Sunday Overnight Open Thread - December 22, 2024 [Doof]

Howdy Hordelings, and welcome to the fourth week of December and the first day of winter! Thanks for stopping by this Sunday’s ONT. Hope you are cozy and warm wherever you are! Let's see what fell out of the ONT bag of stuff tonight.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (421) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gun Thread: Sunday Before Christmas Edition!

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

Holy Shitballs! How in the ever-loving Hell did it get to be the Sunday before Christmas? Have you finished your Wish List and distributed it to all of your gift givers? What are you hoping to find under the tree come Christmas morning? Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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

Posted by: Weasel at 07:00 PM | Comments (270) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Food Thread: End Of Year Coasting...

I love those things! Yorkshire Pudding isn't a pudding, and I doubt it's from Yorkshire originally, but it is also a simple, delicious, and undeniably festive addition to a holiday or everyday table.

It's equal parts eggs, milk, and flour, with a pinch of salt. How much easier can a recipe get! Then into hot muffin tins with beef tallow, a 15-20 minute bake on high heat (425 degrees), and you are done!

Of course you have to render your own beef fat, because that's half the fun of it. And while you are doing that you might as well make beef stock, because why not? Did I say this was easy?

***
I will be mostly absent this afternoon; we are having a Sunday Roast! So please...put your pants on!

Posted by: CBD at 04:00 PM | Comments (246) | Trackbacks (Suck)

First-World Problems...

Those flowers are so large and numerous that I had to stabilize the stems!

The struggle is real!

Seriously, We bought a couple of amaryllis from the high school band. They go door to door every fall, selling them or poinsettias to finance...something. Hopefully not a cocaine-driven orgy.

The kids are always earnest and friendly and very focused. It is a real pleasure, and makes me hopeful for the future.

Posted by: CBD at 02:00 PM | Comments (219) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Merry Christmas!

America is a Christian country.

Yes, I said it, and I am very happy that is the case. What is stupendous and unique about this marvelous country is that it is also a secular republic that is structurally respectful of the minority view.

The Christmas season is my favorite time of the year. I am firmly and contentedly Jewish, so my appreciation is focused on the happiness and joy and beauty that is so evident everywhere. Let us get rid of the silliness of "Happy Holidays," and accept the reality that the "Holiday" is Christianity celebrating the birth of Jesus. It's called Christmas...Christ's Mass. That's pretty clear!

And in case you were wondering whether you were going to dodge a bullet and miss Luciano Pavarotti?

Nope.

That was my father's favorite Christmas song, and this version is marvelous. He would listen to it and sing along in Latin, which he gave a French accent. But it stuck in my head, and whenever I listen to it (and I listen to it a LOT), I think of that...

Thank you all for being loyal and engaged readers and commenters. This strange place would be very different, and not nearly as fun (and maddening) without the vigorous participation of so many of you.

I hope all of you have a wonderful and peaceful and satisfying Christmas, however you may enjoy it. I will be hosting a Sunday Roast this afternoon, which seems appropriate for the season! If you are having 75 people for a Christmas party, or a quiet evening alone, please enjoy the season, our wonderful country, and the renewed prospects for the coming years!

Merry Christmas!

Posted by: CBD at 12:00 PM | Comments (159) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sunday Morning Book Thread - 12-22-2024 ["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, sugar those plums, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:00 AM | Comments (234) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 22 December 2024

Top Story

• Why AI is stupid garbage and everyone in the industry is lying frantically to cover up the truth. (Ars Technica)
  
  Okay, I may have paraphrased Tim Lee at Ars just a little there, but if you look at the promises AI leaders have made against the mathematical problems they face, that is the gist of the situation.
  
  AI - LLM-based generative AI, not the more interesting discriminative AI - uses a technology called transformers which lets it process data in a massively parallel way. This requires about the same amount of work as a traditional neural network on simple prompts, while being able to use highly parallel hardware like graphics cards, so you get the result much faster.
  
  For simple prompts:

  The longer the context gets, the more attention operations (and therefore computing power) are needed to generate the next token.

  This means that the total computing power required for attention grows quadratically with the total number of tokens. Suppose a 10-token prompt requires 414,720 attention operations. Then:

  • Processing a 100-token prompt will require 45.6 million attention operations.
  • Processing a 1,000-token prompt will require 4.6 billion attention operations.
  • Processing a 10,000-token prompt will require 460 billion attention operations.

