recall everything.
  
  AMD hasn't been entirely forthcoming on the nature of their problem either, but they weren't selling chips with known faults.
  
  
  

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (367) | Trackbacks (Suck)

To Each According To His ONT

Welcome to the wonderful world of memes! If you're not sure what those are, well, the illustration below should help.

Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:00 PM | Comments (451) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Unexpected Guests Cafe

PadiTV

Baby fox, doo-doo-do-doo...

Eels are noncute.

Little lizard enjoys an orange.

I think he's bluffing.

Working dog more like shirking dog amirite

Teasing a dog with "Cheese."

I tried to warn this monkey that river otters were evil but he wouldn't believe me.

Frogstyle swimming.

Infiltrating an ostrich criminal gang.

Doggo climbs into a hammock.

Orphaned baby seal doesn't know what to do with a fish, but he knows he's supposed to do something.

Dog gets vengeance.

Just wag your tail and they'll never know.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 07:23 PM | Comments (386) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Keep It Low: Kamala Harris Is an Authoritarian Marxist
Plus: Biden Bumbles, and the Rumor Mill Turns

David Harsany rebuts claims by the leftwing Marxist media that Kamala Harris is a "moderate" and even a "small-c conservative."

Remember when Harris moderately accused Brett Kavanaugh of gang rape?

This false perception of moderation stems from Harris' time as prosecutor and attorney general. Harris liked to brag about using "a huge stick" as a prosecutor in San Francisco, where she regularly threatened poor parents with jail time in her efforts to craft social policy -- which wasn't her job.

It's true that Harris threw a lot of people in jail to bolster her political fortunes. Some of them likely innocent. And judging from her disposition, she would throw a lot more people into jail, if she could.

When pro-life journalist David Daleiden published videos of Planned Parenthood executives nonchalantly discussing the selling of body parts, Harris had his home raided, seized evidence, and then tried to throw him in prison. She later teamed up with the abortion mill to write legislation that would squash the free speech rights of other pro-lifers.

Like any good authoritarian, Harris enforces whatever laws she sees fit to enforce whenever she sees fit. One of the reasons Harris allegedly opposed the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch was that the judge "consistently valued narrow legalisms" -- which is to say, respected the Constitution -- "over real lives."

Harris was never one for legalism. When candidate Biden argued that Harris' promise to issue an executive order unilaterally banning access to certain guns would be unconstitutional, she retorted: "I would just say: Hey, Joe, instead of saying 'No, we can't,' let's say 'yes, we can,'" before cackling at the very notion that presidents couldn't do whatever they wanted.

As a national candidate, Harris said she believed immigration laws should be treated as civil, rather than criminal, offenses. As a candidate, Harris supported abolishing private health insurance -- "Let's eliminate all of that. Let's move on," she told CNN. In addition to nationalizing health care and education, Harris wants the government to control the manufacturing sector, the auto industry, food ... and any industry that emits carbon.

Harris was in favor of getting rid of the filibuster to overturn state voting laws, nationalizing abortion on demand until birth, and passing the Green New Deal -- an authoritarian takeover of the economy written by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which would ban all fossil fuels, force Americans to retrofit every building in the country, eliminate air travel and meat, and create government-guaranteed jobs, among many other authoritarian measures.

Abigail Shrier: Kamala is a threat.

By avoiding a primary, Harris also avoided revealing herself as a leftist.

There is every reason to believe Vice President Harris is actually quite radical and would govern that way. Since the start of her failed 2020 presidential campaign, she has adopted virtually every tenet of progressive maximalism--yes, wokeness--from gender ideology (pronouns-in-her-bio) to seriously discussing defunding the police in a 2020 radio interview.

She has called to "critically reexamine ICE and its role" and concluded "we need to probably think about starting from scratch," meaning scrapping it altogether. She believes that the term radical Islamic terrorism ought to be abolished--not the terrorism, mind you, just the phrase. In 2020, she put out a video endorsing "equity" and insisted "equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place." Actually, that's what equitable treatment means to the hard left.

