Daily Tech News 16 June 2024

Top Story

• Voyager 1 is communicating again. (The Register)
  
  The probe launched in 1977 and completed its primary mission - flybys of Jupiter and Saturn - in 1980, and since then it has been travelling deeper into space just chilling (literally) and enjoying the view.
  
  Only four of the original eleven instruments on board are still operational, but that's enough for it to return interesting data for a little longer.
  
  Both Voyager probes are powered by short-lived radioisotope generators, and within the next decade the power output will have been reduced to a point where none of the instruments will work. Shortly after that they will pass beyond the range of the Deep Space Network and we will lose contact until 2270.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (62) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Overnight Open Thread (6/15/24)

*****

I can hear Andy Rooney say, "Have you ever............had Saturday ONT Random Thoughts?"

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 10:03 PM | Comments (291) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Evening Movie Thread 06/15/2024 [TheJamesMadison]

Mad Max

With the release (and box office failure) of George Miller's latest film and seemingly final entry in his Mad Max franchise, Furiosa, it feels like a perfect opportunity to reflect back on one of the weirdest, enduring action franchises of the past forty-four years, consider its place in the larger culture, and wonder why the culture could embrace the second-to-last entry so fully while leaving the last entry in the dust of the Wasteland.

Born of Miller's desire to become a filmmaker and his experience with crash victims while working as an ER doctor at St. Vincent's Hospital in Sydney, Australia, Mad Max was a worldwide success, raking in about $100 million, but only about $8 million from the US. The sequel, Mad Max 2, was retitled The Road Warrior in the US because the first film had such a small impact and made almost $24 million in the US while (very briefly) becoming the biggest grosser in Australian box office history (quickly supplanted by Peter Weir's Gallipoli). This success led to the largest budget for a Mad Max film with Beyond Thunderdome made for $10 million and only bringing in $36 million at the US box office which was better than the previous film, but it performed much worse in Australia itself, effectively ending the franchise. It was never more than a modest financial win of a franchise, and Miller went off to make other things for more than a decade.

He actually went deep into pre-production on the sequel, Fury Road twice (it may actually be three because the final, successful effort to get Fury Road off the ground took several years and actually changed filming continents from Australia to Africa), and it was a very expensive production (probably helped in no small part by the successive efforts at getting things started which were probably rolled into the final cost). With a final budget reportedly somewhere between $150 and $180 million, Fury Road was easily the most successful entry in the franchise making $380 million. Miller was allowed to find the money to make Furiosa after he took a break to make his smaller, Three Thousand Years of Longing, and this production was also wildly expensive (reportedly about $170 million) and...it has flopped very hard. It makes me sad.

So, with the basic history of the franchise out of the way, let's talk about the movies themselves.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:45 PM | Comments (206) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hobby Thread - June 15, 2024 [TRex]

Hobby Thread - June 15, 2024 [TRex]

Welcome hobbyists! Do not adjust your interweb. This thread is going to have an edge. A spin of the Ace of Spades "wheel of hobbies" has come up with timepieces. Happy horology!

TRex is not wise in the ways of collecting or making watches, clocks, or other timepieces, but the horde has shown in various posts and threads that there is deep and wide interest.

Do you collect watches? If so, do you collect modern or classic watches? Do you have a watch that was handed down from an ancestor? Do you have a grandfather clock that chimes to mark each quarter hour? Do you have a story of finding a gem at a garage sale or antique store? Have you been on antiques roadshow with a rare Rolex with original box and paperwork? Do you repair or restore watches? Have you worked selling or repairing watches or other timepieces? Do you have a soft spot for old-style pocketwatches with a chain? Do you have traditions to give watches as gifts? Did you receive a watch as a special gift?

As usual, keep this thread limited to hobbies. Politics and current events can wait for other threads.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:30 PM | Comments (233) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ace of Spades Pet Thread, June 15

* * *

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

Would you like a treat?

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

Posted by: K.T. at 03:28 PM | Comments (103) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, June 15

Here are some pictures of ginger flowers from my garden here in SW FL.

Note that the flower spike comes up and then in the small cups another "blossom" occurs that can be pollinated, On the white flower the blossoms are purple and on the large red flower the blossoms are orange. The blooms last a long time and the large leaves are very showy also.

The need only filtered light; the Florida sun can toll a toll on them.

I prefer to remain a lurker for now.

Beautiful and fascinating. Thanks for sharing some flowers most of us can't grow.

Posted by: K.T. at 01:15 PM | Comments (55) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Men Exiting Cancel Culture

Happy Father's Day Weekend! This week, I ran across some content on cancel culture and one guy who survived it. He is now helping other men to survive or elude it. He was once cancelled (he quickly lost his job for satire and snark on social media unrelated to his job). The unusual part of the story is that he recovered by doing something beyond Substack.

Part of his own focus this week is on social media, Twitter/X in particular (where he still has a sort of unusual presence). Twitter/X is much less toxic than it was before it was bought by Elon Musk (to the dismay of many on "the other side").

Posted by: K.T. at 11:01 AM | Comments (240) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Classical Saturday Morning Coffee Thread & Prayer Revival (6/15/24)

*****

Happy Saturday 'rons, 'ettes & everything in between. No need to thank me for the physical fitness exercise provided above.

Before we get into Prayer Revival, just a few housekeeping matters. (Rulz for those of you in Baldwin.)

1) This is an open thread feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate.
2) Be nice to one another. Even Cloggensteins need love & support.
3) No running with sharp objects unless you or your parent's health insurance is paid up.
4) Feel free to have whatever weekend you decide or is decided for you.

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 08:10 AM | Comments (335) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 15 June 2024

Top Story

• In its ongoing drive to earn public trust OpenAI has appointed the former director of the NSA to its board. (CNBC) (archive site)
  
  Yep, that's gonna work.
  
  
  
• In a recent AI study, 270 humans failed the Meta-Turing test. (Live Science)
  
  The reason: They judged ChatGPT to be human.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (204) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Thou Shalt Have No Other ONTs Before Me

Memetastic Friday, everyone! Let's get the weekend started right!

Posted by: WeirdDave at 09:50 PM | Comments (408) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Fast and the Furry-ous Cafe

El Chaltén, Patagonia
by @RamiroTorrents

People have turned their home into a racing track for cats.

Time-lapse video of the Milky Way moving across the night sky.

A guy's ceiling totally collapses from carrying too much weight. Engineers call this a
Jonah Goldberg Jazzercise Event.

You can call this guy a slacker, but what a life he's leading.

This dog loves horse races. Sound on. Hilarious.

Big, big fan blade.

Mama bison and calf cross the road. Looks like they meet dad on the other side.

And a moose family crossing the road.

Positano, Italy.

Jumping into Friday night like...

Sundown flight.

Guy parodies modern "art" installations.

A nice cave. Whoops, sorry, I meant an ice cave.

Say, do you all know that the word for umpire was originally "numpire"? And the word got changed over confusion whether people were saying "a numpire" or "an umpire."

The word "orange" similarly got changed due to incorrect parsing of the "a" and "n." The Spanish for orange is naranja, and English speakers weren't sure if the word was "a naranja" or "an oranja." We wrongly interpreted it as the latter.

A crystal-clear lake in Lofoten, Norway.

Jet-skiing on a perfectly smooth and mirror-like lake. Or maybe it's just CGI. I tell you, CGI and AI are the bane of the Cafe. I never know what's real any longer.

This is a real king fisher, and boy howdy.

Wheeee...!

Drone flight over rocky sea cliffs (with some sea stacks peppered in for diversity reasons).

Animals yawning. Bonus: a marmot (?) yawning. The involuntary extension of the jaw to its most open position is called the David French Reflex.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 07:30 PM | Comments (230) | Trackbacks (Suck)

NYT: Biden Is Trying to Get TikTokers and "Influencers" on His Side But They Don't Trust Him and Think He's Cringe

More humiliation of a senior with dementia.