  So as you make your question more detailed and specific, the amount of time taken to produce an answer increases rapidly.
  
  Work is now on to replace transformer models with classic neural networks, which don't have these limitations, but also don't have the magical ease of development of the transformer model.
  
  But that means that promises of AGI next year are simply lies.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (233) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Open Thread

[Hat Tip: TC]

Yes...Yes. It's confusing, but you maniacs will power through it!

Posted by: CBD at 10:13 PM | Comments (289) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Evening Movie Thread - 12/21/2024

IT

A couple of years ago, I decided that I was going to read Stephen King's novels in publishing order until they bored me. I've made it into his 80s output, and I picked up IT, his magnum opus. Reading it in about a month, the 1200 page novel is...a complete and total mess. The first 20% had me hooked, though. It was great. There was this promise and sense of ill-defined danger that worked marvelously well as King jumped us between 1958 and 1985 with this sense of impending doom infecting everything.

And then things began to unravel. He focuses fully on 1958 for a long stretch, and it feels like a more typical King novel than the promise of greatness that had started things. There's a heavy issue with repetitive vignettes that don't actually feel that dangerous because kids keep escaping the central monster. The adults don't actually have a whole lot to do, and when they do become the focus just after the halfway point, they also go through their repetitive, but not dangerous vignettes. Things really pick up again in the final 20% of the book when the jumping between time periods ramps up as both adults and children go into the sewers underneath the central New England town of Derry, Maine, danger ramping up once more. And then...King lets his freak flag fly while also demonstrating that he doesn't know how to pull off endings or fulfill the promise of Lovecraftian horror like he would dream.

And yet...there are people who love this book. Love it. Think it's one of the greatest pieces of English literature ever written. I'm only noting that I don't agree, and I think I am closer to the general consensus which is: good, not great, and could use real editing (I'd go with okay, not good, and in need of an axe).

In the context of film, that presents an interesting question. The book has been adapted twice over the past thirty-five years. The first was on network television, a three-hour mini-series on ABC directed by Tommy Lee Wallace (an early close compatriot of John Carpenter). The second was a two-part, big budget, feature film directed by Andy Muschietti. With such a large, messy, and generally accepted flawed original source material, it presents an interesting case study in how to approach adaptations. Add in the fact that both filmed versions are actually quite different from each other, and you've got an interesting slice of cinematic adaptation.

And, as a note, this is going to feel a fair bit opaque to those not at least passingly familiar with the characters. Sorry, but I don't think I can drag this out another 1,000 words to give that clarity. It's way too long as it is.

Posted by: TheJamesMadison at 07:45 PM | Comments (235) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hobby Thread - December 21, 2024 [TRex]

Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the Horde in this little corner of the interweb. This is the mighty, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread.

As previewed, the Ace of Spades Wheel of Hobbies(TM) has determined that the Hobby Thread theme of the week is Christmas and Hanukkah crafting. The Wheel is feeling festive and might be a little tipsy after getting into the spiked eggnog.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:30 PM | Comments (148) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ace of Spades Pet Thread, December 21

Courtesy of Sarah Hoyt by way of mindful webworker who sent me the link to Hoyt's webpage . . .

Enjoy!

"Perfessor" Squirrel

Heh.

* * *

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 03:00 PM | Comments (98) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, Dec 21

Merry weekend before Christmas! And Hanukkah! It's a time for gardening eye candy. Above, a boxed Amaryllis (Hippeastrum) grown by a cousin whose husband ordered bulbs for her from a "Bulb of the Month Club". Great gift!

Below, another one that started blooming on November 21, grown by her friend:

Posted by: K.T. at 01:00 PM | Comments (43) | Trackbacks (Suck)

A bold educational change in New Zealand

The Culture of New Zealand

* * * * *

Something to talk about while the family is home for the holidays

Steven Hayward:

It is a rare day that I suggest we follow New Zealand’s example for anything, but this is one step Congress and the Trump Administration should strongly consider in their efforts to force universities to reform themselves (which they are not going to do without concentrated and sustained outside pressure):

From Science magazine:

Amid cuts to basic research, New Zealand scraps all support for social sciences

This week, in an announcement that stunned New Zealand’s research community, the country’s center-right coalition government said it would divert half of the NZ$75 million Marsden Fund, the nation’s sole funding source for fundamental science, to “research with economic benefits.” Moreover, the fund would no longer support any social sciences and humanities research, and the expert panels considering these proposals would be disbanded.

Links at the link.