As U.S. senator, Harris was one of the earliest sponsors of AOC's "Green New Deal," a dismantling of the U.S. economy under the flag of climate fundamentalism. She could scarcely be bothered to visit our southern border and had no interest in securing it, even when fixing the immigration crisis was made her unique responsibility as vice president.

In 2019, she expressed remarkable hostility to American energy. On CNN, she said there was "no question" she would ban fracking and offshore drilling. She fully supported Biden's disastrous, inhumane policy of encouraging not only hormones but also gender surgeries for vulnerable minors and of flinging open the doors of women's jail cells to biologically male offenders.

When Joe Biden was running for election in 2020 and referred to the "Latino community," she corrected him on X: "the Latinx community," she wrote, preferring the agender, woke neologism unpopular with the Latino community.

In June of 2020, Harris urged her supporters to post bail for BLM rioters who had ransacked our cities, even tweeting a payment link to the Minnesota Freedom Fund just four days after rioters burned a Minneapolis police precinct to the ground. "They're not going to stop and everyone beware, because they're not going to stop," she said on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, referring to the BLM protesters. "They're not going to let up, and they should not."

Each of these positions is out of step with the moderates in her party and the vast majority of the American people; had they come out in a primary, they would have been quite damaging. For good reason, Harris was ranked the "most liberal" member of the senate by the government transparency organization GovTrack, which recently memory-holed the webpage bearing the accolade.

Now, as a candidate in the 2024 general election, she claims she never wanted to ban fracking. Expect her to reverse course on other far-left positions in the coming weeks. Had she been forced to restate these positions in a recent primary, the current disavowals would seem phony to the point of ridiculous.

Instead, having avoided a primary, Harris can sell herself as a moderate to a public that has no time to unpack whether she was or wasn't the official "border czar." She smiles and laughs a lot. She looks like the kind of person you'd want to unwind with over a glass of pinot grigio. She can present herself as a centrist and count on the media to spearhead the cover-up.

Salena Zito: The media has stopped massaging the truth on behalf of Kamala and moved into straight-up lies.

Facts are facts, even if they make new presidential candidate Kamala Harris look bad. This fact is undeniable, no matter how much dishonest media try to obfuscate it: President Joe Biden appointed the vice president to stem the tide of migrants to the U.S. southern border. Period. No wiggle room.

And the almost inarguable judgment is that she failed at the job. Miserably. The tide didn't recede; it rose and crashed in huge waves upon our (figurative) shores.

It was way back on March 24, 2021. Biden, in a White House meeting that included Harris, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, announced he was tapping Harris to lead the administration's response to the growing number of migrants arriving at the U.S. border. Her job, he said, was "stemming the migration to our southern border." He also said she "agreed to lead our diplomatic effort and work with nations (to our South) to accept re- -- the returnees, and enhance migration enforcement at their borders -- at their borders."

Biden told reporters before the meeting that he wanted Harris to be the point person on the border, to speak decisively for the administration. And in a call to reporters after the announcement, a senior official told reporters unequivocally that Harris' focus would be on the historic surge of illegal border crossings.

Within hours stories emerged in major news organizations with clarity that Biden was tasking her with leading efforts to stem migration at the border, with dozens of elite news organizations referring to her as the "border czar." This is irrefutable history. It's all documented.

Nonetheless, one hour after Biden endorsed Harris on July 21, news organizations and Democrats were stridently saying it was never the case that Harris was in charge of the border, that they never said she was the border czar and that the claim was all a right-wing conspiracy.

Axios, a popular Washington insider online news organization, not only scrubbed part of its story from 2021 reporting Harris was "appointed by Biden as border czar," but also said in an editor's note that it had "incorrectly" labeled Harris a border czar. At least it admitted it originally called her that.

It was one of the most remarkably dishonest moments in American journalism, a once revered industry that in recent years has lost the trust of the people to report the news in a full, fair and accurate way. And it wasn't just Axios. The gaslighting of readers across multiple news organizations has been equally repulsive -- and it may just be the final straw in that relationship between readers and news organizations.

