The Morning Rant: Oil...It Does A Body Good!

The world runs on oil, and no amount of wishcasting or unicorn-fueled nonsense will change that until we and others build many hundreds of nuclear power plants, completely revamp the electricity transmission systems, and make a titanic shift away from natural-gas and propane-powered homes and industry.

Can we do it? Sure! It will take 50 years, a huge shift in attitudes among our elites ( NO NUKES!), and it will cost a lot of money. Is it a smart thing to do? No. Allowing organic changes to occur as energy costs shift based on economic pressure is the only way to do it correctly. Government mandates guarantee huge and unnecessary costs, and pesky things like country-wide blackouts! Just look at what happened to Spain and Portugal recently and ask yourself if going 100% renewable is a good idea.

And that shift won't apply to much of our transportation infrastructure, because absent a revolution in battery technology, the internal combustion engine will reign supreme until the entire world runs out of oil, and that won't be for a very long time.

Love it or hate it...oil is deeply embedded in the world economy, and shifts in its price can have profound effects. Almost literally everything depends on oil, and as the price of oil is driven down, thanks in part to President Trump's relaxation of the insane limits on domestic oil production that the senile old fool Joe Biden enacted, prices of most things will ease. Oil is a building block of most consumer goods, obviously runs our transportation systems, and powers our lives through automobiles, heating, and cooling. So when the price of oil drops, so does the cost of inputs of most of our economy.

OPEC+ to further speed up oil output hikes, four sources say

OPEC+, which includes the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies such as Russia, agreed another big output hike for June on Saturday, taking the total it plans to release in April, May and June to nearly 1 million bpd.

Lowering oil prices also has a direct and malign effect on Russia. It depends on its domestic oil production to fund its little adventure in Ukraine, and as the price it gets for its oil (and because of sanctions that price is lower than most) decreases, it has no choice but to increase production. That costs money, that costs equipment, that costs future production at higher prices.

President Trump's efforts to decrease the price of oil will ripple throughout the economy, the geopolitical situation (don't forget Iran!), and will very probably limit any coming recession to a mild one.

Oh... it will also force more rational pricing for alternative energy, which was receiving massive subsidies, but is no longer the masturbatory fantasy of the government. So America will see more realistic pricing for pie-in-the-sky stuff like solar panels and wind farms and carbon credits and carbon sequestration (that stuff is nuts!) and all of the other wealth-shifting nonsense coming out of the progressive cabal trying to destroy Western culture.

It must make the left absolutely livid that in just a few months, President Trump's administration is beginning to dismantle their carefully constructed edifice of energy nonsense. Hopefully they will continue their obstructionist ways and the American people will continue to cast them from the halls of power. $2 gasoline is a lovely thing, and Americans will understand who is responsible for that!

On the other hand, popcorn futures might skyrocket, but that's a price I am willing to pay!

[Crossposted at CutJibNewsletter and X/Twitter] And the Apple and Spotify feeds for CJN's podcast should be working!

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Mid-Morning Art Thread

Tompkins' Cove
Austin Mecklem

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The Morning Report — 5/ 6 /25

Good morning kids. In the former Soviet Union, many people who applied for an exit visa to emigrate to another country were not only denied but were officially diagnosed as insane and would find themselves as inmates in a psychiatric hospital. The rationale after all was you would have to be insane to want to leave the paradise on earth that was the USSR. Naturally, that kind of madness had to be isolated as it was a contagion that could very well spread and infect others.

With that in mind, I give you this item to ponder:

Last week, it emerged that the left is trying to tar Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) as mentally unhinged because he supports Israel in its existential war for survival against the genocidal forces of Hamas and Iran. The tactic of claiming that mainstream political views with which you disagree constitute mental illness is a classic Stalin-esque tactic. In Soviet Russia, dissidents were diagnosed as clinically insane and stuck in “asylums” that were actually prisons, where they were subject to a variety of tortures in the name of regaining their “mental health.”

It turns out that this approach is not limited to a class of political insiders and journalists trying to silence one of Israel’s most principled and stalwart defenders in Washington, D.C. Instead, the entire psychotherapy profession has determined that supporting Zionism—that is, supporting the idea that Jews have a right to a nation in a land that they’ve occupied without interruption for almost 4,000 years—is a sign of psychopathic mental illness.

These are the same kind of doctors who insist that a child who is born male but feels he is a girl has a right to chop off his genitals and declare himself to be female and is in fact female. And for anyone to oppose this is not only denying one of their human rights but is also in fact a dangerous lunatic. Ditto global warming/climate change. Ditto denying the concept of "toxic masculinity" and institutional white supremacy, and on and on and on.

Now when one part of the national polity views the other as not merely wrong or as a legitimate rival but as an existential threat to their existence and an evil that must be eradicated, we are this close to Soviet style psychiatric wards, if not gulags or worse, the gas chambers and crematoria of Nazi Germany. And just like the latter, we are this close to having a Judiciary that will either act on its own or uphold illegal executive orders by some future Democrat President (God-forbid ever again) or anti-constitutional laws to do away with any and all political opposition.

Look what was done to hundreds of ordinary citizens in the wake of protesting the stolen 2020 election under the pretext of a phony Malig-Nancy Pelosi/FBI staged "insurrection."

And speaking of insurrection:

It’s time to call this what it is. California’s efforts to ban cooperation with federal law enforcement first crossed the line into insurrection. Since then other states, including now Colorado, have followed suit.

The Colorado House has passed a measure aimed at protecting the rights of immigrants in the state, despite efforts by the Trump administration to crack down on illegal immigration.

The House debated Senate Bill 276 for nearly four hours before approving it 42-21 along party lines.