BOLD! What do you think led to this move?

Hmmmmm . . .

New Zealand expects to post budget deficits over five-year forecast period

Immigration: Another annual record for departures from New Zealand

Posted by: K.T. at 11:00 AM | Comments (199) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Classical Saturday Coffee Break & Prayer Revival

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian (ONT Cob Emeritus) at 08:46 AM | Comments (357) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 21 December 2024

Top Story

• Here's a list of the 49 American AI startups that have raised $100 million or more in 2024. (Tech Crunch)
  
  Top among them is OpenAI, which raised $6.6 billion this year, but close behind is Elon Musk's xAI, which raised $6 billion.
  
  Interestingly Europe didn't miss the boat with Mistral leading the table there with $1.2 billion raised.
  
  What all that money will achieve I don't know.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (172) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Just The ONT, Ma'am

Hi Horde! Friday night, what's everyone up to? Time to get silly.

Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:00 PM | Comments (245) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Giant Animals Cafe

Big Jake, one of the World's largest horses during his time

Big moose.

Major elephant.

Big bison.

That's no king cobra, it's a Kong cobra:

Massive moose Elk.

That's a big bull.

Colossal cow.

Serious bunny.

More big critters in the thread.

Cat has opinions on whether or not it's time to wake up.

Dog has opinions on whether your being five minutes late to give him dinner is acceptable or not.

Blowing bubbles in freezing air. It's a little more interesting than you might think.

Otters of a non-evil nature.

Gotta keep your eye out for these rapacious Scandis.

Baby racoon wants to be involved.

Owls have +12 to stealth checks.

Some people just don't like hearing Christmas songs 24/7.

Hoosegow Honey.

Puppy obstacle course.

Friday!

Happy reindeer is limbering up for his big night!

Posted by: Ace at 07:28 PM | Comments (319) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Quick Hits

Why do they always look like this?

There is an answer, of course: because radical, revolutionary politics, which promises to bring down society's winners and replace them with society's losers, are naturally favored by society's losers.

#SorryNotSorry but that's the truth. Marxism is a politics for the ugly, unwanted, uneducated, unhealthy, and insane.

Ryan Saavedra
@RealSaavedra

Reporters did not ask Karine Jean-Pierre a single question about The Wall Street Journal report from yesterday that outlined how the White House hid President Joe Biden's cognitive decline from the public.

The Democrats are holding disaster funds for (red states) Florida and North Carolina hostage, but don't worry, Biden's handlers just approved by their usurped kingly authority a $1 billion payment to Save Some Trees in Ecuador.

Some crime investigators think that the hearthrob terrorist that deplorable leftwing women flick their beans over must have had an accomplice acting as a "spotter" for his target.

Top crime investigators are convinced the suspected UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter carried out the cold-blooded murderer with the help of an accomplice, DailyMail.com can reveal.

...

But two leaders in the investigative field who have analyzed the case have now told DailyMail.com that some key details are being ignored -- and that those clues point to at least one accomplice to the alleged murderer.

...

O'Shea says the coincidence of the shooter arriving within five minutes of Thompson emerging from his hotel, suspicious behavior by others on CCTV, and conflicting witness statements, all suggest the killer knew exactly when to pounce thanks to help from at least one other person.

A second industry leader in private intelligence for celebrities and CEOs spoke to DailyMail.com on condition of anonymity due to being close to the case.

This second top security expert also pointed to CCTV footage of the assassin talking on the phone to an as-yet-unidentified contact while walking to the Hilton Midtown 15 minutes before the murder took place.

These top PIs are asking: could that call have been from an accomplice monitoring the movements of the UnitedHealthcare CEO?

Further arguments about Mangione having an inside line here.

America's Sweetheart -- no, the lesbian one with pink hair, not the brother-marrying one who said some people did some things -- is running her ugly mouth again.

In an incredibly predictable fashion, Megan Rapinoe was a fan of Caitlin Clark's recent comments about how she has benefited from 'white privilege' throughout her life and basketball career. The former U.S. women's soccer standout didn't stop at simply applauding Clark's comment, however, Rapinoe also took a shot at conservatives in the process.

"I want to say I've earned every single thing, but as a white person, there is privilege," was the quote from Clark that lit the Internet ablaze after she was named Time's Athlete of the Year.

Rapinoe co-hosts the 'A Touch More' podcast with her partner, WNBA legend Sue Bird. The two discuss noteworthy topics in the sports world and offer the exact same opinion. Typically, that opinion involves tongue-in-cheek remarks insinuating how awful, racist and misogynistic the United States is as a country.