The New York Times admonished readers, saying, "Ms. Harris was not, in fact, appointed border czar, nor was she tasked with addressing the broader problems plaguing the border itself."

That is not what Biden said. That is not what the press wrote and said.

Simply put, they were either lying then or they are lying now.

For years the national press has had what they referred to as "disinformation beats" and used them to rush to say that social media platforms should not feature certain news stories or news outlets, almost all of them center-right or conservative, on their sites.

And now they are engaged in disinformation that discredits their own reporting. They need to call themselves out for disinformation. Either they're lying now or they were lying then.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 06:10 PM | Comments (305) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Week That Was Woke

The Bee:

The Biden Administration, knowing it is sleepwalking towards an epoch blow-out, is reversing some of its most egregiously insane policies.

It had been revealed that "Rachel" Levine had pressured the already-insane WPATH to strip out any age requirements for trans surgeries.

Now the Biden Administration is saying it supported age restrictions all along. Even when it was actively fighting against them.

After a lawsuit revealed the federal government's highest-ranking transgender official had successfully pressured the World Professional Association on Transgender Health to remove age limits for so-called gender-affirming care from its forthcoming standards in 2022, the Biden administration for the first time claimed it opposed surgery for gender-confused minors.

Activist outrage ensured the clarity didn't last long, prompting the Congressional Anti-Woke Caucus on Tuesday to demand the Department of Health and Human Services specify exactly what procedures it considers "safe and effective" for children who identify as the opposite sex or otherwise want to change their bodies to align with their gender identity.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris is on the record for taxpayer-funded gender affirming care, at least for people old enough to be behind bars.

She bragged in a National Center for Transgender Equality interview in 2019 that she "made sure" as California's attorney general that the state's prison system started granting surgeries for transgender inmates. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom followed by signing a law now being challenged by female inmates that grants prison placement by self-declared gender identity.

The National Institutes of Health also faces scrutiny for hiring Catherine Gordon as clinical director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development without noting she's a crusader for puberty blockers and had several pre-hire conversations with Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine, who pressured WPATH to remove its proposed age restrictions.

...

"We are concerned that the Biden-Harris administration's often contradictory statements, most notably its continued endorsement of 'continuum of care,' amounts to continuing to support the surgical mutilation of minors," the Anti-Woke Caucus told HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra on Tuesday.

"To our knowledge, Admiral Levine has not publicly disavowed support for performing irreversible transgender surgeries on children," said Reps. Jim Banks, of Indiana; Claudia Tenney of New York; Josh Brecheen, of Oklahoma; and Jeff Duncan, of South Carolina.

Drag Queens for Kamala put out a disgusting video: "She's a Woman." Your life will be better if you just skip this one.

Kamala Harris tried to draw a crowd in Atlanta by having Sloppy Whore Rapper Megan Thee Stallion open for her with her raunchy whoreshow. Here's a bit of that.

Janet Yellen: We have to set fire to another $3 trillion every year to fight global warming.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Saturday that the global transition to a low-carbon economy requires $3 trillion in new capital each year through 2050, far above current annual financing, but that filling the gap is the biggest economic opportunity of the 21st century.

Yellen said in Belem, Brazil's Amazon gateway city, that reaching net-zero emissions goals remained a top priority for the Biden-Harris administration and this would require leadership far beyond U.S. borders.

"Neglecting to address climate change and the loss of nature and biodiversity is not just bad environmental policy. It is bad economic policy," Yellen said in a speech after attending a G20 finance leaders meeting on Thursday and Friday in Rio de Janeiro.
Wealthy economies provided and mobilized a record $116 billion for climate finance for developing countries in 2022, 40% of which came from multilateral development banks (MDBs). Yellen said the banks, including the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) were setting new targets.

Inflation is transitory and so is $3 trillion a year, I guess.

Declan Leary writes about "White Dudes for Harris."

I have never been very good at following sound advice, which is why I joined "White Dudes for Harris" on Monday.

