THE MORNING RANT: The Ivy League Endowments’ Liquidity Crisis May Be Worsening

The liquidity crisis at Harvard and other Ivy League schools may be getting worse. I first wrote about this two months ago:

“Harvard’s Endowment Is Having a Cash Crunch” [Buck Throckmorton – 3/08/2024]

But Harvard is sitting on a $50 billion endowment. How much could it hurt Harvard to lose an incremental billon or two? The answer is, it could hurt a lot. It did hurt Harvard immensely.

While the endowment may be valued at $50 billion, it is apparently not weighted very heavily toward liquid investments such as stocks and bonds. Therefore, Harvard relies on the mega-donors’ recurring giving to provide the cash to pay the bills. When those donors closed their checkbooks, Harvard found itself in an asset-rich but cash-poor situation.

So, despite its massive endowment, Harvard finds itself having to rush a bond offering in order to raise the cash needed to keep the lights on.

It was announced in February that Harvard University was floating a $1.65 billion bond offering, choosing to take on over a billion dollars of debt to maintain the cash liquidity it needs to operate the university, since not enough fresh cash is flowing in. The intention was to raise $750 million with a taxable bond sale through Goldman Sachs, and another $900 million of tax-exempt bonds to be issued by the state of Massachusetts.

In March, Harvard successfully raised the $750 million on Wall Street, and it received authorization from the state of Massachusetts to raise up to another $2 billion in state tax-exempt bonds

There was not an investor appetite, however, for anywhere near that amount of Harvard debt. Ira Stoll wrote last week that only $735 million could be raised in the state bond sale, bringing the all-in amount raised to about $1.48 billion. Harvard fell $165 million short in its effort to borrow the cash it needs.

Yet the investor appetite for Massachusetts tax-exempt bonds backed by Harvard apparently turns out to be on the low side of what Harvard was aiming for, at least at the non-distressed or non-“junk” yields that Harvard is offering to pay lenders. A document posted with no fanfare on Harvard’s bondholder information website this week after I inquired with the Massachusetts Development Finance Agency about the fate of the bond offering lists the amount of the offering as $734,995,000. That’s a mere 36.7 percent of the $2 billion that the state approved, and it falls more than $165 million short of the $900 million number touted in the regulatory filing and the alumni magazine article.

Much of Harvard’s newly raised cash is being borrowed simply to pay off maturing bond debt issued at lower interest rates, as well as rolling over other short-term debt.

Even the $734,995,000 sum overstates the amount of new money available to Harvard as a result of the bond offering. Of that, $356 million is being used to buy other Harvard bonds that were issued in 2016. An undisclosed additional amount is also being used to refinance commercial paper—short-term debt. There’s also a $120 million “premium.”

Not that I’m questioning the legitimacy of Harvard’s illiquid investments or the integrity of those managing it, but one might wonder about the “investment strategy” of Harvard’s famous endowment if it is so illiquid that even with several years lead time to prepare for bond maturity, its other investment assets cannot get converted to cash to pay off maturing bonds. With my own finances, I would not consider any of my cash that is “invested” and then becomes permanently unrecoverable to actually be an investment.

Charles Gasparino is reporting that word on Wall Street is that the liquidity crunch at Harvard and other Poison Ivies is getting quite serious.

We are winning major battles against woke with our dollars. Be it Bud Light, Target, or Harvard, our cultural enemies forgot that they still need our dollars.

In the case of the Ivy League endowments, most of the people reading this blog probably aren’t big givers, but by continuing to delegitimize the Ivy League schools, and by not hiring its graduates, we can disincentive big-money donors from any more giving to these now disreputable schools.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

Posted by: Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM | Comments (266) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Mid-Morning Art Thread

In a Quandary, or Mississippi Raftsmen at Cards
George Caleb Bingham

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (303) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Report — 5/17/24

Good morning, kids. Seems like there are a lot of cornered rats out there and while in a certain sense, it gives me cause to be somewhat optimistic, as we all know, cornered rats have no alternative but to strike out directly and violently.

Let's look to the international front. First, Slovak PM Fico while in serious condition is expected to live after an assassination attempt. Fico has been a powerful, vocal and influential opponent of globalist adventurism in the Ukraine-Russia war. Considering support for intervening on behalf of Ukraine is collapsing here and abroad, well, QED.

Second, this news is another massive shot across the bow at the globalists:

The Netherlands will finally get the right wing government its people voted for, and some of the toughest border control in the Western World after veteran populist and Islam sceptic Geert Wilders got the agreement of coalition partners to form a cabinet.

Geert Wilders, who has lived under strict round-the-clock police protection since 2004 over threats to his life by Islamists hailed the success of months-long negotiations between four right wing parties in the Netherlands to form a new government. “The sun will shine again in the Netherlands… The Netherlands will be ours again” he said in celebration of the development. The documents were presented to the Dutch King on Thursday afternoon. . .

. . . Wilders has promised major reform on immigration, a priority area for his party and for others in the coalition, and the 26-page provisional document makes clear the enormous scope of change to the migration system envisioned, with laundry list of planned changes bullet-pointed. Laying out the ground for a programme that could make any pro-border control conservative envious, the document states in its preamble: … The Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries in Europe with [rapid and persistent population growth caused by] migration, which puts pressure on housing, care, education and financial resources, and on social cohesion in our country… Concrete steps are being taken towards the strictest admission regime for asylum and the most comprehensive package to control migration ever. The entire asylum and migration system is being reformed…

Remember, Wilders and other sane, rational politicians in other European nations have been railing against the insanity of mass legal immigration from countries, in particular Islamic, that have all but destroyed the indigenous cultures in which they now reside. Can you say "colonization?" Sure, I knew you could!

Of course, the rejection of Judeo-Christian, family-oriented values reflected in plummeting birth rates and the embracing of anything and everything goes free love, feminism, and all the rest of the degeneracy since the swinging 60s didn't help things. And now we have mass illegal migration on top of it that western governments are in fact encouraging. So if you oppose it, you're a fascistic, bigoted, white supremacist Nazi.

And that gives any globalist government the right to shut you up and shut you down. Like in Germany:

German authorities conducted a search on Thursday at locations connected to Petr Bystron of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Bystron, a leading candidate in the upcoming EU elections and a current Bundestag member, is under investigation over allegations regarding financial bribes from Russian officials. The accusations hinge on purported illicit funds from Russia via the sanctioned news platform Voice of Europe.

After the revocation of his parliamentary immunity by the Bundestag, numerous prosecutors and police officers carried out searches across Bystron’s public offices, as well as in three Bavarian counties and a property in the Balearic Island of Mallorca. Evidence in the form of documents and data carriers was seized for evaluation. . . Seen as a significant threat to the globalist German political establishment, AfD has been surging in the polls due to widespread frustration in Germany with mass migration.

Doesn't a lot of these actions and the issues related to them ring true right here? And as we all know, whatever the government can't do openly, it has paramilitary street thugs who can and will send you the dead fish wrapped in Luca Brasi's flak jacket.

It’s a hallmark of totalitarian regimes. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote about it in his monumental exploration of the nightmare of totalitarianism, "The Gulag Archipelago": “The sharp nighttime ring or the rude knock at the door. The insolent entrance of the unwiped jackboots of the unsleeping State Security operatives.” The left has now adopted this tactic in the United States, not for arrests (yet), but to frighten its foes into submission.

The Jerusalem Post reported Thursday that “anti-Israel masked men arrived at the homes of University of Michigan Board of Regents members before dawn on Wednesday to protest and demand the adoption of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) policies, according to the university and the regents.” Why before dawn, when the Regents were least likely to be able to carry on a rational discussion about these issues? Because rational discussion is the last thing these masked thugs want. Like those who made nighttime arrests in the old Soviet Union, they want to terrify their targets and catch them off guard.

Intimidation is the stock-in-trade of the ideologues who regard human freedom as the enemy, and so it is no real surprise that anti-Israel thugs have started using the same tactics in Michigan. One of the regents, Jordan Acker, says that it was, to be more precise, “around 4:40 A.M.” when “a masked intruder came to the door of my family's home with a list of demands, including defunding the police. My three daughters were asleep in their beds, and thankfully unaware of what transpired.” 

. . . The problem that the university faces is that the groups behind this intimidation tactic include groups that have been coddled and favored on university campuses all over the country for years: the University of Michigan’s Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) chapter, Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE), and the Transparency, Accountability, Humanity, Reparations, Investment, Resistance (TAHRIR) Coalition. JVP and TAHRIR also demand the “abolishment of policing on campus.”