And the new Mrs. President Wilson is allowing this.

On a Friday afternoon in late April, President Biden brought celebrities and elite social media influencers together for a White House reception. Fran Drescher and David Cross mingled with Ilona Maher, a rugby star, and V from @underthedesknews, at a mixer meant to generate warm feelings and badly needed pro-Biden content.

Jonathan M. Katz, an independent journalist and sharp critic of the administration, was shocked to get an invitation. When he met Mr. Biden, he pointedly asked about military aid to Israel and suggested he was supporting a "genocide." Mr. Biden answered politely, but then appeared to grow impatient. "I know you're a typical press guy," he said. "I trust you as far as I can throw your phone." Aides then ushered Mr. Katz away.

The episode, which Mr. Katz recorded on video and shared with his roughly 100,000 followers, was one in a series of Mr. Biden's awkward attempts to manufacture online enthusiasm for his candidacy.

For months, the president's campaign has watched as its rival, Donald J. Trump, has surfed on his popularity among the very online. Mr. Trump's supporters produce an endless stream of memes, videos and adoring posts -- all essentially free advertising -- that reach an increasingly crucial slice of voters.

Mr. Biden and his allies are working furiously to build a comparable online army, trying to persuade, or in some cases pay, people to sing Mr. Biden's praises to their large followings. They are finding that social media feeds are difficult territory for an 81-year-old president whose policies on Gaza and immigration are unpopular on the left.

"It's clear we have to use influencers or creators as a way to reach the future of the progressive movement," said Brian Rolling, co-founder of MurMur Impact, a group that has worked with liberal causes on mobilizing Gen Z voters. "But we talk to a lot of young people and they're just not on board with Biden."

...

Priorities USA, a super PAC supporting Mr. Biden's campaign, has pledged to spend at least $1 million on influencers, some of whom will be paid to share talking points online.

This is a special usage of the word "some." They mean "all" but want to preserve the illusion that a couple of people are repeating their talking points because they actually believe them.

...

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spent $150,000 in March to hire an influencer marketing agency. And in late April, the Biden campaign -- which said it does not pay influencers for content -- paid almost $2 million to retain Village Marketing, an influencer agency, to help run its social media outreach program.

They're lying. They pay these companies knowing that the companies always pay "influencers" to advertise whatever product is being sold. Biden is paying a front group to pay off influencers, and even he knows that.

...

Polling suggests Mr. Biden is struggling with [younger] voters. In a recent NBC poll, Mr. Biden held a commanding advantage among voters who regularly consume traditional news. But Mr. Trump led decisively those among those who said they rely primarily on social media for information, an advantage that stretched to more than 25 points among those who follow no political news at all.

...

That project, however, has been difficult for Mr. Biden.

...

The enthusiasm gap is measurable, particularly on TikTok.

Since February, when the Biden campaign officially joined the platform, it has posted more than 200 times and garnered just over 375,000 followers. Mr. Trump joined TikTok less than two weeks ago but has already accumulated 6.2 million followers.
"They're inviting a few people to the White House, they're doing dinners," said Grace Murray Vazquez, vice president for strategy at the social media marketing agency Fohr, which said it did work with the Biden campaign in 2020 but has not been contacted to do so this year. "It's a drop in the bucket."

Meanwhile, Trump is doing interviews with influencer-turned-WWF-"Wrestler" Logan Paul.

Below: Granpa Felonyfingers tells a TikTok influencer "I trust you as far as I can throw your phone," then adds "I've got a good arm, man, I can throw a long way."

He's literally always lying, bragging, and boasting. It never stops. There is no off-switch on his absurd delusions of hyperpotency. He's like a Kim Il-Jong.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 06:30 PM | Comments (193) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Ides of Pride

Can you believe we're halfway through Pride Month already? I haven't even begun my toddler-tuck-swimsuit shopping yet!

David Strom highlights this telling poll finding from Pew: leftwingers are largely anti-family and anti-human-childbirth.

Even the NYT admits that the "success narratives" pushed by the left do not include childbirth as win or even something to wish for.

For young, secular, politically progressive men and women, having children has become something of an afterthought. Liberal conventional wisdom encourages people to spend their 20s on journeys of personal and professional self-discovery and self-fulfillment. Children are treated as a bonus round, something to get to only after completing a long list of achievements: getting a degree, forging a satisfying and well-established career, buying a house, cultivating the ideal romantic partnership.

The standards of readiness for family are at once so high and so vague that it's hardly a surprise when people fail to reach them. Indeed, the data suggest that people are having children later than they used to and are having fewer than they'd like.

For progressives, waiting to have children has also become a kind of ethical imperative. Gender equality and female empowerment demand that women's self-advancement not be sacrificed on the altar of motherhood. Securing female autonomy means that under no circumstances should a woman be rushed into a reproductive decision -- whether by an eager partner or tone-deaf chatter about ticking biological clocks. Unreserved enthusiasm for having children can come across as essentially reactionary.

Over the past four years, we've conducted interviews and surveys with hundreds of young Americans about their attitudes toward having children. These conversations revealed that the success narratives of modern liberal life leave little room for having a family. Women who want kids often come to that realization belatedly, at some point in their early 30s -- the so-called panic years. If they are lucky, their partner (if they have one) will fall in line. If they are not, they face a choice of returning to the dating pool, freezing their eggs (if they haven't done so already), single parenting or giving up their hope of having kids of their own.

In this way, the logic of postponement that has been promoted by liberals and progressives -- and bolstered by overblown optimism about reproductive technologies -- robs young people of their agency. How many children they have, and even whether they have them at all, is increasingly a decision made for them by circumstance and cultural convention.

This is not just a recipe for unhappiness; it also reflects a deep confusion.

Leftwingers confused about the good? Surely you can't be serious (and yes I will call you Shirley).

A doctor blew the whistle on surgeons cutting off little girl's breasts at Texas Children's Hospital.

The completely non-weaponized DOJ has indicted him for it, spuriously claiming he violated HIPPA.

The Department of Justice has indicted Dr. Eithan Haim, a little-known surgeon who exposed Texas Children's Hospital for secretly conducting transgender surgeries and treatments on minors, on four felony counts related to his alleged violation of a medical-records law.

Last year, Haim anonymously leaked evidence of the child sex-change procedures to conservative journalist Christopher Rufo. The documents revealed that Texas Children's Hospital had continued running its transgender program, despite announcing that the program had been discontinued in accordance with Governor Greg Abbott's 2022 directive equating such medical interventions with child abuse.

The Houston-based hospital was ultimately forced to stop its trans-medical practices after a state law took effect in September 2023, prohibiting drug and surgical "gender-affirming" interventions for minors.

U.S. marshals notified Haim of the indictment at his home this week and summoned him to court for violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Haim and his legal team, who don't yet know the full nature of the charges, are set to appear in court on June 17.

"My client is anxious to get to trial to get his side of the story told," Haim's attorney Marcella Burke told National Review. "I am confident this will result in the correct decision being made."

In January, Haim publicly identified himself as the whistleblower in an effort to protect himself from retaliation by the DOJ and the Department of Health and Human Services. Greeted by federal officials at his doorstep last June, the general surgeon discovered that he was a potential target in a criminal investigation regarding his leaking of medical records. The prosecutor claims he failed to redact sensitive patient information.

Meanwhile, the Biden DOJ targets a 75-year-old grandmother in deteriorting health for a 2-year prison sentence for protesting abortion. Jule Kelly has the transcript, and the bloodthirstiness of the Biden prosecutor, and the cavalier attitude of the leftwing judge are repulsive.

But don't you dare say the DOJ is weaponized against the left's enemies, and civilization itself.