The existence of such an affinity group is remarkable in itself. So much of the political theater of the last three generations has been driven by the insistence that white men, especially straight white men, are the one and only political constituency that can never be allowed to conceive of themselves as a discrete group with identifiable interests. That way lies fascism or, at the very least, cisnormative white Christian heteropatriarchy.

I did not expect a three-hour Zoom call to awaken my sense of racial solidarity. ... My Not Racist credentials stand unimpeached: if this is the White Man awakened, I will gladly keep my distance.

Nina "Stanky Janky" Jankowitz sued Fox for calling her a government censor when she was hired to head the "Disinformation Governance Board," a government censorship bureaucracy. In other words, she's attempting to censor people by lawsuit.

A judge just threw out her lawsuit, concluding that, as a matter of law, she is or at least was a government censor.

Now she's just a private-sector censor, like so many other lunatic Childless Cat Ladies of the Marxist left.

Nina Jankowicz, the one-time (and short-lived) head of the Department of Homeland Security's "Disinformation Governance Board," filed suit against Fox News last year alleging that the network "built a narrative calculated to lead consumers to believe that Jankowicz intended to censor Americans' speech" among other allegations.
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In a delicious and deserved irony, the judge summarily tossed the suit, writing that, in essence, Fox told the truth.

"Fox contends, and I agree, that Jankowicz has not pleaded facts from which it could plausibly be inferred that the challenged statements regarding intended censorship by Jankowicz are not substantially true," U.S. District Judge Colm F. Connolly wrote in his July 22 order to dismiss. "On the contrary, as noted above, censorship is commonly understood to encompass efforts to scrutinize and examine speech in order to suppress certain communications. The Disinformation Governance Board was formed precisely to examine citizens' speech and, in coordination with the private sector, identify 'misinformation,' 'disinformation," and 'malinformation.'"

Case dismissed.

The Disinformation Board was tasked with searching far and wide across the internet to ferret out "misinformation (unintentional falsehoods), disinformation (deliberate falsehoods), and malinformation (inconveniently shared truths)," as J.D. Tuccille of Reason.com reports.

Matt Gaetz slammed the Air Force for outlawing encouragements like "toughen up," claiming they were sexist and ableist.

Rep. Matt Gaetz has denounced a guidebook from the Air Force which labels terms like "toughen up" and "stand for the flag" as microaggressions, arguing it undermines military readiness.

Key Details:

Internal Memo: Gaetz revealed a 27-page guidebook from the 552nd Air Control Wing warning against phrases considered microaggressions, such as "spirit animal" and "toughen up."

Controversial Guidance: The document describes phrases like "opposite sex" and patriotic displays as potentially offensive, advocating for awareness of diverse gender identities and racial sensitivities.

Response from Air Force: A spokesperson clarified that the guidebook is not official policy but was part of a submission for an innovation program and emphasized the Air Force's commitment to warfighting readiness.

A court has ruled in favor of a conservative professor who was punished by his school for writing (checks notes) "all men are created equal."

You know, that kind of Nazi Hate Speech.

A federal court has granted a preliminary injunction preventing the University of Oregon's Division of Equity and Inclusion from blocking a professor's interactions with posts on its official X account.

The ruling states the public university cannot block conservative scholar Bruce Gilley's interactions with its official X account -- even his posts deemed "hateful," "racist" or "otherwise offensive."

"It will be interesting to see how much longer UO wants to use tax payer's money to fight for the right to discriminate based on viewpoint," Gilley's attorney Del Kolde, a senior attorney at the nonprofit Institute for Free Speech, wrote on LinkedIn in response to the July 23 ruling. "They have already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars."

The University of Oregon's Office of the Vice President for Equity and Inclusion, which administers the Division of Equity and Inclusion, did not respond to a request for comment from The College Fix.

Gilley, a professor of political science at Portland State University, in 2022 sued the former communications manager of the @UOEquity X account, Tova Stabin, after she blocked him for responding to her "racism interrupter" prompt with the quote "all men are created equal."

Stabin, who requested her name not be capitalized in court documents, is described on the website My Jewish Learning as an "Ashkenazi lesbian feminist."