Yeah, that’s a great idea while you people are running around in the middle of the night and scaring people half to death. All those involved in this who are students should be summarily expelled. But will the University of Michigan have the courage to cut down a plant it has watered and nurtured for years now?

While the estimable Robert Spencer is correct insofar as the universities themselves have "watered" these noxious weeds, for decades now, the water comes not only from the universities and clueless alumni benefactors like Robert Kraft, but from non-governmental actors like Soros who are in point of fact working iron-hand in velvet glove with the junta itself.

Speaking of Robert Kraft, and as a not-entirely unrelated aside, while being shocked – SHOCKED! – by the anti-Semitism of his alma mater Columbia, he hasn't said anything about the anti-Christian persecution of KC Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker coming from the NFL. The same NFL that coddled and encouraged brillo-headed subpar scrub Colin Kaepernick.

But I digress. Yesterday, I took a shot at Donald Trump for agreeing to walk into a staged public execution masquerading as a presidential debate on junta house propaganda organ XiNN/CNN. But I'm willing to play devil's advocate (as is my wont!) and say, given the media landscape and everything going on perhaps he felt as if he had to do it lest it redound badly on him. Sometimes his greatest asset, that is his ability to shoot from the hip and land body blows on his opponents, can be an Achilles heel when they don't. Yet, given the disaster of the past three and a half years on everyone, will one debate with Sponge-Brain Shits-Pants plus Taper and Bash in his corner really make any difference?

In deciding to debate ex-President Donald Trump on June 27 and Sept. 10, President Biden tacitly admitted he’s losing right now; this is a Hail Mary gambit to turn the race around.

Trump needs to figure out how to seal the deal instead.

That means practicing so he can keep his cool, and pull off a performance more like the second 2020 Biden-Trump faceoff than the first.

Biden’s goal will be to goad Trump into shooting himself in the foot on things like abortion and early voting. . .

. . . Trump may not see the hidden agenda in Biden’s “democracy” offensive: It’s not just about tempting the ex-prez into bogging down relitigating the 2020 vote, but also a bid to cozen him to keep dumping on early voting — and so depress his own vote total in November. Sorry: Every state- and local-level GOP operative knows they’ve got to maximize their early-vote totals; the Democrats certainly are, and it helped them a lot in 2022 as well as 2020.

Don’t obsess over some abstract principle. Play to win by the rules as they are, or you might as well be Hillary Clinton belatedly whining about the Electoral College after she lost. . . If he instead places his cards calmly and wisely, he could wind up with a crushing win.

Some good points in this essay but that presupposes that Tapper and Bash won't come after Trump the minute they sense he's about to deliver a knockout blow, just like Candy Store Crowley came on like an Alpine fat-valanche on Pee-Air Defecto Romney.

All that said, I concur to a degree that throwing down the gauntlet at Trump appears to be an act of desperation from Biden's handlers, but the game, just like the last election and likely this one, is pre-rigged. But, Trump himself is the X factor, for better or worse. Then again, there's this alarming analysis:

Joe Biden suddenly anxious to debate Donald J. Trump seemingly out of the clear blue doesn’t smell right . . .

I preface the following suggestions on the fact that the Left has already demonstrated how elaborately sinister they can be with the election theft of 2020, the staging of January 6 with pipe bombs as “plan B,” and the endless lawfare attempts to incarcerate the former (and hopefully future) President with made-up crimes they’re not even attempting to hide anymore behind a veil of legitimacy. No conspiracy theory is off the table any more, therefore we must all proceed ever so cautiously. We cannot assume everything is as it seems.

One theory is that, failing the first debate miserably and in front of the public, offering a Full Monty view of how badly he would lead the country during the next four years gives the Democrats reason to replace him before or during the convention, not only with the consent of Biden’s former adoring followers but instead with their insistence.

Another theory is the (il)legal warfare being played against Donald Trump might just time itself ever so fortuitously so that he won’t be able to make it to the debate(s). In fact, he might just be in jail or somehow otherwise confined. Darn the luck, right? This would save Biden from the embarrassment of actually debating Pres. Trump while at the same time proclaiming his heroism by putting up the challenge in the first place, and if Trump weren’t such a criminal, he’d be free to come to the venue, but instead, lookie here at Trump in the jump suit.

Yet another theory, and I’ll end with this one, is that on the condition of having no audience in the debate(s), there would be little collateral damage from a “surprise” terrorist attack that solves two problems at once.

Remember: we now have experienced things, some the above link describes with crystal clarity, that not even a few short years ago would be akin to tinfoil hat nuttery. And yet, look what has come to pass. Cornered rats, especially those that have the brass ring of absolute power inches from their grubby digits after a century or more of reaching for it at the cost of millions of destroyed lives, are not about to let Trump or any of us unwashed proles deprive them of it.

* * * * * * * * * *

On a personal note, this will be my last report until, God-willing, Monday May 27th. I have a final consult with my neurosurgeon later this morning and then the surgery itself on Tuesday. My initial diagnosis is that I have a level 2 to level 3 growth/mass/tumor on my right temporal lobe, just below the skull. Hopefully, the latest MRI I took a week ago will show no significant growth and that 95-97% of it can still be removed with very little risk or complications. If that's the case, I should be home as early as Thursday, if not Friday. After that, it's sweating out the pathology/oncology report and what subsequent treatments I might need, but I'll worry about that later.

Still not feeling any pain or debilitating symptoms, and strangely upbeat. I can't begin to express my gratitude for all the prayers, love and encouragement over the past three months. Have a great weekend and I'll see you on the other side.

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
• "I’m not dismissing a rigged election, but the Dems have earlier plans. They will confine Biden to quarters – again. They will fight the campaign from that Delaware basement where the controlled atmosphere of a laboratory is possible. . . . And they will create another crisis that supposedly necessitates lockdowns and lots of mail-in voting that is subject to huge abuse."
  Democrats Can Only Win With Biden if They Lock Him in the Basement and Lock Down America
  
• "What the Biden regime and its political operators don’t consider."
  A Landmark on the Road to Decline
  
• Daniel Greenfield: "One long string of ‘quid-pro-quos’ that have led to international wars and terrorism."
  Biden’s Impeachable "Foreign Oil" Policy

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 07:05 AM | Comments (552) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 17 May 2024

Top Story

• Google Search has added a new "search the web" setting, which overrides the default mode of "make shit up and call me racist". (404 Media)

  "We've launched a new 'Web' filter that shows only text-based links, just like you might filter to show other types of results, such as images or videos," the official Google Search Liaison Twitter account, run by Danny Sullivan, posted on Tuesday. The option will appear at the top of search results, under the "More" option.
  
  "We've added this after hearing from some that there are times when they'd prefer to just see links to web pages in their search results, such as if they're looking for longer-form text documents, using a device with limited internet access, or those who just want an answer to their fucking question instead of endless irrelevant bullshit," Sullivan wrote. "If you're in that group, enjoy! We'll most likely kill this feature in the morning"

  Thanks, Google, I guess.
  
  

• Meanwhile the internet's first search engine, Archie, has been retrieved from near-oblivion and is back up and running on an emulated SPARCStation 5. (Ars Technica)
  
  Archie dates all the way back to 1989, before the web was even a research project. It originally indexed FTP servers.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:51 AM | Comments (104) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ask Not What Your ONT Can Do For You, Ask What You Can Do For Your ONT

Hello everybody! Nasty day today, heavy thunderstorms. At least all the nasty critters stay out of the rain.

Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:00 PM | Comments (334) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sport Animals Cafe

Chinatown in Yokohama, Japan
by @sai_photograher._

No plan on all of these Asian shots this week. Just luck of the draw.

Dog enjoys a completely fake haircut.

But how did she make the boy disappear?

More of the sharpshooting dog. People wonder if it's fake but that isn't any kind of off-the-shelf animation. That dog is definitely holding the scrunchies in a paw and pulling it with his mouth. To computer animate all that, you'd have to animate it all yourself.

On the other hand, this looks real, but I know it can't be real.

There's just so much going on here I don't know where to start.

Freeing a hawk that has tangled itself in fishing line. The hawk's expression is kind of funny. I know he's frightened. But he's funny-looking.

True love is dumb.

Baby makes a friend.

Baby's first compromising situation.

There's a lot of scandalous babies in this Cafe.

No seriously what's going on with all of these babies?

