Saturday Overnight Open Thread (4/13/24)

*****

The Saturday Night Joke

Will I Live to see 85❓
(Here's something to think about):
After having to choose a new primary care doctor, I was curious!
After two visits and exhaustive lab tests, she said I was doing fairly well for my age. (I am north of 75).
A little concerned about that comment, I couldn't resist asking her, 'Do you think I'll live to be 85?'
She asked, 'Do you smoke tobacco, or drink beer, wine or hard liquor?'
'Oh no,' I replied. 'I'm not doing drugs, either!'
Then she asked, 'Do you eat rib-eye steaks and barbecued ribs?'
I said, 'Not much... My former doctor said that all red meat is very unhealthy!'
'Do you spend a lot of time in the sun, like playing golf, boating, sailing, hiking, or bicycling?'
'No, I don't,' I said.
She asked, 'Do you gamble, drive fast cars, or have a lot of sex?'
'No,' I said.........
She looked at me and said, 'Then................................. why do you even give a shit?' (H/T Isophorone Blog)

*****

In case you missed it. The famed OJ Simpson assumed room temperature via cancer. Moar OJ humor via Norm MacDonald.

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 09:50 PM | Comments (390) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Evening Movie Thread 04/13/2024 [TheJamesMadison]

George Romero

If there's one thing George Romero is known for it's zombies. He was the zombie guy. He made zombie movies. And, to be fair, six out of sixteen films were zombie films. That's not a small percentage, but half of those three were made in the final five years of his career from 2005-2009. Much like many film directors who started in the horror genre, he spent most of his career trying to break out of that mold before ultimately just giving up and using what little clout he had in that tiny subgenre he called home to make whatever he could.

Was that all he was, though? Was he just the zombie guy? Was he just the horror guy who made a lot of zombie films? Surely we all remember, or have at least heard of, Martin, his pseudo-vampire film, right?

Well, to figure out Romero, who he was, how he was perceived, and who he wanted to be, you have to break his filmmaking career into three parts. The first is Night of the Living Dead until Dawn of the Dead. The second would be Creepshow to the end of his career with Survival of the Dead. The third would be the film that falls in between: Knightriders.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:45 PM | Comments (269) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Weekend Hobby Thread (4/13/24)

(H/T Muad'Dib)

*****

Good afternoon hobbyists. The only political statement to be made here today is the opening photo. No politics or current events. The photo submitted is a reminder to me that we haven't covered the hobby of off-roading with All Terrain Vehicles (ATVs) or Utility Task Vehicles (UTVs). Originally the game got started with the introduction of mini-bikes to Honda's 3-Wheel ATC then on to '4 wheelers' (ATVs.) From there things just got bigger and more expensive. Did things get better? I don't know, I've been riding 4 wheelers since 1995. (Get off my lawn and ATV trail).

So The Fabulous and I are involved this weekend with some club activities. Things happen fast here when the Frozen Tundra thaws out.

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 06:30 PM | Comments (110) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Iran Launches Drones Against Israel

Iran launches hundreds of drones toward Israel

Not much news...But this is a direct result of the Biden administration's equivocating about Israel's right to self defense.

Iran has been emboldened by the messages coming out of Washington, and they see this as an opportunity to show the world that America is toothless, and that they can attack Israel (Little Satan) and eventually America (Great Satan).

Posted by: CBD at 06:17 PM | Comments (407) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ace of Spades Pet Thread, April 13

* * *

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

Would you like a treat?

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

Posted by: K.T. at 03:30 PM | Comments (78) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, April 13

Happy Saturday! Still having variable weather here. How about where you are?

Well, we have another very talented gardening lurker in The Horde. Love that beautiful photo above. Would like to visit!

Enjoying my front yard this spring in Washington.

Always enjoy the "Gardening, Puttering and Adventure thread".

Prefer to remain a long time lurker

Posted by: K.T. at 01:27 PM | Comments (116) | Trackbacks (Suck)

It's been a long week for NPR's new CEO

u-local New Hampshire

Was the eclipse a sign?

On Tuesday, the day after the eclipse, The Free Press published a piece by Uri Berliner: I've Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here's How We Lost America's Trust.

Mr. Berliner, a senior editor at National Public Radio, apparently waited for a change in CEOs before staking out this position, which is extraordinarily brave for someone still working at the organization. The new CEO has only been in her position for 3 weeks or so. It was really unexpected for a senior editor to claim that NPR has gone off the rails. I'm not so sure it's unexpected for the new CEO to issue a warped response suggesting that she doesn't really understand what he wrote.