The U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon previously denied Gilley's motion for a preliminary injunction against the enforcement of the university's social media policy that bans users who are "hateful," "racist," or "otherwise offensive."

...

In granting the preliminary injunction last week, the district court agreed with Gilley "that the provisions allowing the Communications Manager to block 'hateful,' 'racist,' and 'otherwise offensive' speech create a risk of viewpoint discrimination because '[w]hat is offensive or hateful is often in the eye of the beholder.'"

"If Plaintiff was blocked for posting 'all men are created equal' because the post was viewed as hateful, racist, or otherwise offensive, such blocking would violate the Constitution. Deleting or hiding the post for that reason would also violate the Constitution," the court wrote.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 05:00 PM | Comments (321) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Pelosi's Top Security Aides Received a Red Alert About Possible Unrest the Eve of January 6th

Well well well.

Two top House security aides under then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi got stark warnings from police the night before the Jan. 6 riots that protesters might try to breach the U.S. Capitol through its tunnel systems and block lawmakers from voting to certify Joe Biden's presidential election win, according to newly obtained memos and text messages.

Maybe ask your Fed pal about that. The one who announced the evening of January 5th he intended to go "into the Capitol."

The documents obtained by Just the News also confirm that Pelosi's team played a role in the botched security planning for that fateful day.

"We have identified numerous open source comments indicating groups intentions of finding the tunnel entrances and confronting/blocking the MOCs (Members of Congress)," Capitol Police Deputy Chief Sean Gallagher wrote Deputy House Sergeant at Arms Tim Blodgett at 8:55 p.m. on Jan. 5, 2021 in an email that got forwarded less than an hour later to Blodgett's boss, then-Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving. The second time is listed in UTC, or Coordinated Universal Time.

A second warning was sent later that evening about possible threats against Supreme Court justices, and the sergeant-at arms-office scheduled a briefing for Pelosi's then-chief of staff Terri McCullough the next morning, hours before the breach occurred, according to the messages obtained by House Administration Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Barry Loudermilk.

Congressional investigators believe the texts and emails may explain why Pelosi in a recently surfaced video shot by her daughter as they were fleeing the Capitol on Jan. 6. claimed responsibility for security failures that day despite her claims to the contrary.

"We have responsibility, Terri," Pelosi is heard saying on the videotape to McCullough. "We did not have any accountability for what was going on there, and we should have. .. I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more."

Loudermilk told Just the News his committee plans to question Pelosi's staff about what was meant on the videotape and how they reacted to the emailed warnings from Capitol Police.

"I think it was clear at that moment. She understood. They messed up. She or her staff are the ones who denied the request by Chief (Steven) Sund for the National Guard," he told the "Just the News, No Noise" television show.

Read the whole thing.

Meanwhile, Loudermilk says he'll try, again, to force Pelosi to disclose information about the cover-up of the bomb -- ??? -- found outside the DNC..

As Congress turns its attention to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump's life, a key House investigator vowed Monday to issue a subpoena to force the disclosure of a long-delayed report on an earlier Secret Service failure to detect a bomb that could have jeopardized Kamala Harris' life the morning of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

The Homeland Security Department's inspector general has completed a report on Secret Service missteps during the Capitol crisis 3 ½ years ago but is refusing to release it even though footage Just the News published a year ago shows Secret Service agents took then Vice President-elect Harris within 10 yards of an undetected explosive device planted at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., said.

"We need to get this ... report. We need to see it," Loudermilk told the John Solomon Reports podcast. "And it needs to happen soon because we just created a task force to look at it. And ... I think there's important information there."

Rep. Barry Loudermilk on memo showing Pelosi's top security aides got warning about Capitol breach night before Jan. 6 riotRep. Barry Loudermilk on memo showing Pelosi's top security aides got warning about Capitol breach night before Jan. 6 riot.