The measure prohibits local and state law enforcement officers from allowing federal immigration agents to enter parts of immigrant detention centers that are off limits to the public…The bill also prohibits another state’s National Guard from entering the state as part of any enforcement action without permission from Colorado’s governor, and prevents federal immigration agents from going into schools, health care and child care facilities, churches, libraries and jails without warrants.

The only people this protects are illegal alien invaders. And states do not have the right or power to deny access to federal law enforcement officials simply because some politicians support certain illegal acts.

If a state voted to ban any cooperation with the IRS in enforcing tax laws or the FBI when prosecuting abortion opponents, the hysteria would be off the charts and federal judges would quickly determine that such actions are invalid.

Perhaps Colorodo needs to have its statehood revoked and turned into a federal territory, with its legislature dissolved and a territorial governor appointed by Trump to run it. Send in the Army to put down anyone who resists. How many divisions does Jared Polis have?

Considering this item, perhaps it goes beyond insurrection into participating with a foreign power in an act of war, and committing treason?!

A newly released intelligence assessment has found that some Venezuelan government officials “facilitated” the illegal migration of members of the brutal Venezuelan criminal gang Tren De Aragua into the United States “to advance what they see as the Maduro regime’s goal of destabilizing governments and undermining public safety.”

However, while Venezuela’s “permissive environment enables TDA to operate… the Maduro regime probably is not systematically directing Venezuelan outflows, such as to sow chaos in receiving countries,” says the April memo from the National Intelligence Council, released Monday by the ODNI.

The memo waters down an earlier FBI assessment that the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is specifically directing TdA activities in the U.S.

Maybe a squadron of B-52s and/or B2's should be scrambled to take out a few military bases in and around Caracas. Maduro could use a nice big JDAM enema. Just a thought. And it should be noted that Iran and Venezuela have very close ties. Not just Tren de Aragua gangsters but perhaps Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corpsmen and other terrorist operatives from Tehran are likely filtering through the Darien Gap and over the Rio Grande.

If President Trump and team are serious about confronting or checking Iran, here's the place to do it, right in our own backyard.

Speaking of Israel, finally it seems as if the Israelis after all this time have had it with Gaza.

Israel called up its military reserves Sunday to prepare for a massive new operation, “Gideon’s Chariots,” in which it plans to reconquer Gaza and eliminate Hamas, neighborhood by neighborhood, over several months. The Israeli government says that it will carry out the operation if Hamas does not agree to a hostage deal by the end of the forthcoming visit of President Donald Trump to the region, which will be from May 13 to 16. Military analysts describe “Gideon’s Chariots” as a classic “clear, hold, build” strategy to root out Hamas and create new, credible, demilitarized civilian authorities to govern the Palestinian communities in Gaza.

Should've done this on day one, but better late than never I guess, and given the fact that America was being run by the virulently anti-Israel/pro-Iran Obama/Biden junta I guess that was not possible at the time.

And lastly, a quick shout-out and thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.

Have a great day.

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
• "A suspected Iranian terror attack was hours away from being launched on British soil"
  Daniel Greenfield: 7 Iranians Arrested in UK Over Terror Plot “Hours Away”
  
• Michael Walsh: As things stand, college has now become what a bad high school used to be, except that skilled tradesmen are now making far better money than dancers, poets, and the scholars of radical leftist feminist South American transsexual climate activists. So even the value-added argument is gone.
  THE COLUMN: Make Universities Great Again

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Daily Tech News 6 May 2025

Top Story

• Microsoft has shut down Skype for good. (The Verge) (archive site)
  
  I wish. It's still bloody working. I got a call from work fifteen minutes ago.

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Monday Overnight Open Thread - May 5, 2025 [Doof]

Today's "holiday" doesn't make sense

Hola, los Hordelingos! Gracias por visitar el ONT de esta noche. Por favor, compartan muchos comentarios.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (385) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Pets Gone Wild Cafe

Aw, shelter dog is so excited to have a visitor.

Street dog is very grateful for a meal.

A baby deer gets himself stuck in the middle of a busy highway, but a good and decent man rescues him.

Adopting a dog right off the street. I did that once with a Mexican girl and got yelled at by a policeman.

Mama pig and her bacon-babies.

Dog teaches kittens how to play chase.

Dog pool party.

This baby is going to be trouble. Unless he's CGI. He kinda looks CGI.

Dog really looks forward to the mailman coming.

Rescuing a disabled... honeybee.

Dog sneaks in to the barn to play with the baby goats. Approve.

Posted by: Ace at 07:33 PM | Comments (241) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Quick Hits Part 2

Update: Trump signs an EO again banning funding for gain-of-function bioweapons creation. But this time, Fauci isn't around to rewrite the definition of "gain of function."

Michelle "Big Mike" Obama said on her failing podcast that she is very resentful that while she got to live for free in the world's most famous mansion rent-free for eight years and had many of her meals paid for by the taxpayers, and also had most of her travel costs covered, she still had to use some of her own money for routine food shopping and when she and Obama flew on the taxpayer-provided Air Force One to foreign vacation spots, she had to pay commercial rates to fly her kids with her.

Foul, miserable beast of a "woman."

Megyn Kelly reminded me: Remember when Obama was being groomed for the presidency and the entire Democrat Party rallied to stuff money in his pockets? For Michelle, the corrupt Chicago Democrat Machine phonied-up a fake sinecure for Michelle supposedly working for a hospital. She was paid $200,000 per year or something like that, despite being a very average, no-account (DEI) lawyer.

And yet she complains. She wasn't given enough free stuff and enough corrupt money. It's racist that she wasn't given more.

When you bitch about having to pay for the food you eat, you have hit rock bottom on the grifting scale.

-- Mister Scott

You probably heard, but oh boy, did the Reform Party do well at the polls over the weekend. They won more local council seats than any other party, and stole over one hundred seats from Labour and absolutely demolished the "Conservative" Party, which right now is on the edge of extinction.