This dog sobbing uncontrollably at the grave of his dead master is very affecting but don't watch it unless you're okay with getting misty.

Tourists go home!

Just a couple of guys doin' man-stuff.

Sound on. Funny clip of doggos with funny added audio.

Landscape baking. She makes several edible landscapes.

Fast bike ride through really nice scenery.

A seal sleeping and snoring underwater.

Adorable polar bear just wants to say "hi" (kicks rock) and maybe eat your leg off.

Bears are evolving.

The most polite mini bull. Looks like Snoopy.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 07:40 PM | Comments (155) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Quick Hits

JUST IN: Texas board recommends full pardon for Daniel Perry in the shooting of BLM protester Garrett Foster
Posted by: Mark1971

72 BREAKING: Texas Governor Greg Abbott pardons Daniel Perry for killing BLM protester Garrett Foster
Posted by: Mark1971

Note this is about Daniel Perry, convicted by a leftwing judge and jury of murder in Texas, and not Daniel Penny, who's being prosecuted in another case of Murder by Self-Defense by George Soros DA Alvin Bragg in Manhattan.

The case involved BLM stopping traffic and falsely imprisoning people. He tried to drive through -- which is his right -- and was stopped. Then a BLM supporter carrying an AK-47 advanced on his car, and he shot the guy in legitimate self defense.

The claim is that guy was carrying the AK-47 lawfully. Well, not when you use it to intimidate people who are lawfully using the roads they paid for, as all citizens have a right to do.

The good news here:

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has issued a full pardon for U.S. Army Sergeant Daniel Perry, who was convicted last year of murder for shooting and killing a Black Lives Matter protester in downtown Austin.

This comes right after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended a full pardon for Perry following a unanimous vote.

"The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles conducted an exhaustive review of U.S. Army Sergeant Daniel Perry's personal history and the facts surrounding the July 2020 incident and recommended a Full Pardon and Restoration of Full Civil Rights of Citizenship," said Abbott in a statement. "Among the voluminous files reviewed by the Board, they considered information provided by the Travis County District Attorney, the full investigative report on Daniel Perry, plus a review of all the testimony provided at trial. Texas has one of the strongest 'Stand Your Ground' laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive District Attorney. I thank the Board for its thorough investigation, and I approve their pardon recommendation."

This isn't a perfectly clear case, because Perry's social media postings suggest he went to the blocked road looking for a confrontation. But even if he had bad motives, he had bad motives in... doing something that was perfectly legal and within his rights. BLM has no right to kidnap people on the streets and detain them. And BLM "protesters" have no right to advance on people with AK-47's to enforce BLM's criminal will on citizens.

You have the right to protest -- not the right to falsely imprison.

Here's a very minor case of intent to commit genocide that the media will not be reporting on.

Look, the white race deserves it. Deep in your heart, you know this would-be mass murderer is right.

A black man from New Jersey has been federally charged with threatening to mass murder white people in a genocide-scale shooting rampage. The would-be shooter wanted to "erase...all of them"--that is, eradicate the white race, according to the FBI.

23-year-old Joshua Cobb, a.k.a. "COBB X," of Trenton, was arrested Friday night for allegedly making terroristic threats against "all" white people, the U.S. Department of Justice announced in a press release. He has not been charged with a hate crime.

According to an 11-page criminal complaint, on December 17, 2022, Cobb posted the genocidal, anti-white threat to an unidentified social media platform ("SMP-1," which the investigating FBI agent described as a U.S. news aggregator and forum).

"I want to cause mayhem on the white community. The reason i specifically want to target white people is because as a black male, they will NEVER understand my struggles. Same way I will never understand their struggles, but I don't care to," Cobb allegedly wrote in the December 2022 post. "I want to erase them. All of them really, but in this case as many as I possibly can."

This is your periodic reminder that the corrupt Marxist Media suppresses virtually every story about non-white people committing crimes, on the theory that if white people see such news, our minds will be poisoned against minorites our hatred will be stoked to such a point we seek to commit race-based violence.

But the same Marxist Media runs twenty incendiary, hatred-stirring hit pieces about the evilness and oppression of white people every day.

What's the difference? The difference is the Marxist Media wants to lubricate the wheels of revolution with a little blood of the oppressors. (Themselves excluded, of course.)

A local Real Journalist named Malique Rankin wrote an official to demand why he was lighting a bridge red, white, and blue, and what he hoped to promote through this vile display.

Do you feel Culturally Enriched yet?

Biden claimed that he could not impose any executive order shutting down the border unless he had Republican approval for his plan to let in millions of more illegals and give them work permits and visas. He just couldn't do it without Republicans! That means Republicans own his open border!

Well, the election is coming rapidly and the border issue is hurting him and is one of the few issues he could, if he chose to, substantially fix by simply signing his name to an EO, so suddenly it turns out that Biden can issue that executive order after all!

President Biden is planning executive action that would allow him to shut down the US-Mexico border once the number of migrant crossings reaches 4,000 per day, a source close to the White House told The Post Wednesday.

The order would match a provision in the bipartisan border bill that failed to pass the Senate in February, which gave the president authority to expel migrants when border crossings reached the same daily average.

The legislative proposal would have given the homeland security secretary discretionary authority to carry out removals -- but would have made deportations mandatory when illegal entries surpassed 5,000 per day over a one-week period.

The bill allowed for the suspension of that authority two weeks after the seven-day average falls to 75% of those levels.

A federal government source confirmed to The Post that an executive order to limit entries was coming, though it was unclear when it would be announced.

The White House declined to comment.

In April, southwestern border authorities stopped an average of 5,990 migrants per day, according to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) -- a figure which does not include so-called "gotaways" who escaped detection and arrest.

Obviously, this is completely inadequate -- he still plans on letting 120,000+ illegals per month that we know about under this weaksauce measure. He would only begin turning them away if numbers exceed 4,000 per day for a string of days.

But it proves he could have imposed this all along.

Back in November of last year, a "college professor" and pro-Hamas-terrorist agitator cracked an elderly Jewish man in the face with a bullhorn, killing him.

Of course the Democrat Party is attempting to make pogroms socially acceptable, so there hasn't been much news on this murder, which was all captured on video tape.

But a judge has finally ruled that, yes, murder is still illegal, even if you have all of your DEI Merit Badges up to date.

A California Superior Court judge ruled Wednesday that there is enough evidence for Moorpark College professor/pro-Hamas agitator Loay Alnaji to go to trial on charges of manslaughter in the death of Paul Kessler, a Jewish man who was involved in a counterprotest on November 5, 2023. Alnaji was involved in a confrontation with Kessler on that Sunday afternoon when he allegedly hit Kessler in the face with a bullhorn, causing Kessler to fall and fracture his skull. Kessler died approximately seven hours after the altercation.

At the time of Kessler's death, Alnaji and his supporters claimed that Kessler was the aggressor and he "slipped." They also claimed Alnaji and his fellow agitators were simply peaceful protestors, but video RedState published at the time contradicts that. Kessler and his fellow pro-Israel counter-protesters were stationed across the street from the pro-Hamas mob, but the mob crossed to come to him and get in his face.

In this video, taken as Kessler was being loaded into an ambulance, you can hear the pro-Hamas agitators' blatant antisemitism at the 0:45 mark: "Hitler didn't want you, Hitler didn't want you, Hitler didn't want you, Hitler should've smashed you."

"We're not antisemites, we're just anti-Zionists!!!"

Alnaji, who is a professor at both Moorpark College and California State University-Northridge, was arrested about a week later and charged with involuntary manslaughter related to Kessler's death.

Video of this squalid pogrom murder -- I'm sorry, "manslaughter" -- at the link.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 06:36 PM | Comments (220) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Official Report Lowballs the Biden Inflation At 20% Since His Inauguration

The inflation rate was 172,000 % when I took office, my word as a Biden.

Trump's inflation killed my boy Beau. I'm serious, I'm not joking.

Look it up, Fat!

Joe Biden's inflation crisis continues with prices up 19.9% since '21, CPI report

Quick Hit:

As the inflation crisis under President Joe Biden's administration continues, the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) report reveals a 19.9% increase in prices since January 2021. This surge in prices has resulted in an annual cost of $12,892 to the average household.

Key Details:

Since January 2021, gas prices have surged by over 55%.

Grocery prices have increased by 21.3%, with items like eggs seeing a 43.5% hike.