"We are aware that the Secret Service has reviewed and cleared this report. Therefore, you alone are preventing the DHS OIG from releasing this report to Congress," Loudermilk said. "Given the events of July 13, 2024, yet another security failure by the U.S. Secret Service ("USSS") to detect and prevent a serious threat to a protectee, there is absolutely no justification for your delay."

She's not blocking the release of the report because it makes her look good, of course.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 04:00 PM | Comments (262) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Surprise! Judge Merchan's Daughter Made $12.7 Million Fundraising Off Anti-Trump Politicking in the First Half of This Year Alone

No conflict of interest here!

Julie Kelly:

Loren Merchan, owner of Authentic Campaigns, nearly doubled her business from this same time two years ago. Having daddy preside over the New York trial of Donald Trump sure does help!

Democrats have paid the company owned by the politically active daughter of compromised Judge Juan Merchan at least $12.7 million in the first half of this year.

Federal election reports show Authentic Campaigns, the consulting firm owned by Loren Merchan, raked in the windfall between January 1 and July 1, 2024. Her father currently presides over Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's case against Donald Trump in New York City.

...

According to the firm's website, Authentic Campaigns specializes in "digital marketing and fundraising."

The boom in business coincided with Trump's six-week trial in Merchan's Manhattan courtroom, which began on April 15. Prior to the start of the jury trial, Merchan repeatedly sided with Bragg while demonstrating open hostility to the former president. Merchan imposed a gag order early on and then proceeded to deny nearly every defense motion.

Two weeks into the trial, Merchan held Trump in contempt for violating the gag order.

Merchan, of course, should never have been near the case but he thwarted every legal attempt to get him removed.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 03:00 PM | Comments (332) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Party of Weidoes, Groomers, Degenerates, and Criminals Has a Weird Fixation on JD Vance

Branco, thanks to FenelonSpoke

Weird, weird.

Don Surber:

Over the weekend, UPS delivered the latest sure-fired plan from Acme to get Donald Trump -- the Call Him Weird starter kit. The word was sent out and the leftwing nut jobs jubilated.

Salon declared, " 'Old and quite weird': Democrats finally discover new effective attack -- and Republicans hate it.

"After nearly a decade of being forced to take Trump seriously, Democrats increasingly call BS on the whole charade."

Tim Walz, the white guv of Minnesota, told a crowd, "The fascists depend on fear. The fascists depend on us going back. But we are not afraid of weird people. We're a little bit creeped out, but we are not afraid."

This is pure Saul Alinsky, whose Rules for Radicals included No. 5: "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage."

Calling someone weird only works if you are not weird. Walz may want to sit this one out.

Tim Walz looks like a front runner for Kamala's running mate. He calls Trump and Vance "weird."

Here's his Lieutenant Governor, so you know what his guage of "weird" is:

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 02:00 PM | Comments (412) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Whistleblower: Acting Director Rowe Personally Slashed Trump's Protective Detail

I don't want him fired, I want him impeached, with Congress taking away his pension. Let him fucking beg progressive lunatics for rent-money on GoFundMe for the rest of his miserable assassin-coddling life.

And throw him in prison for 30 years for repeatedly lying to Congress. This lying saboteur is a one-man insurrection and needs to be treated as such.

Susan Crabtree at RealClearPolitics with further revelations:

Just days after Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe denied playing a direct role in rejecting repeated requests for added security measures and assets for former President Trump, whistleblowers have come forward refuting those claims and blaming Rowe for some of the agency's security failures that led to the July 13 assassination attempt that nearly killed Trump and left rallygoer Corey Comperatore dead and two others wounded.

Other whistleblowers are coming forward citing more systemic problems with the Secret Service, the vaunted agency whose primary job is to protect presidents, vice presidents and former presidents and their families.

Those deep-seated long-term problems include nepotism and other non-merit-based favoritism, lowering standards and cutting corners in hiring -- including failure to pass polygraph tests and accepting past hard drug use, retaliation for voicing security and other concerns, as well as uneven disciplinary action.

Sen. Josh Hawley on Thursday sent a letter to Rowe citing "disturbing information" from at least one whistleblower citing Secret Service planning failures for the Butler, Pennsylvania, campaign event "and your own involvement."