WE HAVE been predicting it for a long time. Laura Perrins made her warning in October 2017 when Theresa May announced her race audits. A party that conserves nothing and uses the State as its ideological enforcement arm deserves to die. Far from renouncing May's identity politics and state interventionism, Boris Johnson made matters worse. He doubled down on Net Zero, opened our post-Brexit borders to mass migration and a rising tide of asylum exploitation, closed the country down and forced barely tested vaccines on an unsuspecting public. Sunak was party to all that, and Badenoch too.

Well, we heard the death knell sound for the Conservatives this week. Kemi, like her predecessors, failed to heed our warning. She neither apologised for nor promised retraction of the party's failed policies, notably its 'left progressive' and Statist approach to government. Her only concessions to the conservative critics -- on Net Zero -- came across as initially reluctant and less forceful than Tony Blair's. Kemi was part of these disastrous administrations.

All the more stupid then were the Tory MPs and party members who voted her in as their next doomed leader. Without someone untarnished or who at least had indicated some understanding of the extent of change needed, they had no hope. Suella Braverman was the only one to come anywhere close. The man of course who shouldered none of this toxic burden was Nigel Farage. As he's said more than once in recent weeks, he has much to be grateful to Kemi for. Indeed, he has.

Yesterday, the Telegraph published eight charts that showed the scale of Tory defeat and Reform victory in the local elections, ones that will go down in history as the day the Conservatives became a third party. Just 15 per cent of the vote went to them. It was by far their worst result, previously only having dropped as low as 25 per cent in 1995.

Reform UK now has control of ten local authorities, two mayoralties and a new 5th MP. No one can deny the formidable nature of Farage's victory. Its significance, as the veteran pollster Sir John Curtice pointed out, was that it was a win not just of the vote share but of the (council) seats reflecting it; unlike the General Election, when despite winning over 14 percent of the vote, the new party took only five seats.

No wonder there is much chat about this being the end of two-party politics and the long-predicted extinction of the Tories.

I saw someone project Reform's win here to the future elections for Parliament. Based on this weekend's performance, Reform would win an outright majority of all seats in Parliament and would have the power to form a government without power-sharing with any other party.

That must mean it's time to outlaw the Reform Party. That's how this works, right?

The Golden Emperor promised on Friday to revoke Harvard's bulls**t tax exempt status.

A Harvard apologist said that Harvard just "wasn't ready" to confront the vile antisemitism of its hugely third-world terrorist student body.

An adjunct professor at Harvard spoke out Thursday after the Ivy League university's president, Alan Garber, apologized as scathing internal reports exposed that antisemitism and Islamophobia were prevalent on campus.

Eugene Litvak, who teaches at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview that one of the nation's top universities "was not ready" for the anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic behavior that has plagued Harvard since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

"Obviously, I was really, really upset," Litvak told Fox. "What happened at Harvard after October 7th, and [at] the university, in my opinion, again, that's my personal opinion, the university was not ready to face these kinds of challenges. None of the universities were ready."

Harvard is suing the Trump administration.

"I'm commending, actually, the letter from the president of the university," the Harvard professor added. "What I really like, in science, we say that you cannot solve any problem unless you formulate it. So he formulated the problem in his letter. He acknowledged that there is a problem. Otherwise, nothing would happen."

Harvard president Alan Garber apologized in a letter Tuesday after internal reports unveiled antisemitism and Islamophobia's presence at the Ivy League school. Garber described the findings as "disturbing."

"I think that's a step in the absolutely right direction," Litvak told Fox News Digital. "I would like to see the fruits of it. But again, I was very, very pleased because of the acknowledgment that there is such a problem."

Despite Garber's apology and admission, President Donald Trump posted to Truth Social Friday stating that the administration will be "taking away Harvard's Tax Exempt Status," noting "It's what they deserve!"

Oh no, the cancellation of its tax exempt status is having the exact effect intended.

President Trump's legally dubious threat to strip Harvard's tax-exempt status could cost the university hundreds of millions a year, and other nonprofits fear they could be next.

Why it matters: Trump has waged an unprecedented assault on the independence of universities, law firms, and nonprofit media, using the power of the government to punish his perceived political enemies.

By the numbers: Harvard's property tax benefits totaled at least $456 million in 2023, per a Bloomberg News analysis.

Taxes on its endowment could total $800 million annually, per the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Losing its tax-exempt status, also means donations to Harvard would no longer be tax deductible, and the bonds it sells to fund improvements wouldn't be tax free.

From last week: Trump yeeted 37 Johns Hopkins students for pro-Hamas terrorism support.

37 international students who attend Johns Hopkins University have had their student visas revoked amid the Trump administration's removal of allegedly pro-Hamas protesters.

The university confirmed the revocations in a statement to CBS News, but stated that it had not been given specific reasons by the federal government.

"We have received no information about the specific basis for the terminations, but we have no indication that they are associated with free expression activities on campus," a university statement reads. "While terminations require students to depart the United States, we are not aware of any arrests or detentions of Johns Hopkins students as a result of these visa actions."

15 percent of Johns Hopkins first-years are international students, according to the university website.

Axios: Right-wing media is worth billions.

BTW, is there any left-wing media? Just right-wing, huh, Axios?

MAGA media is seizing on its new influence in Washington -- staffing up, enjoying unprecedented access to power, and making market splashes.

Why it matters: Corporate America has typically shunned right-wing media. But expanded exposure to Washington's powerbrokers is helping MAGA outlets and personalities establish themselves as key media players.

These outlets are landing bigger advertising deals and distribution contracts, and developing stronger talent networks.

And investors are taking notice.

...