Clark, arguably the most popular female athlete in the world, talking about her white privilege was music to Bird and Rapinoe's ears. When race and sport intertwine, Rapinoe is like a kid in a candy store, and this instance was no different.

What also wasn't different was Rapinoe singling out conservatives in her response and then trying to articulate some sort of original thought, but instead suffering from a case of word vomit.

"I think what Caitlin did in her quotes, or in the article, was speak explicitly about her white privilege, like and that is what is receiving so much criticism or backlash, and like that is the lesson," the former NWSL star said. "So, you know, for conservative media coming at her now that obviously they're just showing their whole ass," Rapinoe said.

"If fans are upset about her saying that and just acknowledging what is true, I think that says a lot. But I think the more that you speak directly to it the clearer it becomes what your stance is, and then you can't be used in that way. It doesn't really leave your beliefs or your stance as a white player to any sort of interpretation."

Republican Oklahoma GOP Senator is scheming to craft another Comprehensive Amnesty plan with Democrats.

It never stops.

At least one GOP Senator is working with pro-migration Democrats to draft a border bill for 2025, a report in Axios.com. detailed Thursday.

Oklahoma Republican Markwayne Mullin told the outlet his "serious" project could replace the fast-track reconciliation bill that is now expected to massively fund border security and enforcement in early 2025.

"If we can do border separately -- without reconciliation -- then [President Donald Trump is] okay with" a single reconciliation bill for tax cuts, Mullin told Axios.

The details are "very secret," he said.

Several pro-migration Democratic Senators are working with Mullin. They include Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), according to Axios.

...

Kelly told Axios that the Mullin bill must include their version of "immigration reform." That is an establishment euphemism for amnesty, more legal migrants, and more federal support for migrants. "If there's willingness [by Mullin] to work in a bipartisan way to do some stuff, not only on border security, but on immigration reform, I think it would be great," Kelly told Axios.

Posted by: Ace at 06:16 PM | Comments (195) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Democrat Strategist Ruy Texiera: The Public Gave the Democrats a Clear Message About Their Rejection of Identity Marxism, But the Democrats Don't Want to Listen

They're doubling down.

In the wake of the Democrats' drubbing at the hands of Donald Trump and the GOP, you'd assume the party would be all-in on a fundamental rethink, starting with some serious soul-searching on how the party came to be so out of sync with the majority of America on key cultural questions.

Questions like: Is America a "white supremacist" society? Is it racist to question levels of immigration? Are citing one's personal pronouns necessary? Is anyone who questions the differences between trans women from biological women a bigot who should be expunged from polite society? For each of these questions, the answer for the overwhelming majority of Americans is an obvious no. But in elite Democratic circles, it's a different story. For a party pondering its unpopularity, you might think that this gap would be a good place to start.

Well, if the six weeks since the election is anything to go by, you'd be wrong. Instead, much of the party is maneuvering to change as little as possible on the cultural front. Why? Because many of today's Democrats are culture denialists. That is, they do not consider cultural issues to be real issues. Instead, they see them as fictions, distractions, or expressions of bigotry that are to be opposed, not indulged.

Consider Greg Casar, the new chair of the powerful Congressional Progressive Caucus. In a recent interview with NBC News, Casar urged the Democrats to "re-emphasize core economic issues every time some of these cultural war issues are brought up." He said that "when we hear Republicans attacking queer Americans again, I think the progressive response needs to be that a trans person didn't deny your health insurance claim, a big corporation did--with Republican help." Casar said that "the Republican Party obsession" with culture war issues is "driven by Republicans' desire to distract voters and have them look away while Republicans pick their pocket."

Massachusetts Democratic representative Jim McGovern echoed Casar's thoughts recently with this rhetoric about Republicans: "They want to blame trans people? Guess what? Trans people aren't the ones raising people's grocery prices. Big corporations are." Republicans, he added, "want to blame immigrants. . . . Immigrants aren't the ones denying health insurance claims. . . . it's the billion-dollar insurance companies that do that."

Get it? These aren't real issues. They're just distractions ginned up by Republicans for nefarious political purposes. The logical conclusion of this argument is that Democrats don't need to actually change their position on any "culture war" issue. Instead, they just need to change the subject and talk about mustache-twirling corporate villains.

...