Matt Walsh has more excerpts from the Trans Terrorists' journals. See the link for the excerpts. I'll just quote part of his commentary:

Matt Walsh
@MattWalshBlog

1/ EXCLUSIVE: The Daily Wire has obtained materials written by the trans shooter who killed six people at a Christian school in Nashville. The writings -- concealed for over a year -- reveal the shooter's anti-Christian, pro-trans, and perverse ideas in the weeks before the attack.

2/ In one passage, the shooter rails against "Christian friends" that her parents have encouraged her to make. She writes, "Parents actually believe religion can change nature. That could explain why I don't practice religion anymore. Let kids think for themselves."

Religion can't change nature, but surgery and pills can. Got it.

This isn't just the ravings of a murderous lunatic -- this is core Trans Doctrine.

3/ The shooter, a cognitively impaired and mentally ill 28-year-old woman, at times still frames herself as a child in her writing, saying "kids are not robots, we are the future!"

4/ Separately, she writes: "F*ck parents like them [who oppose trans ideology] who think of themselves first, and their preference of conservative religion..." and how she'd "kill to have had parents" who'd have given her so-called "puberty blockers" as a child.

5/ This is despite admitting that her own natural female puberty "didn't bother me too much." She confesses that it wasn't until her early 20s that she first encountered gender ideology. "I finally found the answer -- that changing ones gender is possible."

6/ That's one of the many problems with radical gender ideology. The people least able to navigate their own care -- children and cognitively impaired adults -- are not just unintentional casualties. They are the targets. They seek answers, and gender ideology comes knocking.

And no one treats their untreated mental illnesses. The Chop is supposed to fix all of their mental illnesses.

7/ Far from an answer, it apparently emboldened this lifelong mental patient to commit an act of horrific violence. If the shooter was a white supremacist, her manifesto would be released. But, over a year on, the White House and FBI continue to block it.

8/ Recall that, in the wake of this shooting, the White House claimed that trans people -- not the murdered Christians -- were "under attack." They didn't want you to realize that, in her own words, the shooter had described her disdain for Christians very clearly.

9/ The White House seems to want to hide the shooter's detailed descriptions of her gender dysphoria, and its link to her interest in pornography and acting out of graphic sexual fantasies with dolls, one of whom she performed "plastic surgery" on to give him a pretend penis.

10/ The writings are distressing and highly emotional. At one point, she states, "Puberty = life sentence. The people in this world adds more bullets to shoot violent thoughts into my head on full-auto. I hate parental views; how my mom sees me as a daughter."

11/ The shooter adopted anti-parent, anti-Christian, pro-trans views, and, according to Crowder's previous leak, also railed against "white privilege." Authorities are claiming no apparent political motivation while what we've seen reads like an homage to radical leftism.

Claiming that she's a "kid" at age 28, railing about puberty -- this suggests that her mental illness was anger about no longer being a child. She tried to remain in a state of arrested development, and was angry that she couldn't live forever as a child with no responsibility.

Of course, no one treated her for that. Here are your pills, drive through, have a nice day.

A new front for Fat Liberation: "Fatties for a Free Palestine."

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 05:20 PM | Comments (262) | Trackbacks (Suck)

SCIENZZZ and GAINZZZ

A study suggests that mental illnesses such as schizophrenia are caused by "junk DNA" written into our genetic sequence by viruses.

Around 8% of human DNA is made up of genetic sequences acquired from ancient viruses. These sequences, known as human endogenous retroviruses (or Hervs), date back hundreds of thousands to millions of years -- with some even predating the emergence of Homo sapiens.

Our latest research suggests that some ancient viral DNA sequences in the human genome play a role in susceptibility to psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder.

Hervs represent the remnants of these infections with ancient retroviruses. Retroviruses are viruses that insert a copy of their genetic material into the DNA of the cells they infect.

Retroviruses probably infected us on multiple occasions during our evolutionary past. When these infections occurred in sperm or egg cells that generated offspring, the genetic material from these retroviruses was passed on to subsequent generations, becoming a permanent part of our lineage.

Initially, scientists considered Hervs to be "junk DNA" -- parts of our genome with no discernible function. But as our understanding of the human genome has advanced, it's become evident that this so-called junk DNA is responsible for more functions than originally hypothesised.

...

Initial research suggested that Hervs regulate the expression of neighbouring genes with important biological functions. One example of this is a Herv that regulates the expression of a gene involved in modifying connections between brain cells.

...

In our study, we profiled Herv expression in nearly 800 autopsy brain samples. This helped us identify DNA variations that influenced Herv expression in the brain.

We then cross-referenced this information with findings from large genetic studies which had compared genetic differences between tens of thousands of people -- both with and without mental health conditions. These studies identified variations in DNA associated with different psychiatric conditions.

We found that that the expression of four Hervs was linked with genetic susceptibility to major psychiatric disorders. The expression of two of these Hervs was associated with schizophrenia, one Herv with both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and one with depression.

Don't think about the fact that most of the world's population just injected itself with gene therapy to alter human DNA. When part of your brain begins wondering about that, just call it a Racist until it shuts up.

Here's something else you need to tell your Racist brain to take no heed of-- unexpectedly, most doctors endorsing drugs online are paid Big Pharma shills.

A team of medical researchers affiliated with several institutions in the U.S. has found that a high percentage of doctors posting endorsements regarding drugs on the social media site X were paid to do so by the makers of the drugs.

In their study, published in JAMA , the group searched for drug endorsements by doctors on X and then used a website called Open Payments to find out if they had been paid for their endorsements.

The United States is one of the few developed countries that allows pharmaceutical companies to advertise the drugs they make and sell, including via radio, television and social media sites. It is also legal in the US for doctors and other health care professionals to receive payment for endorsing the drugs featured in advertising.

In this new effort, the research team noted that the website Open Payments (run by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) allows interested parties to identify doctors practicing in the U.S. who have received money for endorsements and the name of the party that paid them. The team had questions about doctors making endorsements on social media sites.

To learn more, the researchers focused their efforts on X, formerly Twitter. They began their study by searching for doctors who were posting drug endorsements and found 28 of them. They searched the name of each doctor on the Open Payments website to learn more about their endorsement history. They found that 26 of the doctors on X had received payments from the manufacturer of the drugs they were endorsing. They also found that 24 had received payments related to the specific drug they were endorsing.

26 of 28.

Remember, your brain is a Racist and you mustn't ever trust it.

Eating foods rich in fatty acids may help increase our longevity and keep our brains working at a "SuperBiden" level well into our autumn years.

They identified two distinct types of brain aging -- and the slower paced aging was associated with nutrient intake similar to what you would get from the Mediterranean diet, shown in previous studies to be one of the best for our bodies.

"We investigated specific nutrient biomarkers, such as fatty acid profiles, known in nutritional science to potentially offer health benefits," says neuroscientist Aron Barbey, from the University of Illinois.

"This aligns with the extensive body of research in the field demonstrating the positive health effects of the Mediterranean diet, which emphasizes foods rich in these beneficial nutrients."

...

Fatty acids, like those in fish and olive oil, and antioxidants such as vitamin E, present in spinach and almonds, were among the beneficial biomarkers identified, as well as carotenoids, plant pigments found in carrots and pumpkin that have previously been found to lower inflammation in the body and protect cells from damage. Another beneficial biomarker associated with slower aging in this research was choline, which is contained in high concentrations in egg yolks, organ meats and raw soybean.

The word "inflammation" is the new hotness now. What they're talking about is just tissues being damaged -- inflamed -- by some foods or chemicals. Just like the linings of your nose and throat become inflamed when you're sick.

Internal body tissues which are chronically inflamed -- bothered, damaged, stressed -- by diet will tend to age and break down faster.