Fox News, which has a straight-news daytime operation and more overtly conservative programming in primetime, raked in 160+ new advertisers between November 2024 and April 2025, according to iSpot data provided to Axios. A Fox spokesperson said there have been 200 new advertisers since the election.

The Daily Wire's valuation tops $1 billion, Axios reported in December.

Rumble and Newsmax are each publicly trading at values exceeding $2 billion, despite earning just $30 million and $171 million in revenue last year. Truth Social's parent company is currently valued at more than $5 billion on the public market, despite earning $3.6 million in 2024.

Ace of Spades HQ is appreciating in value, too. It's now worth six buck three bit.

...

Zoom out: Beyond the cash flow, these outlets are experiencing unprecedented access to the White House, which reinforces the image they seek as media heavy-hitters.

Reporters and podcasters like The National Pulse's Raheem Kassam, The Daily Wire's Mary Margaret Olohan and Jack Posobiec have been invited on foreign trips with Cabinet officials.

Say were any left-wing media types afforded great access to the Obama and Biden White Houses?

...

"Conservatives were exiled from the establishment, legacy media platforms where most Americans used to get their news," Andrew Kolvet, a top adviser for Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA, tells Axios.

"This forced entrepreneurial creators out into the media wilderness to hone their skills and either sink or swim based on talent. ... Real talent rose to the top and built massive, durable audiences of increasing size and influence."

Say it again, brother.

Six buck three bit, I must be doin' something right!

PBS is Definitely Not Left-Wing Media, says Noted Conservative David Brooks.

Speaking to colleagues Amna Nawaz and Jonathan Capeheart during a recent edition of PBS NewsHour about President Donald Trump's executive order to end federal funding for PBS and NPR due to their biased coverage of the news, Brooks asked an extraordinary question: "Who's more straight down the line than we [PBS] are?" According to Brooks:

At its core, the Trump administration ... think[s] progressive elites have destroyed the country, we need to take progressive elites down.

And that's whether they're in museums and sciences and universities, whatever. And so, in some sense, they have some case to be made that the elites have become a little more progressive. ...

And I would say, if you think that PBS is biased, compared to who? Name one news organization in America -- and I shouldn't be defending us. I get paid by PBS.

[LAUGHTER]

But I'm going to do it -- who's more straight down the line than we are.

Is it MSNBC? Is it FOX? Is it CNN? Lisa Desjardins, like, one of the great journalists of our time? And so I will defend PBS, A, because I know how good we do in relative terms, but, B, because we travel around the country. We see the local affiliates where they're not doing some ideological thing. They are the voice of their community.

...

Both PBS and NPR are indistinguishable from the legacy media in that they offer readers only one side of every story.

This is good, too: On a separate podcast, James Carville announced that Democrats can't just lie like Republicans do, because truth-worshipping Democrats just wouldn't put up with the lies.

Speaking of, did you know Trump said there are Very Fine Nazis on Both Sides?

People say to me all the time, 'James, why don't we just do like the Republicans do, just stand up and lie?'

Because our f***ing people wouldn't stand for it!

If I stood up and lied, you would be the first person to say, 'James Carville lost all credibility last night when he said X, Y and Z.'

LOL.

"Protect the Dolls," the trans cult's latest and creepiest slogan.

They're wearing T-shirts (which cost about $90) that say "Protect the Dolls" -- the "dolls" here being real-life children they want to play with like they're toys.

'Protect the Dolls' is trans activism at its creepiest

Reading a Guardian report on the new pro-trans 'Protect the Dolls' t-shirt campaign, I reflected that there's no tell like a self-tell.

When Tilda Swinton and a host of lesser-known fashion and showbiz faces (I had personally never heard of Pedro Pascal or Troye Sivan) put on one of these hilariously over-priced garments -- £75! -- and smiled self-servingly for the cameras, did they have no inkling of how the use of the word 'dolls' would play?

...

[I]n a way, transwomen are 'dolls'. But not the kind they think of themselves as. Social media have fuelled the rise in images of men with body dysmorphia and / or a kink portraying themselves as fairies and little girls, even when they're six-foot-four abattoir workers called Big Al.

...

It makes one think of sex dolls, and thus 'sissy porn'. This is the unwholesome genre of porn in which a man is 'forced' to transform into a woman, whether through the administration of hormones or the donning of makeup and lingerie. It has apparently drawn a sizeable number of 'normal' men to cross-dressing, while being altogether less innocent than the desire to spend alternate Fridays wearing frills'n'furbelows and answering to Fiona. One self-confessed fan of this genre is transwoman and literary critic Andrea Long Chu, who also once described his ideal / idea of womanhood as 'an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes'.

Mr Chu has also argued there should be unregulated access for all, including children, to cross-sex hormones and surgery. A surprising number of activists involved in the 'respectable' end of trans activism believe that children should be allowed to 'transition' at an age when they aren't even allowed to be legally left alone at home overnight. As Malcolm Clark has pointed out previously on spiked: 'If anyone argued that children had a fundamental human right to work or to marry we would think them bonkers or worse. Yet the trans movement wants us to believe that those who have not yet gone through puberty should be given the choice to make radical and permanent changes to their bodies.'

Posted by: Ace at 06:27 PM | Comments (258) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Quick Hits

The media refuses to report the fact that the stock market has fully recovered from the "Liberation Day" slump.

It felt much longer, but the U.S. stock market needed just a few weeks to roar all the way back to where it was on President Donald Trump's "Liberation Day." That's when he shocked Wall Street by announcing much steeper tariffs than expected on nearly all U.S. trading partners.

Those tariffs unveiled on April 2 were so severe that they raised fears Trump did not worry about causing a recession in his attempt to reshape the global economy. Within just four days, the S&P 500 fell about 12%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost nearly 4,600 points, or about 11%.

This past Friday, though, the S&P 500 rallied 1.5% for a ninth straight gain and pulled back to where it was on April 2.