Or perhaps the real problem, some Democrats argue, is that the party hasn't communicated its wonderful positions adeptly and thoroughly enough. With the right spin, maybe their positions on everything, from the economy to transgender issues and immigration would be popular. This seems to be the view of the two leading candidates for chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Ken Martin, head of Minnesota's Democratic Party (technically its Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party), has a 10-point plan that calls for a "massive narrative and branding project." Ben Wikler, head of Wisconsin's Democratic Party, believes Democrats must "become the narrator" of their own brand.

This all seems reasonable enough but, cutting through the verbiage, nowhere do these candidates for the DNC chair concede the party's cultural vulnerabilities. When reading their pitches for the powerful post, it's as if those problems don't exist.
The outgoing DNC chair takes things even further. Since the election, Jaime Harrison has strenuously resisted the idea Democrats should abandon "identity politics," saying they represent how "people of color" see Democrats fighting for them.

Invoking his status as a black man, he remarked: "That is my identity. . . . it is not politics. It is my life. And the people that I need in the party, that I need to stand up for me, have to recognize that. You cannot run away from that." In other words, Democrats should double down on so-called culture war issues like race and gender that are so off-putting to voters. This is a strange recommendation since, as Democrats have become ever more associated with identity politics, they have been doing ever more poorly among non-white voters, especially non-white working-class voters. Their advantage among the latter group has declined by more than half since 2012.

I was wondering when the Democrats would change course, and I decided it probably wouldn't be for another 8 years.

It took the Democrats 12 years of losing the White House to finally pretend to moderate. Bill Clinton was their fig-leaf of "moderation."

But it took three crushing losses in a row to even get there.

The Democrat Cult will keep doubling down until they lose twice more.

They're in such a (Satanic) religious fervor now, and they are so ruthless in attacking and shaming and cancelling any heretics who question current cult doctrine, that they might not ever be able to moderate. The entire party might just have to collapse and be replaced by an emergent alternate-liberal party.

Ed Morrissey writes that Democrat strategist James Carville, campaign director for the "moderate" Bill Clinton, is making a similar argument.

The Daily Caller:

"Anybody that questions the absolute, unquestionable benefits of transition surgery is going to be called this equivalent of being against civil rights or being against women having the right to vote ... somebody can fact-check me, it's banned in Nordic countries," Carville said. "I think the liberal Labor government of Britain just passed legislation on that question." ...

"But you can't -- if you say the border, we should have had something different -- well, that makes you a racist. If you say that we should proceed with caution on this transition surgery ... then you're slammed. And the tyranny of the left is tyranny. And not only tyranny that it causes people grief, it loses us elections, people," Carville said. "And I got to tell you ... there are people that think this, and I'm increasingly agreeing with them."

"There are a substantial number of people in the Democratic Party -- almost exclusively coastal, almost exclusively white, almost exclusively higher-educated -- that would rather lose and feel superior about themselves than have to go through the trouble to do the stuff it takes necessary to win an election," he continued. "And as long as that philosophy is part of the Democratic coalition, it is going to continue to cause unbelievable damage to our electoral prospects. I cannot say it any simpler than that."

Morrissey comments:

This formulation is pure Carville. He structures this argument so that it's less concerned about the actual tyranny than it is about the elections. If tyranny won elections, you get the sense that Carville might gripe a bit, but he'd also appreciate it from an electoral-strategy point of view.

As it happens, though, tyranny turns out to be ... unpopular. In fact, that's it's defining characteristic. If these policies were popular, the Left wouldn't need to impose them with tyrannical methods, after all. Carville seems to miss that point in this rant, although to be fair, it's clipped from an obviously longer argument that Carville makes.

In fairness, you cannot tell these cultists that tyranny is bad, because they want the tyranny. This is what the revolution preaches: Tear down society until you can install yourself as dictators and impose your weird, sick vision of the anointed on the unwilling masses.

You can only make the argument that their tyranny will result in them giving the right the power to impose tyranny.

Morrissey acknowledges this as well:

Tyranny is both the strategy and the end goal.

Remember, though, "reporters" can't report on Biden's obvious senility until one of his top-raking aides/coup-conspirators admits he's senile:

Posted by: Ace at 05:20 PM | Comments (177) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Kamala Harris To Be Offered $20 Million in a Media Payoff Disguised as an "Advance" on Book Royalties
Plus: Media Makes Excuses for Covering Up Biden's Obvious Senility

At Victory Girls, as reported by the Daily Mail, another corrupt media company will offer Kamala Harris a $20 million bribe in the form of a "book advance" for royalties they know she'll never, ever earn.