Next, the team wants to look at clinical trials across a significant amount of time to see how diet and nutrition might affect brain aging. It's possible that simple tweaks to what we eat could help cut down the risk of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's.

"The present study identifies particular nutrient biomarker patterns that are promising and have favorable associations with measures of cognitive performance and brain health," says Barbey.

Speaking of inflammation, Republican Congresswoman Anna Palina Luna introduced two bills, one to ban food dyes, and one to ban high fructose corn syrup.

The Do or Dye Act targets toxic food dyes such as Red No. 40, Yellow No. 5, and Yellow No. 6, classifying foods containing these additives as adulterated under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

The Stop Spoonfuls of Fake Sugar Act seeks to classify any food containing high-fructose corn syrup as adulterated, also under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

Congresswoman Luna emphasizes that these bills are a step towards preventing corporations and the FDA from allowing harmful ingredients that contribute to health issues like type 2 diabetes and various mental health conditions.

I'm not a super-fan of strongarm measures like this, but in her defense, I'd point out the FDA already has the authority to ban various ingredients in food. So the question isn't so much about giving the government such a power -- we already gave it to them, ages ago -- but whether Congress may instruct executive-branch petty bureaucrats about which ingredients should be banned. Of course Congress has that power, having created the FDA and delegated part of its own law-making power to the bureaucrats working there.

As you probably know, the "rule-making" power of executive bureaucrats is just Congress lazily, and perhaps unconstitutionally, empowering the executive to make law, so long as a court is willing to call these laws mere "rules" rather than full "laws."

I might also point out that America's high levels of obesity are a direct result of FDA rulings and advice, like the insane "food pyramid" telling people to eat 6-11 portions of bread and pasta per day while limiting meat. And for claiming that sugar isn't really all that bad. After being lobbied hard about it by Big Sugar. And for going along with the fiction that high-fructose corn syrups is a "good sugar."

I don't know. Argue amongst yourselves. I'm playing devil's advocate for her because she's a hottie.

If you need inspiration for getting some GAINZZZ, this triple blackbelt Life Coach at The Guardian has a fantastic motivational pitch for you -- getting healths and strong might turn you into a rightwing fascist.

Getting fit is great -- but it could turn you into a rightwing jerk

The more self-actualised you become, the higher you are on self-righteousness, blaming other people's problems on their failure to be as healthy as you

You had my interest, but now you have my attention.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 04:20 PM | Comments (212) | Trackbacks (Suck)

After Decades of Denial, Progressives Begin to Realize the Real Antisemites Are in the Heart of the Movement

Mostly Peaceful Hamas Supporters are, get this, mobbing and harassing Jews in New York.

Last night, I went to New York City's Union Square to cover a rally against the "massacre in the Nuseirat Camp regions of Gaza." That's what pro-Palestinian protesters are calling the operation that freed four Israeli hostages and killed at least a hundred Palestinians--a mix of Hamas combatants and civilians caught in the chaos as Hamas fired RPGs at the hostages. All around the country, similar anti-Israel protests sprung up to rouse those furious at the hostage rescue operation.

I had been at this particular protest in Union Square for about 45 minutes, watching and taking notes, when a man wearing a neck gaiter, sunglasses, and a Hezbollah flag fashioned as a headscarf suddenly pointed at me. "She's a Zionist!" he shouted. "Get her out of here."

Immediately, dozens of protesters swarmed me, hoisting their keffiyehs high in the sky and boxing me in to block my view. Many of them were completely shrouded in keffiyehs and masks. A chorus of voices surrounded me, shoving me. "Get the fuck out," a woman yelled into my ear. "The people are saying we don't want you here."

A man holding a sign that declared "Long Live October 7th" shouted over the crowd, "Get in her face, make her leave."

One man fired an air horn into my ears. A girl lurched at my notebook, grabbing it and ripping apart the metal spine. "You're not writing anything down," she said, tearing the pages and throwing them into the air. "Get the fuck out--get the fuck out!"

In the context of these protests across the country this week, this was very mild. For anyone visibly Jewish who happens to be near one of these mobs, or anyone like a security guard trying to keep peace, the interactions are often much more harrowing. Here are a few data points of the escalation over the last 24 hours.

Yesterday at UCLA, a crowd of pro-Palestine protesters, most with makeshift shields, swarmed a security guard. As he tried to flee, one smacked him over the head with a smartphone, causing him to bleed.

Later that night on campus, a masked protester berated UCLA Chabad Rabbi Dovid Gurevich, calling him a "pedophile rabbi," adding that "Israel is full of pedophiles." When Gurevich asked why he wouldn't reveal his face, the man replied, "If I show my face, I'll have to fucking kill you." Other protesters shouted at the rabbi and others: "Go back to Poland or Ukraine," "Go back to Europe," and "Death to fucking Zionism." Twenty-five protesters were arrested.

More scenes were captured on video in Union Square in New York. One man yelled at a small crowd that had come out to support Israel, "I wish Hitler was still here, he would've wiped all you out."

On Wall Street, the protest mob chanted "Israel go to hell" outside an exhibition memorializing the Nova Music Festival, where Hamas murdered 364 innocents. As the crowd took its "citywide day of rage for Gaza" downtown via the subway, one protester proclaimed on the train, "Raise your hands if you're a Zionist. This is your chance to get out."

Anti-Israel protesters, who have been marching regularly in major cities across the world ever since Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, killing more than 1,200 civilians, claim they are for peace. And yet, they find creative ways to justify the violence of Hamas. I've been to 18 of these protests so far, and it's not unusual to spot the symbols of terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah, and even Nazi swastikas.

Mostly Peaceful Protesters are mobbing and harassing Jews -- wait, they say "Zionists" -- in Hamas sympathizers harassed Jews at a music festival in Manhattan.

If you thought they'd avoid harassing Jews at music festival to avoid the obvious parallel with the Hamas terror attack on the Israeli festival, wrong. They didn't avoid it -- they leaned into it.

Attendees at the Nova Music Festival exhibition were harassed in Manhattan, my colleague was mobbed while trying to report at a protest, and a masked thug on the subway barked in a train, "Raise your hand if you're a Zionist. This is your chance to get out." And that's only what made the news. In New York. That was all Monday.

Yesterday, I woke up to a text from an old source. He sent me pictures of the outside of his apartment building in Brooklyn Heights: it was covered in red paint, including red arrows meant to symbolize that the people inside are targets. A sign, punctuated with red handprints, was addressed to his neighbor, the director of the Brooklyn Museum. It read, "Anne Pasternak Brooklyn Museum White Supremacist Zionist." He told me the act of vandalism happened around 2:30 in the morning, and that there was now an NYPD squad car stationed outside the building. "It's pretty disgusting," he texted. Other Jewish members of the museum's board live in the building too.

From AOC to Brad Lander--the liberal comptroller who once defended the antisemite Linda Sarsour--New York's leading progressives finally seem to realize they have a problem on their hands. As they issue condemnations of antisemitism, it's tempting to dismiss it as too little too late.

"You built this, @bradlander! Enjoy the fruits of the Jew-hatred you harvested," wrote my old colleague Karol Markowicz. Noah Pollak wrote, "This is 100% the fault of the Democratic Party."

The attack on Pasternak's home was doubly irresistible. "I hate that this is happening but I hate even more that the progressives who run the Brooklyn Museum advocated for the rise of woke that led directly to this moment," The Post Millennial's Libby Emmons posted on X. Anne Pasternak is a liberal Jew, director of one of New York's great cultural establishments who once told New York magazine, "white staff and trustees have to do the work of learning about our nation's history and looking at their own education, conditioning, and biases, before we can lead meaningful change. That work is deep, hard, and essential." She's championed exhibits on themes of gender and race, lynching, and one that examined Picasso's misogyny through the critical eye of comedian Hannah Gadsby. Her programming is like a woke Mad Lib.