Essential services and commodities such as rent, electricity bills, auto insurance, and baby food have seen increases of 20.8%, 28.5%, 52.1%, and 30.0% respectively.

Electricity only costs more because the snags in the foreign supply chains are keeping electricity from being delivered by ship. In the case of rent, Greedy Corporations are charging more for their rental properties. State-controlled auto insurance also costs more because of Greedy Corporations who act as state regulators.

The inflation crisis under President Joe Biden's administration shows no signs of abating. The latest CPI data paints a grim picture of the economic landscape, with prices having increased by a staggering 19.9% since January 2021. This surge in prices has resulted in an annual cost of $12,892 to the average household, significantly impacting the purchasing power of the American consumer.

Black voters are abandoning Biden over inflation -- and also, Biden's relentless pursuit of an extremist groomer agenda.

Black voters are trending away from President Joe Biden and Democrats, frustrated that Democrats are not addressing kitchen table issues as they grab for extreme matters to woo leftists, according to a broad poll of 39 battleground congressional districts.

In the new survey from Cygnal, conducted in 20 states, Democrats are struggling to maintain their edge with black and women voters, "two traditionally reliable Democrat voting blocs."

Vice President of Polling Brock McCleary told Secrets on Wednesday morning, "Democrats are in trouble with black voters, as the number of those saying the Democrat Party is more extreme than the Republican Party has increased by 20% since March. Biden is similarly in trouble, with over a third having an unfavorable view of the president, and it's largely because they're most concerned with the cost of living and not ideological issues like climate change and election integrity that his administration has chosen to prioritize."

...

The new survey showed voters are focused on both, and they also want something done about the open border between Mexico and the United States.

Cygnal's survey of 1,500 likely general election voters revealed one possible reason why voters continue to give Trump a slight edge in general election matchups four years after Biden beat the Republican.

In a word, it's "nostalgia," pollster McCleary said.

"Nostalgia for Trump's first term continues to gain steam. Battleground voters now give Trump positive job approval for his four years in the White House while disapproval of Biden remains high," he said.

Biden promised a return to "normality." What he delivered was chaos, disorder, despair, and death.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 05:35 PM | Comments (244) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Oh, No! White House Aides Fret About the Psychological Strain on Joe Biden Caused By His DOJ Prosecuting His Crackhead Whoremonger Gun Criminal Son

Huntie the Charmed-Life Methmouth has been bothering courts with frivolous filings claiming that the gun charges against him should be dismissed, because the government headed by his own ratf*ck father is politically biased against him. His filings keep bringing up Trump, overlooking the fact that Trump has not been president since January 2020.

In April, a court tossed out his motion to dismiss on the theory that his own father was hounding him in a selective and vindictive prosecution. The court found no merit in his attempt to claim refuge in the constitutional doctrine of Daddy Mad.

Hunter Biden, who is by now physically made of crack and Mexican Viagra, is now attempting to get the charges dismissed on the theory that all gun laws that ban drug addicts from owning a gun are unconstitutional -- a very strange position for the crackmade son of a leftwing gungrabber president to take.

But, as Hunter Biden's syphilitic dick would say, any old port in a storm.

A court has now dismissed that claim as well.

Biden's lawyers filed the motion in December, arguing that the case should be dismissed because one of the charges -- possession of a firearm by a controlled substance addict -- is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment, citing a 2022 Supreme Court decision that held that gun restrictions must be rooted in "history and tradition."

In denying Biden's arguments, Noreika on Thursday cited an 8th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that upheld the constitutionality of the statute that was used to charge Biden by comparing it to historical laws keeping firearms out of the hands of people suffering from mental illness.

This is cheeky:

Lawyers for Biden can seek review from the full bench of the 3rd Circuit or petition the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the case.<

...

Biden was indicted in September on charges that he had a gun when he was using narcotics. The counts include allegations that he owned a gun while on he was narcotics and that he submitted a form falsely stating he was not using illegal drugs when he bought the revolver in 2018.

Huntie is arguing that it shouldn't be a crime to lie on your gun application form.

Now, with Huntie the Man With X-Ray Crackeyes about to go to trial on June 3rd, a confused and well-meaning old man with a poor memory is aching under the psychological torment.

President Joe Biden will soon have to watch and wait as 12 jurors in his home state decide whether his son is guilty of felony gun charges -- a case brought by his own Justice Department.

For the White House, the scenario of Hunter Biden's first criminal trial, all but assured to start June 3, is an unprecedented event in American political history that they hoped never to face.

While aides insist that the White House will have no involvement in the case, brought by special counsel David Weiss, some fear it could dramatically impact the president himself, more psychologically than politically.

Three advisers granted anonymity to speak about private deliberations said they, and members of the First Family, are worried about the weight Hunter Biden's trial will place on the president at an already difficult time for him politically. Biden has expressed fears to them about the possibility that his son will serve time in prison.

"He worries about Hunter every single day, from the moment he wakes up to the moment he goes to sleep," said one of the three advisers. "That will only pick up during a trial."

The possibility of a reprieve vanished Tuesday when a judge rejected a last-ditch request to postpone the case.

The president himself has long been kept apprised of his son's legal fights.

I'll bet he has!

Let me just ask for the millionth time: Who is paying for Hunter Biden's hundred-thousand-dollars per week legal team, and why are they paying for it?

He checks on him every day -- usually with a call, sometimes by a text. The advisers say that will continue through the trial.

All via dummy email accounts and burner phones, I'm sure.

But there is a gingerness among the president's team about how to approach the matter. With few exceptions, White House aides don't bring up the subject of Hunter Biden with the president, for fear of an angry rebuke or an icy stare, according to two of those people familiar with the president's reactions. All spoke only on condition of anonymity to describe the personal elements of the presidency.

Just give him some ice cream.

....

The younger Biden has, for years, argued that the charges against him are politically motivated. He has accused prosecutors of caving to pressure from congressional Republicans, who urged them to be more aggressive. A plea deal was reached last year that would have seen him receive a sentence of probation for the tax charges and a diversion agreement for the gun matter. But it fell apart in spectacular fashion. The president, according to the advisers, was left deeply frustrated by that development.

Yeah, I'll bet. The corrupt illegal unprecedented plea-bargain-where-he-gets-everything-and-the-People-get-nothing was certainly arranged by Biden's close advisors.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 04:35 PM | Comments (213) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Anthony Fauci's Superior at the NIH Admits That the "Six Foot Rule" of Social Distancing Was Never Based on Any Science At All

I'll never forget Dr. Guy P. Benson, Ph.D., screaming at Trump on twitter for failing to mention "social distancing," which trended on Twitter as thousands of Monkey-See, Monkey-Do liberals heard the words and immediately began repeating them as if they were all degreed Doctors of Social Distancing Science.

Liberals are faux intellectual magpies -- like the birds, they have tiny brains but are attracted by new shiny objects, and steal them to put in their nests to make them more appealing to potential mates.

Twitter NPCs are not smart, they're not educated, but they're part of a cult which (claims to) worship intelligence and education.

So whenever they hear a bit of jargon from a learned profession, they all start repeating it like five-year-olds. "Kompromat." "Social distancing." "Problematic." "Performative."

They don't know what these words mean, and often use them wrong, but they know these are the Power Words of the High Priests of Intellect, and by cargo cult logic, that means if they speak the same Power Words, they will become smart too.

Be careful when you hear all the Twitter NPCs like Guy Benson repeating words they just learned five minutes ago.

That means they're ginning up a pretext for heavy-handed government coersion. If they say the right Magic Power Words, it will transform the unconstitutional into the absolutely necessary.

The left is always attempting, and often succeeding, and stampeding people with their many tales of Looming Catastrophe. To stampede a herd of horses, you don't spook the brave, stable horses. No, you only need to spook the most panicky, most neurotic, most fear-loving horses. You start them panicking, and then the rest of the herd will follow, figuring the stampeding horses must have seen something to warrant such extreme alarm.

The GOP will always have panicky idiots like Dr. Guy P. Benson, Ph.D., who desperately want to show themselves as worth of liberals' love. When they tell this kind of weak simp to panic, they ask "How insanely should we panic, sir?!"

We have to marginalize these people. We need to kick them out of the herd. They are bad for our survival.

But instead of marginalizing such hazardous cowards and simps, the GOPe elevates them and gives them their own radio show. They want us all to follow the example of Dr. Guy P. Benson, Esq.'s exquisitely-calibrated "moderation."

Francis Collins just admitted that Dr. Guy P. Benson, Ph. D., badly erred in his application of Twitter Science.