The left has discovered a politician they want to evict from office due to mental incapacity.

That politician? John Fetterman, of course.

They claimed he was mentally fit as a fiddle when he wasn't even capable of understanding human speech but now that he's dug-in in his support for Israel, now he's too retarded to be a senator.

In 2022, when John Fetterman had a stroke while he was running for his Senate seat, the Democrats and their media allies were insistent that to even question his fitness to serve was ableist and unacceptable.

My, how times have changed.

This week, New York magazine, as reliable a Democrat organ as there is, ran a scathing hit piece on Fetterman in which current and former staffers all but suggest that not only should he not be Pennsylvania's senior senator, he belongs in an assisted living facility.

The piece has no "gotcha" moment that would make any fair person say that Fetterman needs to step aside - you know, the kind former President Biden provided daily. Rather, it is a collection of anecdotes about him snapping at staff, or withdrawing into himself, perhaps not taking his medication. Try as they might, the folks at New York magazine constructed a molehill, not a mountain.

But why, one wonders, two years after waiving away similar behavior is a liberal news outlet suddenly parading the senator's alleged diminished capacities? What changed?

Well, the article itself gives us a big hint with this line, "The endless fights over Israel, which saw Fetterman draw further into himself, coincided with setbacks in his recovery regimen."

You don't say.

Allow me to humbly suggest that this is not, in fact, a coincidence. Fetterman's strong support of Israel, America's ally, and his other recent moderate positions have placed a giant target on the back of his hoodie sweatshirt.

Condemning Israel's defensive war against Hamas is just one of the progressive shibboleths that Fetterman refuses to mindlessly repeat, but it may be the most important one. After all, according to progressives, he is supporting genocide.

Likewise, his completely sane and rational position that not every utterance of President Donald Trump needs to be met with setting one's hair on fire completely contradicts Democrats' claims that Trump has already begun ushering in autocratic fascism.

It's honestly kind of amusing that one of the only Democrats who isn't driven completely insane by Trump is the one they say is mentally unfit.

Collin Rugg
@CollinRugg
REPORT: Antarctica reverses trend and gains ice for the first time in decades, according to a new study published by Science China Earth Sciences.

Researchers say from 2021-2023, the Antarctic Ice Sheet saw a record-breaking mass *gain.*

Tongji University researchers say satellite gravimetry data shows that from 2011 to 2020, the Antarctic Ice Sheet lost 142 gigatons of ice per year.

That trend flipped between 2021 and 2023 when the ice sheet allegedly gained about 108 gigatons of ice per year.

Most of the gains are in East Antarctica. Scientists say much of the gains are linked to precipitation patterns, which could be temporary.

Crazy.

Notice that when the news is good, and defies climate alarmists' fake predictions, they claim it might be "temporary." Weird that they never say that temperature fluctuations could be temporary.

Posted by: Ace at 05:25 PM | Comments (243) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Left Shrieks: Fear of Deportation is Causing Illegal Alien Mexicans to Cancel Their Cinco De Mayo Celebrations!

This is the greatest tragedy in human history!

Posted by: Ace at 04:20 PM | Comments (389) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Super-Ager: Biden's Team Decided to Not Give Him a Cognitive Test in 2024 Because They Were So Completely Confident He'd Pass It What Would Be the Point?

John Sexton relays the disclosures from a new book about the 2024 election.

They considered giving him a test after the Hur report was released, which said that Biden was not capable of being tried due to mental infirmity. Because his lapses in memory and obvious cognitive impairment would defeat any attempt to prove "intent" in any of his crimes.

He then gave a press conference in which he referred to Egyptian president al-Sisi as "the president of Mexico" and also confused Helmut Kohl for Angela Merkel and Francois Mitterand for Emmanual Macron.

Suffice it to say, the Biden team was on the back foot after that news conference and was probably looking for a way to convince people he was fine. Since Biden's final medical exam before the 2024 election was released at the end of February, it seems his team was considering adding the cognitive exam to the other tests performed by his doctor.

The story claims Biden's team was confident he would pass the cognitive exam, but decided not to do it because it would only add to the discussion of his decline by suggesting the test was necessary. They may also have been put off by the fact that Biden's doctor had warned he would treat Biden like any other patient, without regard to his political office. In other words, if Biden had failed the test he would not have been willing to pretend otherwise.

See the post for more.

Paid liar and Marxist whore Jen Psaki still insists that she never saw the flustered, mentally-incompetent Biden until the rest of us did in that debate. She also, apparently, never saw him on television mixing up long-dead European leaders for current ones or thinking that "al-Sisi" sounded like a Spanish name.

Or calling for a dead woman -- whose death he was on stage to memorialize -- to join him on the stage.

Nope, she never saw any of that, she swears, whenever she saw Biden he was, infamously, out-thinking and out-working all of his young staff and all the rest of the cover-up cover stories they pumped out for years.

She repeatedly insists that the term "cover-up" is a "loaded term." She says this instead of actually denying she took any of the actions to advance the cover-up.

The Washington Examiner:

MSNBC anchor Jen Psaki defended the Biden administration that once employed her by suggesting they didn't cover up then-President Joe Biden's mental decline, that it just happened "quite quickly."

Psaki served as the White House press secretary during the first half of Biden's term. In the months since Biden left office, many revelations have emerged about his mental acuity while serving as president of the United States, even before and while he was running for reelection. According to Psaki, his staff never tried to hide his mental state, but he declined rapidly.

"I left in May of 2022 -- just for the facts here -- and I have seen Biden once since then when I took my daughter to the holiday party this last December after he had lost. So I hadn't seen him in person during that period of time. I never saw that person not a single time -- and I was in the Oval Office every day -- that was on that debate stage. I'm not a doctor. Aging happens quite quickly," Psaki said on the Mixed Signals podcast on Saturday.