Even so, her own museum has been mobbed twice since her tenure began, by members of the Decolonize This Place movement in 2018 and by pro-Palestine protesters affiliated with Within Our Lifetime just last month....

...

There should have been plenty of wake-up calls for the progressive left that the antisemitism was coming from inside the house. Often, they're footing the phone bill. But if the alarm is finally rousing them out of their slumber, we shouldn't pour cold water on their heads. We should welcome them back to reality. But an apology would be nice.

The world's loudest, most annoying AWFL, Sheryl Sandberg, who was an executive at FaceBook and won't ever let you forget that, now realizes that maybe her progressive allies kind of want to kill her because of her religion.

When people think of Sheryl Sandberg, they think of a girlboss, corporate feminism, and coastal politics--wearing a power suit and campaigning for Hillary Clinton.

I think of someone who wants to be perpetually congratulated for the Historic Breakthrough of having a job. For a few years.

And for pretending her sex was a barrier to her "success," when in fact she got the job because of it.

She is, in other words, a normal Democrat. A normal liberal.

A feminist narcissist hag, in other words.

But as major parts of the left side against Israel, and downplay or ignore or actually foment antisemitism, a lot of people who consider themselves normal liberals are asking themselves: What happened to liberalism?

The position that Sheryl finds herself in is relatable to many Americans, people who feel betwixt and between in a post--October 7 world where the very people they thought were their friends are proving themselves to be just the opposite.

She's made a documentary called Screams Before Silence about the rapes of women by Hamas -- and the left's denial about it. She talks about the rapes with Bari Weiss, and the denial of the left of the rapes, and the antisemitism of the left.

She brings up the horrifying possibility -- or probability -- that Hamas has raped some of the girls they're holding captive and gotten them pregnant, and now, I guess, they're holding them until they give birth.

BW: In the past few weeks, a new video [from October 7] came out of Naama along with four other girls around the age of 19 and 20, and one of the terrorists says, "These are the girls that can get pregnant." We're sitting here basically nine months since October 7. Is it possible that there are hostages who are right now sitting in Gaza about to give birth?

SS: Yes. I interviewed Agam [Goldstein], who was 18 years old when she was taken captive. The terrorists broke into their home. They shot her father. When her sister passed out, they shot her in the face in front of her. And then she and her mother are taken into captivity. She says that of all the hostages she saw, half of them were being sexually assaulted. So yes, it is very possible that we have people who are pregnant in captivity.

Why isn't Michele Obama on Twitter posting #BringBackOurGirls as she did in 2014?

BW: The title Screams Before Silence comes from a woman who hid for seven hours in a trailer at the Nova Music Festival, but there's a meta level at which the title also works, which is that on October 7, the only Jewish state in the world had a primal scream. And then there was silence from the world. I can't help but think about someone like Michelle Obama, who in 2014 campaigned to #BringBackOurGirls when Boko Haram, an Islamist group in Nigeria, stole 276 schoolgirls. And everyone in the world cared about those 276 girls because of the leadership of Michelle Obama. And everyone fell like dominoes to follow her moral leadership on that issue. Where is she and people like her in this moment?

SS: I think everyone should be screaming, "Bring back the hostages." But do you know that about half of those girls are still not back? And I actually haven't heard anyone talking about it for a while. I remember when Afghanistan happened. Some girls are committing suicide, I think, regularly now. Can you imagine everything being taken away from you because you're a girl? And I don't feel like we're talking about that. I do think it's very hard to stay focused on these issues, and I really think we need more focus, and we need many more voices on this one.

If you think any of this has changed her vote, boy, you do not understand leftwing feminists:

BW: You've been a Democrat your whole life. Obviously, your worldview has sort of shifted a little bit. Will you be donating to Biden this cycle and supporting Biden?

SS: I did donate and I do support.

Below, a family home in Brooklyn is painted with red triangles, which Hamas uses as a symbol to mark targets.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 03:20 PM | Comments (266) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Poll: Half of All Americans Expect Biden to Forget He's At a Debate and Wander Off Stage

Before getting to that: A poll finds 62% of voters support mass deportation for illegal aliens. And maybe Rachel Maddow.

Wow, Rachel Maddow too? I guess she wasn't just having another menstrual hallucination.

Just kidding about that. She was having a menstrual hallucination.

A majority of voters support efforts to mass deport illegal aliens residing in the United States, a newly released survey found.

Conducted by CBS News/YouGov, the poll showed that 62 percent of registered voters favor, "in principle, a new government program to deport all [foreign nationals] living in the U.S. illegally." This includes backing from 88 percent of Republicans, 60 percent of independents, and 38 percent of Democrats.

The survey additionally found similar levels of support (62 percent) for allowing local law enforcement to try and identify aliens residing in the United States illegally. A slight majority (52 to 48 percent), however, oppose the government "establishing large detention centers, where people would be sent and held, while the government determined whether or not they should be deported."

I already posted about this poll.

Here's a new one: Trump is now tied with Biden in Virginia, which has been a solid blue state since 2008.

President Joe Biden has received negative polling news in a state the Democratic Party has not lost in 20 years.

...

However, according to polling by firm co/efficient, Biden and Trump are now tied in Virginia, a state which has not backed a Republican for president since George W. Bush in 2004.

According to their survey of 851 likely voters, 41 percent would vote for Biden while 41 percent would vote for Trump. A further 12 percent are undecided and seven percent would vote for a third-party candidate like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The poll was conducted between June 11 and June 12. The margin of error is +/- 3.36 percent.

Nate Silver mocks the left which have been pointing to THE POLLS! forever for suddenly having a case of #TwistedPollsSyndrome.

Nate Silver
@NateSilver538

This is the first time since 2004 (!) that the Democratic candidate is down in presidential polls on a sustained basis and yet it's been like 100% predictable which Twitter personalities Suddenly Have A Lot of Questions About The Polls.

During Pride Month, Virginia voters? DURING PRIDE MONTH?!?!

This is fun, but maybe unhelpful:

Half of Americans expect Biden to forget where he is at the "debate" "scheduled" for late June.

During Pride Month, America? DURING PRIDE MONTH!?!

Half of American voters expect President Biden to once again forget where he is during his crucial upcoming presidential debates -- with more than a third expecting him to wander offstage, a shocking new poll shows.

A staggering 70% expect the gaffe-prone 81-year-old to mess up his words during the TV debates -- while 40% think the oldest-ever president is so frail, he'll struggle to even get to his feet, according to the JL Partners poll published Thursday.

Biden's debate rival, former President Donald Trump, will likely easily win the debate, according to the poll -- with an overwhelming 90% of Republicans confident of his victory.

Most worrying, however, 49% expect Biden to forget where he is and 41% think he'll even walk the wrong way off the debate stage.

Asked what word best sums up their view of the president, those polled overwhelmingly said "Old."

I don't like this. People keep setting unrealistic expectations about Biden's performance -- I'm personally guilty of this -- like him actually having a seizure or Lost Time at a debate or speech, and then when he clears that incredibly low bar, people think, "Well, he wasn't as bad as I was expecting."

Biden has been getting by on rockbottom expectations and handfulls of amphetamines since 2019.

But Biden is clearly deteriorating at an increasingly fast pace so maybe this will be a debate in which he shows inarguably that he is unfit to be president, even with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash surrounding him and protecting him like G7 leaders at a skydiving exhibition.

And maybe Biden will just do what we all expect him to do, and contrive a reason to cancel.

But if he does that, he will lock in the public's expectations about his unfitness -- if he cancels last-minute, it will confirm people's belief that he would have forgotten he was even at a debate if he showed up at all.

The Democrats are panicking about the age issue. (This helps them ignore the immigration issue and the inflation issue. And the foreign corruption issue. And the fascist weaponization of government issue.)