Dr. Francis Collins, the former NIH Director, testified Wednesday that the widely-promoted social distancing guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic lacked any scientific basis.

* Dr. Francis Collins admitted that the "6 feet apart" social distancing recommendation was not grounded in scientific evidence.

* Dr. Anthony Fauci echoed this sentiment, revealing further systemic failures in America's public health response during his testimony.

* The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic continues to uncover critical failings in pandemic-era policies.

In testimony before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, Dr. Francis Collins, the former Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), admitted that the federal guideline to maintain six feet of social distancing was not based on any science or data. This admission casts doubt on one of the most widely promoted measures during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Dr. Collins agreed with Dr. Fauci that the '6 feet apart' social distancing recommendation promoted by federal health officials was likely not based on any science or data," noted Select Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio). Collins, who led the NIH's pandemic response, acknowledged that the recommendation lacked empirical support.

Collins was also asked about his Very Scientific Public Relations Smear Campaign against the (completely vindicated) epidemiologists who wrote the Great Barrington Declaration, which said that at-risk people should be isolated, but healthy people should not.

The testimony also highlighted Collins' stance on the Great Barrington Declaration, a publication advocating for focused protection of vulnerable populations while allowing minimal restrictions for the young and healthy. Collins reaffirmed his previous criticisms, referencing a 2020 email to Dr. Fauci in which he called for a "quick and devastating published takedown" of the declaration.

Then he played the same perjurious games with the term "gain-of-function" that his good Pal Fauci is so fond of.

Further, Collins engaged in semantic arguments over the definition of gain-of-function research, attempting to obscure the NIH's involvement in funding such research in Wuhan, China. This approach mirrored Dr. Fauci's defense in prior Congressional testimonies where he denied NIH's funding of potentially dangerous research.

He was also forced to admit that he and Fauci co-produced the infamous "Proximal Origins" screed, a thoroughly political and unscientific document the pair ordered their grant-receiving cronies to type up to discedit any notion that the Wuhan Novel Bat Respiratory Virus came from the Wuhan Novel Bat Respiratory Virus laboratory they were funding.

Science Itself -- I mean Anthony Fauci -- proved that, like Albert Einstein, our most brilliant scientific minds are often terrible scatterbrains.

In separate 14-hour transcribed testimony with the Select Subcommittee, Dr. Fauci further exposed systemic failures within America's public health systems. Fauci claimed he "did not recall" key COVID-19 information over 100 times and admitted that the social distancing guidance "sort of just appeared." He also defended his testimony regarding NIH's funding of gain-of-function research in Wuhan, despite evidence suggesting otherwise.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 03:37 PM | Comments (377) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Early Quick Hits

These are really from last night but this is all still Real News, Mr. President.

Michael Cohen's former lawyer attests that Cohen repeatedly denied that Trump broke any laws when debriefed by DOJ (and Mueller) lawyers in 2018.

"Cohen decided that while he didn't believe the allegation (of the Stormy Daniels story), that he thought the story would be embarrassing for Trump and especially for Melania, so he decided he would take care of it himself."

I forgot to mention this earlier, but in Ed Morrissey's article about this, he mentions that Michael Cohen is pitching around a reality tv show about himself called "The Fixer." Here's the presumably self-funded video teaser he released for this show.

So yes, I'd say he has a strong financial interest in lying to Get Trump.

A gallon of gas already costs $5.29 in California. That's going to change, though. Because they're slapping a fifty cent per gallon surcharge on it.

In today's edition of Getting What You Vote For, the dummies in California are about to get hit with a 50 cent per gallon gas tax.

Remember, California voters have handed the Democrat party full power over the former Golden State. Democrats run everything from the governorship on down. Democrats not only hold majorities in the state legislature, they hold veto-proof majorities. In other words...

Republicans are powerless in California. And so...

According to Triple-A, the average cost of a gallon of gas in California today is $5.29. That's nearly $1.70 more than the national average. In some parts of California, gas costs $6.32 per gallon. The lowest cost for a gallon of gas in that Democrat-run shithole is $5.02.

Now add 50 cents to those prices.

Tee hee.

The barbarians are at the gate in the castle's throne room.

Washington DC will now demand that day care centers be staffed only by people with a college degree. I assume this is pushed by the teachers unions, who always fight to restrict the number of competitors for jobs in this field. This will drive costs into the stratosphere and make it impossible for most to afford.

Average toddler day care costs in Washington, D.C., exceed $24,000 a year, outstripping expenses in cities like New York and San Francisco. Despite the steep prices, parents such as Megan McCune and Tom Shonosky, who live in a suburban D.C. neighborhood with their children John and Lizzy, believe day care is still worth it.

"They're doing these amazing activities with kids. John's last teacher was planning just all these really stimulating, exciting experiences," McCune says. "That's just not something that we can feasibly do and also have full-time jobs."

But day care might soon become a luxury the couple can no longer afford. In 2016, a regulation was passed mandating that day care workers obtain a college degree. The city's logic is straightforward: If D.C.'s day care staff had college degrees, they could do a better job helping disadvantaged kids climb out of poverty.

This is Reason magazine. Reason thinks that it's "straightforward" and obvious that people with degrees are better caregivers to children.

Among the many things to be despised in these fringy libertarians is their gross petit-bourgeois six-people-living-in-an-apartment downscale elitism. People who don't make enough money to be considered elite pile a lot of importance on credentials, for obvious reasons.

...

After a delay, the rule was finally implemented in December 2023.

Yet contrary to its intended benefits, this regulation could lead to job losses among day care workers, increased operating costs for day cares, and higher tuition for parents.

Ami Bawa, lead teacher and assistant director at a nursery school in northwest D.C., exemplifies the unintended consequences of the regulation. Although she has been working in the field for over 20 years, Bawa may now be forced out of her job. "Even though I have a lot of experiential learning, I don't meet what is now the current standard," she explains.

I don't want to blow your minds or anything, but it turns out Biden's effete gangsters at the DOJ have been illegally punishing whistleblowers.

When they were told to stop, they claimed they stopped -- while continuing to illegally punish them.

Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz confirmed Tuesday officials at the federal law enforcement agency have inappropriately retaliated against whistleblowers by pulling security clearances and implementing other retribution against them.

A lot of guys fired by the FBI or DEA for whistleblowing would get jobs in the private security sector. So these Deep State Nazis yank their security clearances so that they can't get jobs. They want to starve them until they recant.

"The purpose of this memorandum is to advise you of concerns that the Department of Justice (Department or DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has identified regarding the Department's compliance with 50 U.S.C. § 3341 and the Director of National Intelligence's (DNI) Security Executive Agent Directive 9 (SEAD 9), which provide protections for federal employees who allege their security clearance has been suspended, revoked, or denied in retaliation for making a protected disclosure," a new OIG memo states. "This concern came to our attention in connection with the OIG's assessment of complaints the OIG received from employees of a DOJ component, alleging that their security clearances were suspended in retaliation for protected whistleblowing activity."

The investigation covered the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Oh, and they suspend them without pay for a year or more.

While crippling their ability to find outside work.

"[A] lack of a DOJ appeal process for employees who allege their suspension of more than 1 year is retaliatory, as required by Section 3341 and SEAD 9, is especially problematic at DOJ components that regularly suspend employees without pay for the duration of the security review process, which can sometimes last years," the memo continues.

I feel bad about blowing your minds again after having just blown your minds, but Biden's Racialist Gangsters in the VA are now denying vocational training and psychological services to white veterans.

DEI Hits the VA: Biden's Veterans Affairs Department Offers Race-Based Training Programs That Exclude White Vets

'Equity' means realizing 'treating everybody the same might not be enough,' VA official Shawn Liu says

Peter Hasson
May 13, 2024

President Joe Biden's Department of Veterans Affairs is offering race-based training programs and workshops that exclude white veterans--programs that one legal expert says are "of dubious constitutionality and legality."

The programs are taking place in at least four states, a Washington Free Beacon review of online offerings found.

In Battle Creek, Mich., for example, the VA offers a "BIPOC Support Group," an "8-week curriculum designed to provide support for Veterans that identify as people of color/BIPOC, or as multiracial or biracial," according to a program description. The Battle Creek VA also offers a "Race-Based Stress/Trauma and Empowerment" program, a "weekly group, tailored to our Veterans of color, to address race-based stress and trauma in a safe and validating environment."