From the New York Post: Psaki objects to the term "cover-up" because it sounds like a crime.

Not because she didn't participate in a cover-up. Just because it's not formally a crime to hide the disability of a president from the voters:

Psaki didn't entertain the notion of a political cover-up from her former colleagues.

"It's a very loaded term, I think. A cover-up is often like a crime. People use that term when they refer to Watergate or the covering up of not sharing public information and about a war," she said.

Posted by: Ace at 02:50 PM | Comments (421) | Trackbacks (Suck)

HHS: Treat "Gender Dysphoria" with Talking-Cure Psychiatry, Not Hormones and Amputations

Sounds crazy but maybe mentally-ill children need to be told the truth about reality, not indulged with irreversible hormone treatments and gender mutilations.

A sweeping review of transgender treatments on minors found "deep uncertainty about the purported benefits" of many of those interventions -- and urged doctors to put more of an emphasis on behavioral therapy when addressing gender dysphoria.

Researchers also concluded that many of the protocols for treating children with gender dysphoria became widely used before outcome studies determined whether or not they were safe practices, a massive 409-page Health and Human Services study revealed.

"The umbrella review found that the overall quality of evidence concerning the effects of any intervention on psychological outcomes, quality of life, regret, or long-term health, is very low," HHS' Gender Dysphoria Report determined in its assessment of common studies on transgender treatments.

"This indicates that the beneficial effects reported in the literature are likely to differ substantially from the true effects of the interventions."

President Trump signed an executive order in January ordering HHS to conduct a review of best practices for treating gender dysphoria within 90 days, which was released Thursday.

Transgender interventions in children that were scrutinized in the blockbuster HHS report include the use of puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgeries.

While the report stressed it is not a "clinical practice guideline," the paper examined 17 systematic reviews of transgender treatments in minors and concluded that there was limited evidence to suggest those interventions had any "meaningful improvement in mental health."

In some instances, this was because studies did not properly measure track patient outcomes or studied individuals whose mental health was already at a "high-functioning at baseline."

"Multiple SRs [systematic reviews] have concluded that the evidence supporting the benefits of pediatric transition interventions--from PBs [puberty blockers] to CSH [cross-sex hormone therapy] and surgery--is of 'very low certainty,'" the HHS report said.

"All medical interventions carry the potential for harm."

A lot of the research into transgenderism in question was conducted overseas. One of the most famous ones was the Dutch Protocol, which was originally published in 2006 and outlined "highly medicalized" methods to treat young people with gender dysphoria, including puberty blockers.

For years, the Dutch Protocol was generally regarded as the gold standard guideline for treating young people struggling with gender dysphoria. The guidance has since been weakened over time, with some of its eligibility restrictions pared down.

Following the 2006 publication of the Dutch Protocol, there had been a sharp rise in transgender treatments in minors.

An estimated 3.3% of US adolescents consider themselves transgender, per the HHS report. Meanwhile, about 0.1% of 17-year-olds received hormonal treatment between 2018 and 2022.

But HHS researchers found that the Dutch Protocol was based on "methodological flaws" that were "largely overlooked" by the broader medical community since its publication.

"One of the study's limitations was its retrospective selection of 70 subjects from a larger 'intent-to-treat' group of 111 using non-randomized methods," the HHS report said.

"This selection process inadvertently biased the sample toward cases with the most favorable prognoses, thereby limiting the generalizability of the study's findings."

The HHS study cautioned that there is an "extreme toxicity and polarization surrounding this field of medicine."

I'll say there's "extreme toxicity" on this issue, coming from the extremely toxic.

...

The HHS study has been met with mixed reactions from the medical community.

Susan Kressly, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, slammed the report, arguing that it relied too heavily upon a "narrow set of data" and "select perspectives.

"This report misrepresents the current medical consensus and fails to reflect the realities of pediatric care," she said in a statement.

Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, chairman of Do No Harm, an organization that opposes so-called gender transition surgeries, hailed the HHS review for exposing "a number of serious risks in the medical transition of young people."

"The report cites a 'lack of robust evidence' for these medical procedures," Goldfarb said in a statement. "It is clearer now, more than ever, that we must end this misguided practice and replace it with evidence-based treatment for gender confused kids."

A Biden judge has blocked the report from being disseminated.

No, that's just a dark jibe. But you have to figure that that's on the way.

Below, a writer insists that she has discovered arguments in favor of transitioning that you never heard before, not even a single time. She (?) claims that, get this, our ideas of gender are imposed on us by Society and are infinitely and easily malleable and that if we just get used to men dressing as women, then we'll get used to men dressing as women.

I know, I know, you're all blown away by hearing this never-before-advanced claim and are so impressed by this entirely new argument that you're all stroking your chins saying "Cross-dressing, you say...?" while searching Amazon for genital-hiding bathing suits.

Posted by: Ace at 01:48 PM | Comments (359) | Trackbacks (Suck)

DOJ Settles $30 Million Wrongful Death Lawsuit by Ashli Babbitt's Family

Good.

The left will shriek. Meanwhile, leftist governments pay out millions to left-wing rioters, apologizing for having put them in jail for five hours.

The Department of Justice and the estate of Ashli Babbitt have reached a preliminary settlement in a $30 million wrongful death lawsuit tied to her fatal shooting during the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. Babbitt, an unarmed Air Force veteran and staunch Trump supporter, was shot by a Capitol Police officer as she attempted to breach the Speaker's Lobby.

Key Details:

DOJ and Babbitt's estate reached a settlement "in principle" in the $30 million lawsuit filed in 2024.

Babbitt was shot by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd while trying to climb through a barricaded door during the January 6 riot.

President Trump has suggested financial compensation for January 6 defendants and is reviewing Babbitt's case.