John Sexton reports that the Washington Post's feminist dope Kathleen Parker thinks that what hurts Biden is the idea that if he dies in office, he'll be replaced by Kamala Harris, who people don't like.

So she has a terrific idea: replace Kamala Harris with the beloved.... Hillary Clinton.

Among her many other defects, Hillary Clinton badly complicates the left's "Trump won't accept the outcome of elections" narrative.

He also links this Sun article discussing Biden's accelerating deterioriation.

The 81-year-old has been "losing focus" during the gathering of world leaders in Puglia, Italy, according to well placed diplomatic sources.

One told The Sun: "It's the worst he has ever been."

As I keep saying: Dementia is a chronic condition. You don't get over dementia like you get over a cold. Every day it gets worse and worse.

Another insider added that while the president had shown moments of sharpness and clarity during meetings, at other times he had appeared to be "losing focus" and concentration.

Other attendees from multiple delegations have described Mr Biden's performance as "embarrassing".

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 02:20 PM | Comments (358) | Trackbacks (Suck)

In Both France and England, the Parties Representing the Center-Right and Right Are At War, and the Old Guard Fake "Conservative" Parties Are Imploding

One of the only decent conservatives in the "Conservative" Tory Party, Suella Braverman, invited Nigel Farage to rejoin her party, as it stands on the edge of the political cliff. The Conservative Party is facing an existential election -- they might lose 70% of their parliament seats.

The Conservative Party in the UK does nothing but conserve the "right" of millions of foreigners to change the country into something most voters don't want and never voted in favor of.

Nigel Farage sees the end of the Conservative Party coming, and says he's ready to lead the right wing after the destruction of the Conservatives.

And he says he'll consider accepting former Conservatives into his Reform Party, once the party is essentially killed off.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, who appears to be at the inflection point of overtaking the centuries-old Conservative Party as the major party of the British right says he would even consider taking over the Tories and incorporating them into Reform.

...

As Farage has repeatedly said in the past week the question is not now who will form the next British government, but rather who will have the important job of opposing it, and who will challenge it for power at the next election in 2029, or before. In normal times of Britain's legacy two-party system this would be the Conservatives who are presently in power, but they have upset their own voters so badly, there is a developing feeling the party deserves to win zero seats and to vanish for good.

That would leave Mr Farage as the leader of the opposition, he hopes. He told LBC: "We need a coherent voice of opposition in Parliament, and in the country. And do you know what... I believe I can do that better than the current Conservative Party". Separately this week, he had said: "they're done, they're toast and they thoroughly deserve it in my opinion".

...

Pressed on whether he would consider leading the Conservative Party itself by the host, Farage demurred but accepted he'd be willing to lead a merged Reform -- Conservative party, an outcome not unlike the Canadian example where the legacy Conservatives were defeated by the Canadian Reform Party, before the two merged.

He said: "There's no reason for this to be more than a one-term Labour government, but the centre right has got to sort itself out. And if that means the extinction of the 190 year old Conservative Party, so be it. Or it might mean something else."

He repeatedly called the "Conservative" Party "dead."

A new poll confirms that the Conservative Party is all but dead: Reform has overtaken it by a single point.

"That day has finally arrived. The latest YouGov voting intention survey, conducted 12-13 June, has Reform UK one point ahead of the Conservatives on 19% to 18%. While numerically ahead, it is worth keeping sight of the fact that these figures are well within the margin of error of one another -- we will not be able to tell for some time whether Reform can sustain or improve their position relative to the Conservatives."

Note that this is a disaster for both parties and a boon for Labour. With the right's vote now evenly split between Reform and the Tories, neither party can win more than a couple of handfuls of parliamentary seats. Labour will win seats with just 20-30% of the vote.

But, as the right in the UK has realized: We have to beat our first enemy first, and our first enemy is the fake Conservative Party that we vote for only to see it implement the left's agenda with gusto.

Here's some interesting news from France: For decades, the center-right party, which is currently called "Les Republicains," have had a rule of strict isolation towards the Le Pen party, currently called "Rassemblement National" or "National Rally."

They have refused to cooperate with the NR or strategize with them. And, when the presidential runoff produces Le Pen as a winner and someone from the left, the Republicains have elected mostly to support the leftwing candidate, rather than give any of their votes to the Deplorables.

But now the president of Les Republicains called for an alliance for the snap National Assembly elections.

According to Le Figaro, the head of the centre-right Les Républicains party, Éric Ciotti, has backed an alliance with Marine Le Pen's populist National Rally in the snap election called by President Emmanuel Macron. This potential coalition could drastically reshape the French political landscape, challenging the cordon sanitaire that has long isolated the National Rally.

Ciotti argues that forming an electoral alliance is crucial to steer the country back in the right direction, as he believes France is "in danger" due to the current political forces in power, including an "unnatural alliance of rebels" on the left and the "Macronist bloc." He emphasized the necessity of unity to fight against what he describes as migratory chaos, restore authority and order, and support the purchasing power of the French.

The reaction within Les Républicains has been mixed, with some senior figures like Olivier Marleix and Bruno Retailleu opposing the move, suggesting it undermines the party's integrity. On the other hand, Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella of the National Rally have welcomed the alliance, with Bardella emphasizing that this union prioritizes the interest of France over party politics.

I don't know the details but I assume the alliance would work like this:

French elections are held in two rounds, or tours, with the first tour being huge multicandidate elections. The top two vote-getters then proceed to the runoff.

In the past, the Republicains have often voted for a leftwing candidate rather than an NR one. So the NR makes it to the runoff a lot -- and then loses the runoff election.

The two parties would agree on a consensus candidate for most precincts. That is, if a Republicain is favored in a precinct, NR would stand down, and if an NR candidate is favored in a precinct, Les Republicains would withdraw their candidate. So that the votes of the right are not split between the two, permitting the left or the Marconists to win. (The Macronists are Tony-Blair/Bill-Clinton-esque "third way" corporate leftists.)

Or, when the first round of voting results in one candidate from the left winning and one candidate from the right, the parties agree that they will vote for the rightist candidate, whoever that is.

The elections are scheduled for June 30, with the runoff then on July 7.

Note that France's president is elected separately so this election will not dislodge Macron from office. It could seriously restrain and weaken him, though.

But... 57% of Frenchmen say that Macron should resign from the presidency if he loses the Assembly elections. I don't know if that's a realistic wish.

But there's new news: the other top party officials of LR declared that the president only spoke for himself, and then demanded he resign.

When he refused, they demanded entrance into the party HQ so that they could arrange a vote to depose him, but he locked them out of the HQ.

But then they got a spare key to the offices, went inside, and claimed they had voted him out of his leadership position. He says that vote doesn't count because it was procedurally defective, but it's pretty clear that LR is going to continue supporting the left over Le Pen.

But maybe NR doesn't need LR.

The former (?) president of Les Republicains did not call for an alliance because he had a change of heart. No, he called for an alliance because Le Pen's party might win so many seats that it controls a majority of Assembly seats.

259 seats constitute a majority in the National Assembly. A projection based on current polling shows that the National Rally might win that outright majority.

Below, LR is "Les Republicains" (center-right), Ensemble is Macron's corporate liberal party, and NUPES is an alliance of various leftwing and Green parties. "Autres" means "others." "Sieges" means "seats."

The projection based on polling is reported here. I have no idea how accurate the company is. I'm not a "journalist," so I don't know everything by simply existing and reading headlines on Twitter.

Politico continues spazzing out over political parties they don't really understand winning elections in countries they don't live in.

In France, Marine Le Pen's National Rally party is expected to trounce Macron's party, increasing the likelihood of the far-right leader, or someone of her ilk, winning a presidential election due in 2027.