In Long Beach, Calif., the VA also offers a "Race-Based Stress/Trauma Empowerment Group," which it says is for "Veterans who identify as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) and who are interested in addressing issues of race-based stress, trauma, resilience, and empowerment." A similar program in Palo Alto, Calif., invites "Women Veterans of color" to join a "10-week group to explore [the] impact of racism on your well-being."

In Minneapolis, meanwhile, a VA-sponsored "Black Veterans peer support group" welcomes "all Veterans who self-identify as Black" to learn "skills that help protect against the negative impact of racial stress and trauma by increasing feelings of belongingness, connectedness to racial/ethnic identity and empowerment." And the VA's Central Ohio Health Care System advertises a "Minority Stress & Empowerment" group, an eight-week series "open to Black, Indigenous and all Veterans of color who are interested in addressing race-based stress and trauma."

Under Biden, the federal government has made "equity" a guiding principle thanks to a June 2021 executive order instructing agencies to beef up their diversity programming. "Such training programs," the order said, "should enable Federal employees, managers, and leaders to have knowledge of systemic and institutional racism and bias" as well as an "increased understanding of implicit and unconscious bias."

In other settings, however, race-based offerings have landed private entities in hot water. Last year, amid legal scrutiny, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer quietly amended a fellowship program to remove a provision that barred whites and Asians from applying. Now, University of San Diego law professor and U.S. Commission on Civil Rights member Gail Heriot is expressing similar concern over the VA's programs.

"It seems like every time you turn around there's another race-exclusive government program of dubious constitutionality and legality," Heriot told the Free Beacon. "Race exclusivity should raise red flags. Yet for the past four years, we've been seeing more and more of this kind of thing."

The VA did not respond to a request for comment.

Of course not. You peons think the government answers to you?

...

The VA has a history of implementing left-wing cultural initiatives under Biden.

In 2021, internal agency training included the "genderbread" diagram, which is also featured in some elementary school curricula. The diagram points to the brain, heart, and pelvic area of a gingerbread "person" to distinguish "gender identity," "sexual orientation," and "biological sex," respectively. The full body of the gingerbread "person" represents its "gender expression," the diagram says.

I can imagine the wounded veterans there thinking, "I got shot the f*** up in Afghanistan so I can sit here and be lectured about my inner gender identity."

West Virginia Governor Jim Justice has won the Republican primary to compete for Joe Manchin's senate seat -- he's retiring -- which essentially wins the race for the GOP. The article claims, a bit prematurely, that this means the GOP will have a "minimum of 50 seats" after the election.

I don't like making bets on what the GOP's minimum performance will turn out to be.

AGAIN: Biden claims that Beau Biden was killed by burn-pits or something and claims that's just like cops being killed in the line of duty.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 02:35 PM | Comments (468) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Biden Asserts Executive Privilege to Hide His Embarrassing Senility-Exposing Tapes of His Interview with Special Counsel Hur

"Hur?" -- Michael Bluth.

I can totally understand why Biden chose to hide these damning tapes. But then, I have the mind of a coward, and so I can understand the mind of another coward.

Biden blocks release of damning Hur interview as House prepares to hold Garland in contempt of Congress

The White House has invoked executive privilege to block the release of audio and video from President Joe Biden's interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur, claiming potential misuse for political purposes. The move comes as House Republicans prepare to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress over the refusal to hand over the files.

Key Details:

The White House argues that Republicans in Congress only want the recordings to use them for political purposes, with the dispute over access to the recordings central to a Republican effort to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress.

Garland has advised Biden that the audio falls within the scope of executive privilege, which protects a president's ability to obtain candid counsel from his advisers without fear of immediate public disclosure.

Real Clear investigative journalist Julie Kelly however tweeted, "Joe Biden repeatedly denied Trump's claims of privilege in authorizing NARA to turn over presidential records to Congress. Biden claimed Congress' investigation into Jan 6 "insurrection" outweighed presidential privilege claims...So now House GOP has a framework of recent case law to challenge Biden's privilege claims related to denying Congress the recording of his interview with Robert Hur--by using Biden's own words."

...

Attorney General Merrick Garland, in a separate letter to President Biden, advised that the audio falls within the scope of executive privilege. This privilege protects a president's ability to obtain candid counsel from his advisers without fear of immediate public disclosure and to protect confidential communications relating to official responsibilities. Garland argued that the lawmakers' needs are insufficient to outweigh the negative effects that the production of the recordings would have on the integrity and effectiveness of similar law enforcement investigations in the future.

Note that these tapes are not personal -- they are evidence collected in investigating Biden's illegally-hoarded classified documents, and therefore are the investigatory property of the taxpayers of the US.

In US v. Nixon, the Supreme Court decided that Nixon did not have the right to hide the "Nixon tapes" from the public.

The decision was unanimous, 8-0. Eight, because the chief justice Rehnquist recused himself.

A refresher from Wikipedia. Nixon, of course, made surreptitious recordings of his conversations with his staffers in the Oval Office. I think Nixon did this in the interests of preserving a historical record for posterity.

The Watergate special prosecutor Jaworski demanded Nixon turn over those tapes.

He turned over heavily-redacted tapes.

Jaworski said that was insufficient and brought suit in federal court.

Nixon, of course, also argued that "executive privilege" should shield tapes of him talking with aides.

Hoping that [Watergate Special Counsel] Jaworski and the public would be satisfied, Nixon turned over edited transcripts of 43 conversations, including portions of 20 conversations demanded by the subpoena....

Less than three weeks after oral arguments, the Court issued its decision.

On July 9, the day following oral arguments, all eight justices (Justice William H. Rehnquist recused himself due to his close association with several Watergate conspirators, including Attorneys General John Mitchell and Richard Kleindienst, prior to his appointment to the Court) indicated to each other that they would rule against the president. The justices struggled to settle on an opinion that all eight could agree to, however, with the major issue being how much of a constitutional standard could be established for what executive privilege meant.

...

The stakes were so high, in that the tapes most likely contained evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the President and his men, that they wanted no dissent. Despite the Chief Justice's hostility to allowing the other Justices to participate in the ing of the opinion, the final version was agreed to on July 23, the day before the decision was announced, and would contain the work of all the Justices. The Court's opinion found that the courts could indeed intervene on the matter and that Special Counsel Jaworski had proven a "sufficient likelihood that each of the tapes contains conversations relevant to the offenses charged in the indictment". While the Court acknowledged that the principle of executive privilege did exist, the Court would also directly reject President Nixon's claim to an "absolute, unqualified Presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process under all circumstances."

The Court held that a claim of Presidential privilege as to materials subpoenaed for use in a criminal trial cannot override the needs of the judicial process if that claim is based, not on the ground that military or diplomatic secrets are implicated, but merely on the ground of a generalized interest in confidentiality.

It concluded that "when the ground for asserting privilege as to subpoenaed materials sought for use in a criminal trial is based only on the generalized interest in confidentiality, it cannot prevail over the fundamental demands of due process of law in the fair administration of criminal justice."

Nixon was then ordered to deliver the subpoenaed materials to the District Court.

Nixon resigned sixteen days later, on August 9, 1974.

This is not exactly on point, because the Nixon tapes were sought in an ongoing investigation, whereas Hur closed the case here.

But the tapes contain the evidence for the public to decide whether Hur was right or wrong to avoid prosecution on the technicality that he's senile and can no longer name the year, even within a span of years, when his son died.

And also: A prosecutor closing a case does not implicate double jeopardy. A Trump prosecutor could reverse the decision. So in a way, this is potentially live case.

Also, executive privilege shields confidential communications with aides. The theory is that you want to have unvarnished conversations with your advisors, and if everyone knows their statements can be divulged by court order, they'll hesitate to give the president their true opinions.

But here, Biden is talking to a federal prosecutor investigating his crimes, not with an aide or advisor he expects to have confidential communications with!

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 02:24 PM | Comments (391) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Dana Bash and Jake Tapper (!!!!!) Will "Moderate" First Debate ?!?!

Oh. My.

It is lunacy for Trump to have agreed to this! Madness!

CNN isn't even hiding their intent or pretending at moderation by inviting a token Country Club Republican like Hugh Hewitt. It's just a full-on Trump Derangement Syndrome Murderer's Row.

Does he want to lose?