Diving Deeper:

The Department of Justice has taken the first step in settling a high-profile legal challenge tied to the events of January 6, 2021, agreeing in principle to resolve a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the estate of Ashli Babbitt. The lawsuit, originally seeking $30 million in damages, alleged that the fatal shooting of Babbitt by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd constituted an unjustified use of deadly force.

...

Byrd was later cleared of wrongdoing by an internal Capitol Police investigation, which ruled his actions were in self-defense and in the defense of congressional members. Nonetheless, his exoneration sparked intense backlash among conservatives and civil liberties advocates who questioned the proportionality of the use of force--particularly given Babbitt was unarmed and posed no immediate lethal threat.

...

Babbitt's political views had drawn attention prior to her death. A vocal supporter of then-President Donald Trump, she frequently posted on social media in support of the president and occasionally shared content linked to the QAnon movement. Her death has since become a rallying cry for Trump supporters, many of whom view her as a martyr unjustly killed by a system increasingly weaponized against political dissent.

Earlier this year, President Trump signaled his continued concern over the treatment of January 6 defendants and raised the possibility of financial redress for those imprisoned, including a reexamination of Babbitt's case. "We're going to look into it," Trump said in March when asked whether justice had been served in Babbitt's death.

I did a pretty hardcore digital detox the past week. I only caught news occasionally. I think I only turned my computer on three or four times.

Just my way of saying, I might be a little out-of-sync with the news cycle.

How are all of you?

Unrelated:

Posted by: Ace at 12:38 PM | Comments (466) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hello Everybody!

The coblogs did me a huge solid last week. Thanks so much, guys.

I'm trying to find a good story but I just want to say that I'm glad to be back and that I've missed you all.

Posted by: Ace at 12:05 PM | Comments (293) | Trackbacks (Suck)

THE MORNING RANT: President Trump defunds PBS and NPR, which identify the Declaration of Independence as a “document that contains offensive language”

Back before government-funded public radio fully morphed into a bastion of anti-Americanism, NPR had a tradition of reading the Declaration of Independence every July 4.

With NPR, PBS, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting fully captured by the America-hating left, the annual reading of the Declaration became a distasteful experience for NPR’s journalists. Effective July 4, 2022, NPR officially terminated its annual reading of the Declaration of Independence, replacing it instead with a discussion of what a despicable country the United States is and has always been. NPR understood that July 4th is a traumatic day for its listener base, so it sought to offer some comfort to triggered listeners recoiling at the star-spangled fun going on around them by denouncing patriotic Americans as being racists.

This July 4th we break with tradition. Instead of a reading of the Declaration of Independence @NPRinskeep examines what equality means and has meant in this document. Important segment about our past and future...produced by @marcarivers and @bgordemer https://t.co/MxlgNaWpC1

— Leila Fadel (@LeilaFadel) July 4, 2022

NPR also retroactively updated its previous links about the reading of the Declaration of Independence to advise that it is a racist document containing offensive language. Here is a link to NPR’s July 4, 2019 reading of the Declaration, with an Editors Note retroactively added in 2022 which reads:

Editor's note on July 8, 2022: This story quotes the U.S. Declaration of Independence — a document that contains offensive language about Native Americans, including a racial slur.

Although the House of Representatives allegedly controls the nation’s purse strings, and although there have been numerous Republican House speakers over the past several decades, none has chosen to defund NPR and PBS. President Donald Trump finally did what Mike Johnson, Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, John Boehner, etc would not do when he ordered the suspension of all taxpayer funding to NPR and PBS.

LEFT: Trump has now ordered an END to federal funding of NPR and PBS.

RIGHT: NPR CEO Katherine Maher believes her "number one challenge" is the First Amendment.

It’s way past time for this to end.

Not ONE DIME of US taxpayer money should fund these leftwing propaganda mills. pic.twitter.com/nSPWUV5k5Q

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) May 2, 2025

Going back decades, Republicans have been promising to defund NPR and PBS, but none did, not until Donald Trump came along.

Posted by: Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM | Comments (275) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Mid-Morning Art Thread

Chrysanthemums
Charles Sheeler

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (308) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Report — 5/ 5 /25

Good morning kids. Well after terrorists started mass forest fires in Israel, the Houthis launched missiles which landed very near to Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. The Houthis, along with Hamas, Hezbollah and many other terror groups are backed and in most cases directed by the Mullahs in Tehran.

The Houthi missile hit just 75 meters from Terminal 3 at Ben Gurion Airport, narrowly avoiding a direct strike that could have triggered a full-scale war. . .

. . .In mid-March, President Donald Trump ordered a “decisive and powerful military action” against the Houthis, resulting in a wave of U.S. airstrikes against key terrorist targets in Yemen.

Since Jimmy Carter allowed the Mullahs to take control of Iran 45 years ago, Israel, America and much of the west have endured bloody terrorist attacks that have left hundreds of innocent people dead and maimed.

As far as triggering a full-scale war, with Iran still moving closer and closer to a nuclear bomb, sooner or later there indeed will be either a preemptive strike or heaven forbid a much more devastating retaliatory strike by Israel on Tehran that could involve the major powers.

That they have gotten this far, despite Israel's best efforts to derail them is directly attributable to Jimmy Carter as well as the preternatural Israel hatred and anti-Semitism that has been endemic to the denizens of Foggy Bottom going back to Cordell Hull that continues to this day, despite the efforts of Donald Trump to cleanse it and the rest of DC of the globalist Deep State.

Regardless of President Trump's tough stance vis a vis the Houthis and this insane effort at negotiations which will accomplish nothing, except give Iran time and cover to complete the building of their bomb.
That the President is playing the negotions game is very disheartening, unless he's got cards he's not showing and, despite the fact that the Mullahs have got to go for the sake of preventing a regional if not a global war that could easily go nuclear, the idea of American armed forces engaging directly against Iran for me is a very bright red line.