Kamala Harris, who bizarrely blew through a record $1.5billion on her failed presidential campaign, may soon earn some big-bucks payback.

Top publishers, DailyMail.com has learned exclusively, are willing to pay the soon-to-be former vice president and twice-failed Democratic presidential hopeful a whopping advance of as much as $20million for an inside look at President Joe Biden's, 82, White House and presidential campaign tell-all.

According to a Kamala insider: 'Virtually the moment Kamala lost to Trump, the offers began pouring in from the publishing world for her to do the definitive book on what really went on between Joe and Kamala -- what went right and what went wrong -- inside the Oval Office walls, and all the ups and downs of her campaign.

'They are throwing around advance numbers in the $20million range, maybe more with other publishing rights.'

...

A prominent executive at one of New York's top liberal-leaning publishing houses told DailyMail.com: 'More than anyone in the Biden White House, Kamala as the number two, and then as Joe Biden's campaign successor after he dropped out of the race, knows all the secrets, knows where all the skeletons are buried.

'She was there from the beginning of the administration and participated in all the presidential decisions, right or wrong. She's the one who can tell the consummate story.

Sure, sure. She'll "tell all." Sure.

These outsized "advances" for leftwing politicians are simply bribes. An advance is just the royalties you would collect in the future, but paid in advance. It's literally an advance on expected future royalties.

But no one, and I mean no one, expects Kamala Harris's book to earn $20 million in royalties. She'd make about 10% per book in royalties, so a $20 book would earn her $2. She'd have to sell ten million books to make $20 million royalty.

She won't. She'll struggle to make a one million dollar royalty.

This is not a payment, this is a pay-off. Remember, she still intends to run for office. There is no way to pay off a politician legally for future favors -- except through these corrupt "book deal" payoff operations.

All politicians should be required to only take real royalties for their book deals. No "advances" which are completely divorced from reality. They can earn for their books, but they should earn what they actually earn, not what a multibillion dollar media conglomerate with business before the government thinks they might be worth as a paid operative.

Unrelated: Former CNN Thumb Chris Cillizza admits he is a weakling and coward who can easily be bullied by more aggressive people. That's why, he says, he refused to report on Biden's obvious mental decline.

The White House worked to make him "feel bad" about any reporting on this, the admitted beta male follower cuck says to excuse himself of responsibility.

"Republicans would regularly ping me and say 'Why don't you ask more questions about Joe Biden and how he's doing? He's 76, 77, 78-year-old man,'" Cillizza said. He continued, "And I would sort of brush them off because what I would say is 'Well, there's no obvious evidence that he's declining. He moves a little slower. He talks a little slower but there's no evidence that he's declining.'

"And the White House and the people around Joe Biden were absolutely adamant that suggesting anything...asking the question about whether he was in some physical, mental or both decline was offensive. 'How could you?! It's age shaming.' And I think impacted me at some level. Because while I did ask the question from time to time...I didn't really push on it if I'm being honest."

A bit later he returned to this adding, "There was a shame factor that went into that. People around Biden worked to make you feel bad when you asked whether he was up to the job of being president, running for president again and serving for another four years...And they did a very good job, until they couldn't any more, of hiding it."

Two points here. First, I guarantee you that there are 50 or 100 other DC reporters who could all tell this same story. All of them were cowed by the White House for years. That's obvious in retrospect. Few wanted to risk their access to the exclusive club by stating what was increasingly evident to everyone. That was especially true given that the right had taken up the issue. No media person wants to agree with them. It's career suicide to take anything the right says seriously.

More at Sexton's article. He points out that Cillizza says that the Trump debate showed everyone that Biden had "good days and bad days," but Sexton wants to know: What "bad days" did Biden have that we didn't see on video? Did he have a "bad day" when he sleepwalked through the Afghanistan bug-out debacle, for example?

We'll never know, because reporters never bothered themselves about it. They just kept repeating the mantra that when the cameras were not running, Joe Biden was performing Chinese Kung Fu Human Pyramid Attacks like he was one of the Five Deadly Venoms.*

Scott Adams made the point that Cillizza pretends that the only reportage he could do was asking questions of the White House staff. Because the White House staff would not admit Biden's obvious senility, he could do no stories about it.

Posted by: Ace at 04:20 PM | Comments (286) | Trackbacks (Suck)