I hope he at least is on-the-ball enough to bring Jake Tapper's book alleging the 2000 election was stolen and brings it with him and shows it to the cameras when Tapper begins his 60 minute harangue on "election denial:"

So, President Joe Biden puts out a 13-second video challenging Donald Trump to a debate, Trump accepts, and CNN already has it scheduled for June 27. There won't be an audience ... that was one of the Biden camp's demands. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will also be absent, per Biden's demands -- which works out, because co-moderator Jake Tapper has said he would NOT host a town hall with Kennedy because of his lies about vaccines.

Tapper's co-moderator will be Dana Bash ... this Dana Bash:

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 12:00 PM | Comments (581) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Rant: Minimalist Edition

New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon; you are all pikers...pretenders...the real champion of lunacy was, is, and always will be California.

Oceans of tax revenue, courtesy of a fading but still huge tech sector, manufacturing, tourism, etc, yet the state has a $45 billion deficit! Gavin The Greasy claims it is because of rain. It rained in California last winter. Unexpectedly!

California has a bloated state bureaucracy that meddles in seemingly every aspect of its subjects' lives. What they use to mow their lawns, how they cook their food, what they drive...and businesses have it worse! Just try to build a house or open a business, and you will be confronted by a dizzying maze of sometimes conflicting regulations that make it almost impossible.

But this one might be the nuttiest ever! California now wants many rail locomotives to be "zero-emissions." I guess that means either battery powered (hah!), or powered by overhead lines supplying electricity. There are so many obvious problems with this plan that it suggests that the regulators have absolutely no idea how the American rail system works!

Biden's EPA May Soon Greenlight California Diesel Train Ban, Sparking Backlash From GOP

The issue dates back to April 2023 when the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the state's lead environmental regulator, passed a first-of-its-kind rule requiring rail operators to begin transitioning their freight train fleets in the state to zero-emissions technology. CARB chair Liane Randolph said at the time that the rule is part of the California's plan to decarbonize its entire transportation sector.

Under CARB's rule, beginning in 2030, all locomotive engines older than 23 years will be banned on a rolling basis. In addition, the rule requires all new switch, industrial, and passenger locomotives to be zero emissions that same year while requiring new freight line haul to be zero emissions by 2035.

Freight locomotives are massive, incredibly powerful machines that are actually quite efficient. Most of them are diesel-electric, so the diesel engine can be run efficiently while powering the electric engines. 4,000 horsepower, and full torque at 0 RPM. They are amazing. Three or four or five of those can pull freight trains of more than a mile long with ease, and no ugly expensive and fragile overhead power lines needed!

Putting those long trains together in train yards is a complex undertaking, and requires switching engines across the vast spaces and many sidings of those train yards. Yes, there are battery-powered switchers, but they aren't as powerful or as fast as the normal ones. And just how overhead power could be supplied to a massive train yard is a question for Rube Goldberg.

As usual, these pie-in-the-sky plans run generations behind the infrastructure that is required to implement them. Look at the logistical and practical mess of EVs for passengers if you want a hint of the economy-crushing demands of an electric train system.

But that doesn't matter to California. The virtue-signalling emerging from the Mandarins in Sacramento is second to none! They are the unchallenged masters of unworkable plans shoved down our throats. And sadly, because CA is the largest state, their regulations leak into the rest of the country.

I wonder how long it will take for the good people of California to realize that electric trains are a boondoggle that will dwarf the EVs that can't make a 150 mile trip, catch fire, burn forever, and cost many multiples of ICE cars to repair?

Imagine an electric train that unexpectedly stops in a city, cutting off several crossings. And now add a battery fire to the mix.

I'll bring the popcorn.

[Crossposted at CutJibNewsletter]

Posted by: CBD at 11:00 AM | Comments (252) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Mid-Morning Art Thread

January: Cernay, near Rambouillet
Léon-Germain Pelouse

***
And now for something completely different! Below the fold is the new official portrait of Charles the Third, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of His other Realms and Territories, King, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.

Although judging by the palette, I would go with his nickname: Tampon Boy.

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (323) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Report — 5/16/24

Good morning, kids. Somewhere out there, Ronna Romney McDaniel is saying, and rightly so in this instance, "Don't look at me!" I'm not going to dwell on this because what's the point really? Why would Donald Trump, who literally invented the term "fake news" ever agree to going into a XiNN studio, without an audience (though to be sure, like the juries and judges in his kangaroo court show trials, those would be populated by shills and confederates) to "debate" Jake Tapper and Dana Bash? Joey Sponge-Brain Shits-Pants merely playing the role of potted plant.

Michael Whatley and Lara Trump now run the RNC, but ultimately, Donald Trump himself could have easily demanded the debate take place at Sooner Stadium with Tucker Carlson and Mark Levin as moderators. Better yet, Lincoln-Douglass style with no moderators. And yet, this unforced error. I'd like to hear from the full-throated Trump defenders how this is brilliant 11-dimensional chess on his part, but I'm not seeing it. And I support him to the hilt. I'm just not going to pretend that when he shoots himself in the foot, like this, it's brilliance that I just don't see.

In any case, moving on from that distraction, did anyone notice this incident over in Europe?

In Europe's first major assault on a state leader since the assassination of Olaf Palme in Sweden in the 1980s, a socialist opened fire and injured Slovakia's conservative prime minister, Robert Fico Wednesday.

He held a lot of controversial views and stances on causes dear to the globalist crowd, but there is no clear motive thus far. Still, there has been interesting speculation as to what it might mean. . .

. . . Could it have been someone opposed to his Ukraine stance? The Czech Republic is said to be thinking about following its neighbor, which could lead to a chain reaction, even as U.S. credibility comes under duress . . .

. . . The attempt to take out Fico by either pro-Ukraine or pro-globalist forces, then, could be a scenario worth watching, given that so much is at stake and they've all played dirty in the past. This one may well be something that goes beyond local politics and could be well worth watching.

Whatever one thinks about Vladimir Putin, the rush by Junta-Controlled America and much of Europe to escalate what is a local/regional conflict between two unsavory states that has zero impact on our own national security is insanity. First and foremost, Ukraine and Russia have had a troubled relationship going back centuries. Second, with the fall of the Soviet Union, Foggy Bottom's influence over the Bush and Clinton administrations insofar as guaranteeing Ukrainian security in exchange for handing over Soviet nukes back to Gorbachev and Yeltsin, and assurances to them that NATO would not expand eastward towards its border – assurances that were worthless as we now can see, just like Putin – is what lit the fuse on this crisis.

Obviously, for whatever reasons, the globalist cabal wants Putin and Russia neutralized. The military industrial complex plus the Biden crime family grift involving Ukraine (which includes many other crooked American pols beside Biden and his bastard-breeding bastard) must be preserved. In this Venn Diagram of madness, Trump intersects insofar as he exposed Burisma and the Bidens. Hence the Russia Collusion hoax and everything that came after it.

UPDATE: Per commenter"Biden's Dog sniffs a whole lotta malarkey" someone just tried to take out Irish Republican European MEP candidate Malachy Steenson. He happens to be vocally against the mass immigration that globalists are foisting on everyone.

And speaking of attempted assassination, should Trump somehow survive the bevy of Stalinist show trials, as well as overcome the cheat machine that is still in place from 2020, there is no way in hell the powers that be will allow him to take office. Not after years of declaring him and all of us as "literally Hitler." Given all we have witnessed these last hellacious years, every option to take him out has got to be considered on the table. After all, these are individuals who are so warped and twisted as to believe their own propaganda about preserving "our precious democracy." Despite not believing in His existence, God is after all on there side!

And then there's Gaza. And beyond, as Daniel Greenfield yet again squares the circle:

Rafah isn’t just the last stand for Hamas, but for an entire foreign policy establishment.

The desperate effort to keep Israeli soldiers from going into the last Gaza stronghold of the Islamic terrorist organization is about more than the sum of the geopolitical parts.

After nation building failed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and everywhere else it’s been tried, the radioactive ‘Palestinian’ nation building experiment from over 30 years ago is its last hope. . .

. . . When Iraq and Afghanistan went bad, America could just leave, Israelis did not have that luxury. Sharon forcibly expelled the Jews living in Gaza to the other side of a border wall, but despite all the sob stories that the terrorists were living in an “open air concentration camp” with five-star hotels and mansions, walls weren’t that hard to get through even before Oct 7.

Israel has been stuck living next door to a failed 30-year nation-building experiment gone bad. And everyone in the international community is worried that the Oct 7 war will see it taken apart.