Hawley said he had received detailed information that Rowe personally directed "significant cuts" to the Countersurveillance Division, a department that performs threat assessment evaluations of event sites before the events occur and did not perform its typical evaluation of the Butler site and was not present that day.

"This is significant because CSD's duties include evaluating potential security threats outside the security perimeter," Hawley wrote, adding that a CSD's threat assessment likely would have provided more measures to protect the rooftop of the American Glass Research building where shooter Thomas Crooks perched and opened fire on Trump and the crowd.

"The whistleblower claims that if personnel from the CSD had been present at the rally, the gunman would have been handcuffed in the parking lot after being spotted with a rangefinder," Hawley continued. "You acknowledged in your Senate testimony that the American Glass Research complex should have been included in the security perimeter for the Butler event."

The unnamed whistleblower further alleged that Rowe personally directed significant cuts to the CSD, including reducing the division's manpower by 20%, Hawley asserted. "You did not mention this in your Senate testimony when asked directly to explain manpower reductions."

Rowe also said -- in a quote that merits his firing -- that the assassination attempt was aided by the agency's (his, in other words) "failure of imagination" to imagine that there are people out there who want to kill presidents and other politically-important people.

The director of Protective Operations admitted that he did not believe that assassins even existed, and therefore took a lackadaisical attitude to the ONE FUCKING THING he's supposed to be concerned with.

You had one fucking job, as the old saying goes.

But he admits he "lacked the imagination" to think that people existed who might want to shoot a president.

And of course he refuses to resign.

Rowe specifically denied being involved in any decisions that rejected requests for added security for Trump over the course of two years, and disputed accusations that he was involved in decision-making limiting the assignment of counter sniper teams to any event not in driving distance to D.C. RealClearPolitics reported on those two accusations earlier this week, citing sources within the Secret Service community.

Whistleblowers also accused Secret Service leaders and managers of retaliating against individuals who expressed concerns about the security of Trump's events.

Obviously, organizations with nothing to hide have no need of retaliating against truth-tellers.

The flurry of anonymous accusations includes an assertion that after an event with a Trump golf tournament in August of last year Secret Service personnel present expressed "serious concern" that the agency's reliance on local law enforcement was not adequate to meet security needs because these local officers were not properly trained and "otherwise prepared" to carry out the tasks delegated to them.

"Further, Secret Service personnel expressed alarm that individuals were admitted to the event without vetting," Hawley wrote. "The whistleblower alleges that those who raised such concerns were retaliated against."

Read the rest of the article for details about nepotism. One "legacy" hire, a son of a past agent, failed his polygraph exam, but for some reason was "retested" to make sure this ne'er-do-well got a cushy government posting.

Apparently the agency had a "failure of imagination" about people with histories of hard drug use and other highly-blackmailable pasts being hired to protect the president of the United States.

Remember, a prior whistleblower is warning that the Secret Service is incompetent and rife with corruption and he fears another assassination attempt will soon occur.

A Secret Service sniper has issued a stark warning about the likelihood of another assassination attempt on a presidential candidate before Election Day, citing critical security flaws within the agency. This alarming revelation follows the attack on former President Donald Trump, which has highlighted significant weaknesses in the Secret Service's ability to protect its principals.

"This agency NEEDS to change, if not now, WHEN? The NEXT assassination attempt in 30 days?" read the scathing letter, first published by RealClearPolitics. The sniper's letter, verified by law enforcement sources and sent to the entire Secret Service Uniformed Division, underscores the agency's failures and demands accountability.

The sniper, a Marine Corps veteran and member of the Secret Service's counter-sniper team for over 20 years, called for the resignation of high-level supervisors. The letter accused these supervisors of failing the rank-and-file Secret Service staff, stating, "Sadly we have fallen short for YEARS. We just got lucky and looked good doing it. I have conveyed these thoughts to not only supervisors ... Only to be brushed off as those with less experience somehow knew more than me."

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 01:00 PM | Comments (363) | Trackbacks (Suck)