Across the Rhine, the far-right Alternative for Germany party -- whose lead candidate recently told an Italian newspaper there were good people to be found among Nazi SS troops -- is seen as vying a second place with the Scholz's Social Democratic Party.

In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy party, which has its roots in the country's fascist past, is due to increase its number of seats in the European Parliament. In Poland, the nationalist, anti-abortion Law and Justice party is looking to make a comeback after losing power last December.

For a Continent that has prided itself on having laid the rest the ghosts of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, the resurgence of the right as a political forces is coming as a shock. POLITICO's Poll of Polls shows far-right groups substantially increasing their share of the 720 seats in the European Parliament to as many as 184 seats, as voters across the bloc swing to the right.

Will the American GOP get the message before we desert them as well?

Communism killed more people than fascism, but you never, and I do mean never, hear anyone on the left demanding that all communists be excluded from public life, or that all communist ideas be denounced, or that any party with a historical connection to communism be outlawed.

The Fascist Party in Italy was popular, at the time. That means that at one time half of Italians or so (maybe more) supported it.

Politico and the left demand that if you can draw any attenuated connections between the Fascist Party and a current politician, that politician must be deemed ineligible to hold office. And any idea ever championed by the Fascists -- like that the family is important and the state should pass laws that encourage family formation -- must likewise be discarded.

Just because.

Again, they are very comfortable with the progressive movement ideology being entirely based on Marxism. Politico never demands that AOC be booted out of office for her Connections to Communist Genocides.

And I have to say this: As someone who actually reads foreign newspapers, I have to say, the politics in foreign countries is hard to understand for Americans. Their ideas of "left" and "right" do not track with our own. People make facile and glib equivalencies -- Macron is a Good Democrat and Le Pen is an Evil Trumpist!!! -- which are absurd to anyone who has read anything about European politics that isn't in Politico or Time.

Le Pen champions expanded social spending and what I'd call socialism, for example.

At any rate: The media Emperors have no clothes. They are ludicrously uniformed and stupid. They are a bunch of loud, angry drunks in a bar screaming their ignorant opinions at everyone 24 hours a day, and when you ask them what reading they've done or experiences they've lived give them such absolute surety about the world outside of NY and DC newsrooms, they all say the same thing: "I am a JOURNALIST. Journalism school taught me how to think, and how to know things well outside of my training or experience. Journalism school taught me how to think without reason and to know without reading."

They really believe their silly, trifling 18-month degree has bequeathed upon them unquestionable expertise in all fields. They get physically enraged when you dispute this fundamental conceit.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 01:19 PM | Comments (297) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Politico Notices, Gee Willickers, Biden Says He's Not Involved In His Family's Foreign Buckraking Operations, But Weirdly All of His Aides Are Involved In the Grift

Yeah, how about that. It's almost as if Joe Biden is "The Brand" the family is selling to overseas clients and both his family members and his aides are getting rich off selling access.

I mean, it's like that, but it isn't that, because Biden has said he's not involved in Hunter's (or James') foreign shakedown operations and therefore any word to the contrary is a Conspiracy Theory offered Without Evidence, as Jake Tapper's chyrons put it.

And if Hunter's own emails say that 10% of his payments will go to "the Big Guy," and everyone involved says that "the Big Guy" is code for Joe Biden?

Well that has all the Hallmarks of a Russian Disinformation Campaign.

Biden insists he's not involved in his family's business dealings. But his aides are a different story.

The overlapping roles are under scrutiny as the president distances himself from his family's dealings.

By Ben Schreckinger

For years, Joe Biden shared a bookkeeper with his son, Hunter. He also shared a personal lawyer with his brother, Jim. And when Jim Biden wanted to know more about one of Hunter Biden's associates, he hired the former head of Joe Biden's Secret Service detail to investigate.

Since 2019, Joe Biden has repeatedly distanced himself from his family's business dealings, saying that he has never so much as discussed them with his relatives or with anyone else. But House impeachment inquiry interviews, public records and emails reviewed by POLITICO show that members of his inner circle were regularly enmeshed in those dealings: Many of the president's closest staffers and advisers have doubled as his relatives' business associates, both during and after their stints working for the man at the center of the Biden family orbit.

Those overlaps reflect an all-in-the family approach to business and politicking that dates back a half-century to the president's first Senate bid, run primarily by his parents and siblings. Since then, his political patrons have at times forged business ties with his relatives, who in turn have converted some of their business partners into campaign supporters. And over a lifetime in public life, some of the president's aides have taken on roles as surrogate members of the tight-knit Biden clan.

The Bidens' approach complicates their efforts to distance the president from his family's ventures.

It's incredible the contortions they put themselves through to avoid coming to the obvious conclusion. They won't say he's lying, no way. Instead they'll say, the obvious contradiction between Biden's claims and the actual facts "complicates" Biden's preferred narrative.

As Jim and Hunter Biden's foreign dealings have caused controversy and several of their business partners have been convicted of federal fraud and corruption crimes in recent years, any potential links between their business dealings and the president have come in for renewed scrutiny.

To allay concerns about any intermingling of their affairs, the Bidens have said that they observe strict interpersonal firewalls to avoid discussing business among themselves.

But with so many former and current aides in the mix -- and with the surfacing of private communications in which Jim and Hunter Biden suggest they represent their powerful relative in business matters -- onlookers are forced to take family members at their word that those firewalls always held.

In one instance, Jim Biden testified that he hired the former head of his brother's Secret Service detail, Dale Pupillo, to investigate a Chinese executive that Hunter Biden was doing business with in 2017.

Jim Biden said during his February impeachment inquiry interview that he commissioned Pupillo in advance of accompanying Hunter Biden to Hong Kong so that his nephew could meet with the executive, Patrick Ho.

Despite hiring a private investigator and traveling halfway around the world for the meeting, Jim Biden said he never asked Hunter Biden what Ho -- then on the cusp of being arrested, and later convicted, on federal corruption charges -- and his nephew were meeting about. He said the decision not to inquire about the meeting came down to a desire to quarantine his affairs from those of his nephew's.

"That may be hard for you to believe," he told an incredulous Republican staffer. "But that's the way we operate in my family."

That's the way they operate in Tony Soprano's family, too. "No don't hand the money to me directly, give it to my nephew Joe."

...

The hiring of Pupillo and the purpose of the Hong Kong meeting was subjected to extended scrutiny in Jim Biden's congressional interview.

A Republican staffer voiced a suspicion that the real reason Pupillo was hired was to provide intelligence about the Justice Department's probe that could then be communicated to Ho face-to-face.

"Was this person used to investigate Patrick Ho to try and identify whether or not there was a federal investigation before you and Hunter Biden went out to go visit Patrick Ho so that you could inform Patrick Ho if there was an indictment or a federal investigation, maybe, that was under seal?" the staffer asked.

"Absolutely not," Jim Biden responded. "This was for my personal edification, because I do not like to walk into blind buildings, okay?"

...

"It's odd," suggested a Republican staffer, "that you would go to such lengths to hire a private investigator to look into Patrick Ho, but then you wouldn't even just ask Hunter Biden, your relative, like, 'why are we going and who is this guy?'"

"The way that we deal in my family, it wasn't odd," Jim Biden responded. "To others it might be."

Strategic ignorance.

"If I accept this letter from you, Kate, a prosecutor could use that to prove that I know Michael's current whereabouts."

By the way I believe that Jim Biden didn't know just as much as I believe Tom Hagen didn't know where Michael was.

...

POLITICO previously reported on the accounts of three former executives at Americore, a troubled hospital chain that Jim Biden worked closely with, who said that Jim Biden spoke of various plans to involve his older brother in the company.

One of the executives told POLITICO that Jim Biden, who was negotiating for a large equity stake in Americore in 2018, said at the time that his older brother would get a piece of the company, too.

...