Lately the nation building experts have taken to warning that Israel is doing it the wrong way. Former CIA Director David Petraeus who also oversaw American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been arguing that Israel needs to pivot to a “counterinsurgency” model. And then we’re back to “winning hearts and minds” instead of actually trying to win a war.

The Biden [junta] has never stopped insisting that Israel needs a “day after” plan for rebuilding Gaza under a PLO government and some “moderate” terrorists from Hamas. Three generations after it became the norm, fighting a war without nation building as an endgame is so impossible that warfare experts can’t even understand what they’re seeing in Israel. . .

. . . American foreign policy believes that no people or group are good or bad, they just lack sufficient representation or the ability to participate in democratic elections. And that any governments that suppress any group, no matter how evil, are inherently illegitimate.

Comedy gold! And it rings a bell right here at home! Back to the action:

That’s why Truman insisted on ending Chiang Kai-Shek’s repression of Communists in China, why Carter bailed out the Islamists in Iran, and why, based on this stunning track record, we decided that the only way to stop terrorism in Israel was to give the terrorists their own state. . .

. . . “Truly winning this war would require creating some sort of government in Gaza that could gain the support of the people and prevent Hamas from returning after Israeli soldiers pull out,” ex-neo con Max Boot argues in his Washington Post column.

But what if killing Jews is what the ‘people’ in Gaza really want? Just as what the Shiites in Iraq really wanted was to step on the Sunnis and the Kurds, what the Sunnis in Iraq really wanted was to kill the Shiites and rape the Yazidis, and what the Kurds wanted was their own country. And just as a whole lot of Afghans really wanted to lock up women and mandate beards again.

Nation building’s faulty premise is that people everywhere want what Americans want. . . The Israelis have grown tired of trying to win the hearts and minds of rapists, kidnappers and killers. They’ve grown tired of giving them what we think they want and are giving them what they deserve. Maybe we could learn something from their experiment in ‘un-nation building’.

My day after plan for Gaza? Martial law and absolute surrender. And deprogram the children; the adults are a hopeless cause, like trying to defuse a ticking nuke with a hammer and chisel. Muslims understand one thing only; violence. The problem is there are 1.5 billion of them still living in the 12th century while the rest of the world is living in denial.

Can't wait for Jake Tapper and Dana Bash to handle this topic.

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
• "The late Kevin Phillips pointed the way toward a populist-driven American renewal."
  What Does Richard Nixon’s Prophet Tell Us About 2024?
  
• "It’s been a long and disgraceful road to the propaganda factories American universities have become."
  The Fall of the Universities Began in Vietnam
• Victor Davis Hanson: "Bidenites believe they can reelect an unhealthy, unpopular, and unsuccessful president by any means necessary. And they may be right."
  The Biden Reelection Strategy
  
• Daniel Greenfield: "Israel’s war teaches us what we should have done after September 11."
  Nation Building’s Last Stand in Gaza

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 07:27 AM | Comments (565) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 16 May 2024

Top Story

• Google is adding an AI feature to Android that will listen in on your calls and interrupt you. (Ars Technica)
  
  Specifically it will interrupt you if it thinks you are being scammed.
  
  Which, well, I don't need it since I never answer the phone.
  
  You don't need it.
  
  But there are certainly people who would benefit from this, and there's a slim chance that Google won't screw this up, so let's see what happens.
  
  
  
  

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:24 AM | Comments (174) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Overnight Open Thread - 5/15/2024
[Roger Ball]

Greetings, oh, great Horde of Spades! As a humble ONT, I offer the classic story of the Boeing 314 “Pacific Clipper”, piloted by Pan Am Captain John Ford. The Pacific Clipper started it’s ‘round the world journey with a regular scheduled flight to New Zealand. On December 7th, 1941, they were on their way back home, but “some people did something”.
Below are several links from many of the available sources. Many publications have recounted this incredible story. If you have any interest in history, it’s worth a look and a listen.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (389) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Kangaroo Corner Cafe

Hong Kong
by @jackyy_wch via GlobalPhotographyCommunity on IG

The world's most dangerous land predator.

Jack Russell terrier bopping around a pond.

Sharing a drink with a llama.

I bet this homemade wine comports with all local safety regulations.

Hillbilly Forearm Fishing.

The ball taking a path with up-and-down ramps is faster than the ball rolling down a straight slope. This phenomenon can be seen everywhere in nature.

Man drives excavator through torrential flooding to save a family stuck on a roof.

I imagine you're wondering why I've summoned you all here today...

A little hard to watch. A woman is having violent seizures, banging her face on the floor. Her dog rushes over to slip his head under hers and cushion her. She stops seizing within seconds.

Crayola sunset.

Saving and raising an orphaned kangaroo baby.

Another orphaned kangaroo baby. Very cute. Almost like a sea otter of the land.

Also cute: a non-orphaned kangaroo hugs his mom.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 07:24 PM | Comments (289) | Trackbacks (Suck)

WHOA: GOVERNMENT PAYMENTS TO FAUCI'S CRONY GROUP, ECOHEALTH, WHICH FUNDED GAIN-OF-FUNCTION EXPERIMENTS ON BAT VIRUSES AT WUHAN, SUSPENDED INDEFINITELY; INVESTIGATION BEGUN

I was just reading the other day -- I'll add the link in a moment -- that one of Peter Daszak's fellow scientists called him a "bullshitter" for claiming that Wuhan had high safety standards. He said that the whole reason Peter Daszak even wanted to fund research specifically at Wuhan is that they had lower safety standards than other facilities.

Specifically, he accused Daszak of wanting to fund research at the Wuhan lab, which was Biosafety level 2. That's pretty low. A biosafety level 3 lab has negative-pressure containment (where the air blows in to the facility but can't blow out, to contain germs), and such labs are much more expensive to do viral resarch at.

He chose Wuhan precisely because it was a low biosafety level. So the work could be done more cheaply.

So Daszak wouldn't have to spend so much money to get his frankenvirus patents.

Then when covid-19 escaped, he started blitzing people with bullshit about Wuhan being technically biosafety level 2 but being kinda-sorta biosafety level 3. In its soul.

A fellow scientist told him "stop bullshitting me."

Is this part of that? I dunno.

Update: I haven't found the article I was looking for, but I found that the scientist who rapped Wuhan for insufficient safety standards was Ralph Baric, one of the world's leading virus researchers.

Perhaps most notably, Baric testified that he had specifically warned Shi Zhengli that the WIV's critical coronavirus research was being conducted in labs with insufficient biosafety protections. When he urged her to move the work to a more secure biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) lab, he testified that she did not heed his recommendation.

Because the WIV continued to perform coronavirus research at what he considers an inappropriately low biosafety level, Baric said of a laboratory accident, "You can't rule that out.... You just can't."

"Clearly, the market was a conduit for expansion," Baric testified. "Is that where it started? I don't think so."

In an email turned over to the Select Subcommittee as part of its investigation, Baric told Peter Daszak, president of the scientific nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, that it was "a load of BS" to suggest that the WIV conducted coronavirus research in labs with sufficient biosafety protocols.

But remember, it's a conspiracy theory that any US taxpayer money went to funding the creation of covid-19, and if you say otherwise, the CIA and FBI will get the MI-6 to activate its front group the "Global Disinformation Initiative" to pressure social media to censor you.

Note that the CIA and FBI use the British MI-6 as a cut-out because it would look bad if American government agents were seen directly lobbying to censor taxpaying American citizens, who used to like to believe they had a thing called "rights."

The Department of Health and Human Services is cutting off all funds and initiating procedures to ban the EcoHealth Alliance from getting federal money for at least three years. However, HHS may extend that period based on the seriousness of the violations.

The violations are very serious.

About damn time. Now, prosecute him. Toss him in jail and throw away the key. Tar and feather him. Put him in the stocks.

...

It is impossible to overstate how important this move is. It is a formal acknowledgment by The Department of Health and Human Services that the EcoHealth Alliance--which has been funding gain-of-function research that violates American law and almost certainly created the COVID-19 virus--is an outlaw entity with which the US government should have nothing to do.

Peter Daszak, its CEO, is one of Tony Fauci's best friends. He conspired to funnel money to Dazsek and has repeatedly lied about whether the organization engaged in prohibited activity. HHS has not directly implicated Fauci, but their conclusion that EcoHealth violated federal rules makes him a perjurer, having lied to Congress multiple times.

As if we didn't already know that.

Lock.

These.

Murdering.

Cocksuckers.

Up.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 06:05 PM | Comments (311) | Trackbacks (Suck)