Frankly, I fear Trump and or his team do not understand who they are dealing with. And that is individuals whose minds and black hearts are planted firmly in the 15th century. Those who believe that bringing about Armageddon will directly pave the way for the conquest and subjugation of the world as an Islamic planet for all time.

America has spent over a decade attempting to negotiate with the Islamic Republic of Iran. From Obama’s JCPOA to Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign and now renewed talks under Trump’s second term, the pattern remains: Iran makes promises it doesn’t keep, while the U.S. oscillates between diplomacy and sanctions.

Washington still doesn’t grasp the fundamental truth: the mullahs don’t keep promises—except those made to Allah. . .

. . . Now, in Trump’s second term, the signals are scrambled. After running on a platform of toughness, the administration has stunned observers by floating new talks with Iran—even sending a personal message to Supreme Leader Khamenei through unofficial channels. . .

. . . Just recently, Iran accused the U.S. of “contradictory behavior and provocative statements,” citing backchannel proposals followed immediately by Treasury sanctions on Iranian banks and officials. Meanwhile, Trump himself stated in a campaign-style rally that “we will never let Iran go nuclear,” while his administration quietly signals openness to a “limited freeze” in exchange for sanctions relief. The result? Strategic incoherence. Tehran smells weakness—and buys time.

Don't get me wrong. I am a huge fan of President Trump, especially with what he has been able to do in just his first 100 days despite the rhetorical slings and arrows and literal bullets, of outrageous fortune hurled against him. But With this Iran garbage, and his actions with Zelensky and Putin, I get a nagging suspicion that he's angling for a Nobel Prize. Even if he were successful in stopping that war or preventing Iran from starting World War 3, does he think he'd even be given the recognition, considering he is regarded as the second coming of Adolf Hitler by the same global elites whom he craves recognition?

I hope to God I'm wrong, because the stakes are so insanely high.

Just give Israel the logistical and intel support it needs and it can get the job done. The question is what job? Striking nuclear weapons sites or the reactors? That in and of itself would be problematic to say the least. But from what I have read, Iran's faltering economy along with the insanity of the mad Mullahs and a severe water crisis has only fueled the Persian citizenry's decades-long hatred of their government, so perhaps crippling their oil refineries and electrical grid could lead to the long awaited regime change.

Will we get what we got in Syria by swapping out the Baathists for an ISIS offshoot or does Iran's future hold even the slightest glimmer of hope for a stable and sane non-Islamic government.

We'll have to wait and see, I suppose.

And lastly, a quick shout-out and thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.

Have a great day.

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
• Israel has struck Houthi targets in Yemen in previous responses. However, it is possible that Israel will target Iran instead, since Iran arms and funds the Houthis and is heavily involved in their ballistic missile attacks.
  Houthis Hit Ben Gurion Airport with Missile; Israel Weighs Response; Iran Possible Target
  
• Between the leftist attack on a shared culture and the existential importance of babies, America is becoming a Balkanized, depopulated mess. (Plus Islam and Academia - jjs)
  Why We May Lose Our Country

Victor Davis Hanson: From Russiagate to Harvard scandals, the left’s decade-long hysteria machine spins on—loud, fact-light, and void of any serious plan for America’s future.
From One Fake Left-wing Hysteria to the Next

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 07:15 AM | Comments (329) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 5 May 2025

Top Story

• Intel may have sold off a majority of its Altera acquisition to balance the books, but it hasn't given up in other areas: The B770 GPU could be here as soon as Computex, which is in just (searches frantically) over two weeks. (WCCFTech)
  
  This will likely be a mid-range 16GB card. The existing B580 offers 12GB of RAM at $250, which is already a better bet in the current market than 8GB cards, except for the minor problem that there aren't any.
  
  
  
• And Intel's third-generation "Celestial" GPUs could be here by CES. (Hot Hardware)
  
  That seems a bit ambitious, to be honest. Expect this to take more like a year to reach retail even if things go well, and eighteen months if they need more than a simple tweak moving from test samples to production.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:30 AM | Comments (159) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sunday Overnight Open Thread - May 4, 2025 [Doof]

May the Fourth Be With You!

Greeted you are. Into the ONT you will step. Much fear in the lurkers I sense. Commenting you will learn to do. Fun to be had, there is!

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (570) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gun Thread: May 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! As predicted last week, it's now May. How did that happen you ask? I think it has to do with the calendar and use of magic beans. It's going to be something of a quickie this week guys and gals. Apologies in advance.

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 (277) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Food Thread: Chicken Femurs And Turgid Wine?

Well kids; it's time for your yearly poultry anatomy lesson!

Specifically...comparative anatomy of French vs. American chickens.

And you thought this wasn't a sexy and provocative thread? Hah!

American chicken thighs tend to be quadrilaterals with roughly equal length sides.

French thighs, based on my limited experience, tend to be longer and thinner.

That sounds nuts! Don't chickens migrate across the Atlantic? Aren't they the same varieties?

Nope. I dipped my toe into the waters of chicken varieties and...it's crazy!

But the gold standard in France is a breed called Bresse Gauloise, which is the source of the famous Volaille de Bresse, a very tasty and very expensive chicken that has rigorous standards and a legal definition.

My American comparison is a regional brand called Bell & Evans, a local poultry farm, and the premium chicken from my go-to market. And all three have the shape I described, as has every chicken thigh I have seen in all of my years eating chicken.

So, what's the difference? What were the French breeding for that yielded that shape, and what was the American chicken industry seeking when they got their particular shape?

Don't ask me...I have no idea.

Posted by: CBD at 04:00 PM | Comments (312) | Trackbacks (Suck)