A June 2018 email shows that Monzack helped negotiate a proposed deal that would have given Jim Biden's company 35 percent of Americore.

Monzack is a lawyer representing, get this, Joe Biden.

The article also discusses Francis Person, one of Joe Biden's "body men" -- bodyguards who maintain a close presence to the client -- who Biden once said was "like a son."

That body man is also in "business" with Hunter Biden.

A series of WhatsApp messages between Person and Hunter Biden from the summer of 2017 show that discussions of potential partnerships lasted for years and included offers of personal financial help for Hunter Biden from Person's Chinese business partner, Harves executive Bo Zhang.

The messages were included in an exhibit provided to the House Ways and Means Committee by IRS special agent Joseph Ziegler, who investigated Hunter Biden's tax matters. Ziegler said in an affidavit that the WhatsApp messages summarized in the exhibit were obtained via search warrants.

In the messages, Hunter Biden detailed his daunting personal debts, while Person expressed a desire to work with Hunter Biden and said that Zhang was eager to provide the financially distressed political scion with monetary assistance.

"I've got one loyalty brother. That's to my family. Your family," Person, who did not respond to requests for comment, wrote in one July 27, 2017, message. "I talked to Bo previously about the 37K -- he didn't flinch. I will talk to him about 56K and possibly 100K. It really depends on his liquid assets in the US ... I will ask. His only problem is getting large sums out of China (especially right now)."

Next: Eric Schwerin. Hunter Biden's "business partner" who coincidentally also takes care of Joe Biden's personal finances.

Firewall, baby! Three feet of legal concrete reinforced with ethical steel separating Joe Biden from Hunter Biden's business dealings!

Schwerin, who met Hunter Biden when they both worked in the Clinton Administration's Commerce Department, went on to work as his lobbying partner.

At the beginning of the Obama administration, the pair co-founded Rosemont Seneca Partners, an investment and consulting firm. Schwerin also oversaw Rosemont's finances and helped manage Hunter Biden's personal finances. In those roles, Schwerin participated in and managed the tax implications of some of Hunter Biden's controversial overseas dealings.

During the Obama years, Schwerin took over Joe Biden's bookkeeping as well, he told congressional impeachment investigators in January, saying that the volunteer role entailed bill-paying and tax preparation.

Schwerin testified that Hunter Biden did not cover expenses for his father. "I do not recall anything," he said. "It's possible there were small things here and there, but I don't recall anything major." Schwerin added that Hunter Biden paid for a family cell phone plan used by his father and that his father would reimburse him for it.

Meanwhile, Schwerin's day job kept him involved in Hunter Biden's overseas business dealings.

In one episode, Schwerin referred Burisma -- a Ukrainian energy firm that installed Hunter Biden on its board in 2014 as it navigated corruption allegations -- to the Democratic lobbying firm Blue Star Strategies for help with government relations, according to his testimony.

The referral worked out. Blue Star helped Burisma fend off a corruption investigation in Ukraine, before its work with the energy firm itself became the subject of a Justice Department probe. Blue Star belatedly registered as a foreign agent, but the DOJ probe was reportedly closed with no finding of wrongdoing.

The DOJ is a organized criminal gang.

I wonder how many of these Selfless Civil Servants are dipping their beaks:

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 12:15 PM | Comments (291) | Trackbacks (Suck)

THE MORNING RANT: #NeverHogan - Would Republicans Support Liz Cheney as a “GOP” Senator from Maryland?

In the election for US Senator from Maryland this November, I do not want the Republican candidate to win. A Democrat senator from Maryland will do far less harm to the Trump agenda than Larry Hogan will do if he is elected as a Republican.

I am well aware of the Buckley rule (which effectively states that conservatives should support the rightwardmost viable candidate in a given race) and I still generally support that concept. I would gladly vote for Susan Collins if I lived in Maine. But the Buckley Rule gets thrown out the window if the “rightwardmost candidate” is running on a platform of sabotaging the presidency of a Republican with a conservative agenda.

Would any among us vote for Liz Cheney if she were the Republican senate candidate in Maryland? If you wouldn’t vote for Cheney, why would you vote for Larry Hogan? He is campaigning to be the Liz Cheney of Trump’s 2nd term.

Why is Maryland Governor Larry Hogan even running for the US Senate? He makes it very clear that his motivation to trade the Governor’s Mansion for the Senate is due to his hostility toward Donald Trump, and to stop Donald Trump’s agenda.

Hogan actually stated that the precipitating event that made him decide to run is Trump’s opposition to Biden’s border agenda as laid out in Biden’s border bill this past spring. (The bill was defeated by senate Republicans, who denied it the 60 votes it needed.)

“Hogan: Trump push against bipartisan border bill made me ‘angry enough’ to run for Senate” [The Hill 3/04/2024]

Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) says former President Trump’s efforts to help to tank the Senate’s bipartisan border bill is the reason he decided to enter his state’s Senate race. “It’s why I decided to run for the Senate, actually,” Hogan said Monday.

An actual conservative governor, Ron DeSantis, had this to say about Biden’s border bill that Larry Hogan so passionately supported:

During a news conference in Miami Monday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis called the Senate Bill a “farce” and a “dog and pony show” that will just exacerbate the border crisis. “People are starting to point out what a farce it is to basically say that you only shut the border down once 5,000 people a day come in illegally, which is about two million a year,” DeSantis said. “That’s basically legalizing illegal immigration.”

That is correct. Biden’s border bill would have enshrined in law the authorization for 1,825,000 million illegal aliens per year to enter and remain in the US. That is 1,825,000 more than are currently allowed under the laws that Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas are flagrantly ignoring. And Larry Hogan is so passionate about allowing 1.8 million illegal immigrants into the US each year that he wants to go to battle with Donald Trump to protect Biden’s open border when Trump is elected.

Beyond the border, Hogan has such an advanced case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that he can’t even condemn the political show trial against Donald Trump, an assault on our legal system that was so egregious that even most hardcore NeverTump conservatives objected to it. In fact, Hogan urges us all to “respect” the verdict, and to respect the legal process that is going to imprison Trump for his undefinable, victimless “crimes.” If that’s not enough, Hogan also states that we are engaging in “toxic partisanship” if we oppose the Biden administration and its allies for seeking to imprison Biden’s political adversaries.

What about judicial nominations? Hogan will almost certainly be siding with the Democrats in trying to defeat Trump’s nominees. Back in autumn of 2020, when Trump suddenly had the opportunity to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, Governor Hogan refused to join 24 other Republican governors in a letter of support for the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett.

Posted by: Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM | Comments (305) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Mid-Morning Art Thread

Woman, I
Willem de Kooning

Here's the description from The Metropolitan Museum of Art:

The result of a protracted period of labor that involved the creation and destruction of many other possible versions, Woman, I appears to be suspended in a state of arrested development. The effect was deliberate: throughout his career, de Kooning prized experimentation, editing, and testing. To this end, he employed a range of techniques, from cutting, masking, and collaging to scraping, wiping, and blotting. Although he also produced individual sketches, the real sketching happened on his canvases. Yet this alone does not account for the unfinished quality of his finished painting. De Kooning’s purposefully fluid, undisciplined brushwork and his tendency to disregard contour lines produce a visual chaos that suggests incompletion, whether spatial, physical, or technical. "I refrain from finishing," the artist said in 1958. He elaborated in 1960: "I was never interested . . . [in] how to make a good painting. . . . I didn’t want to pin it down at all."

Well, I agree with de Kooning's quotation!

And here is a short discussion about it...and yes, it is more nonsense.

So why did I post this? Because it is art. I think it is self-indulgent crap, but there is a certain seriousness about it, and obviously the current art world is enamored of this sort of stuff, which I consider "Anti-Art."

Or, shArt.

Posted by: Sponge - F*ck Joe Biden

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (406) | Trackbacks (Suck)