Posted by: K.T. at 11:08 AM | Comments (328) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Classical Saturday Morning Coffee Break & Prayer Revival

For the foreseeable future my classical music Mystery Clicks will be taken from the following, "The 200 Classical Music Pieces Every Moron and 'Ette Should Know Better, as compiled by Hadrian the Seventh"

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 08:01 AM | Comments (303) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Who The F*ck Puts Cumin In Bloody Mary Mix?

Posted by: CBD at 07:35 AM | Comments (102) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Techy News 13 April 2024

Top Story

• Google is threatening to stop providing news links to California after California announced legislation charging companies that provide news links to California. (The Verge)
  
  It's obvious to everyone that this is what will happen if these stupid laws pass, but they still pass these stupid laws.
  
  
  

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (145) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Only Thing We Have To Fear Is The ONT Itself

Welcome to Friday night. Someone sent me this meme, so I guess I better use it.

Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:00 PM | Comments (354) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Things That Go "Squeak" in the Night Cafe

Socotra Island, off the coast of Yemen
Yes it's real
It's mostly made of gases so people can live on it
More photos here. Worth the clicks!

Polishing your "little rhino," if you know what I mean.

Birds being silly.

Local man is stunned by #lifehacks.

Take the plunge.

SHARK! Oh wait it's a whale, don't even worry.

Chick-flinging.

Prepper hidey-holes.

Neat flyover.

Things you probably did as a kid when you were bored. The title specifies "90s kids" but I think most of these are universal, before the age of endless random scrolling on cellphones.

Speaking of boredom: make a miniature longbow!

Beachfront property.

There's nothing better for the insides of a man than the outside of a bear.

Sick orphaned lamb just wants to do headbutts all day.

No man is poor so long as he has friends, and those friends are elephants.

Baby and husky puppy grow up together.

Gorilla dances like nobody's watching.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 07:20 PM | Comments (243) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Leftists Seeking to Paper Over the Schisms in the Islamist-Gay Alliance Now Say That Pointing Out that Hamas is Anti-Gay Is Itself "Homophobic"

Stop bringing up relevant information that we are trying to suppress!

End all "Hate Facts"!

Professors claim pointing out how Hamas brutalizes LGBTQ people is 'homophobic violence'

Israel was also accused of committing sexual assault against Palestinians as 'part of the settler colonial White supremacist logics and practices'

Describing Hamas' brutalization of LGBTQ Palestinians needs to be labeled "homophobic violence," university professors suggested at an event last month.

Associate Professor Maya Mikdashi took part in a discussion at the school titled "Palestine is a Feminist and Queer Anti-Imperialist Abolition Struggle" with University of Illinois professor Nadine Naber on March 20. During the event, Mikdashi pushed back on the complaint that Palestinians and Hamas mistreat LGBTQ citizens, claiming that the assertion itself is a form of bigotry.

"So I've been at protests where I'm then told, 'Don't you know what Hamas would do to you, if you were in Palestine.' And we have to start naming this, actually, as homophobic," Mikdashi said, as Naber vocally agreed. "You cannot rehearse violence to queer people and be like, 'don't you know ... A, B, you would be...' in really excruciating detail. I think we have to actually shift it."

"It's violence," an audience member said.

"It's homophobic. It's violent," Mikdashi agreed.

"Homophobic violence," Naber affirmed.

Naber also excused Hamas' gang-rapes of civilians on the grounds that Israel, by simply existing, was guilty of "sexual assault," so this is just rough justice.

Naber also alleged that the concept was based on a "racist assumption" that Arab culture is "hyper-misogynist" and rooted in "backwards or savage concepts." She later insisted that Israel is guilty of sexual assault based on its colonialist founding.

"[I]ndeed the practices of rape and sexual assault that have been well-documented during the founding of Israel and continued today are not an exception or a secondary impact of colonial violence but are part of the settler colonial White supremacist logics and practices of Israel that conflate colonized women with the land and nature and assume that therefore to dominate the land necessitates dominating Palestinian women's bodies and their reproductive capacities from 1948 until today," Naber said.

And you're not going to believe this, but the Gaza Health Ministry, owned and operated by noted Fact-Checking and Disinformation Expert organization Hamas, turns out to have fudged the numbers about claimed casualties.

From FDD:

The Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health said on April 6 that it had "incomplete data" for 11,371 of the 33,091 Palestinian fatalities it claims to have documented. In a statistical report, the ministry notes that it considers an individual record to be incomplete if it is missing any of the following key data points: identity number, full name, date of birth, or date of death. The health ministry also released a report on April 3 that acknowledged the presence of incomplete data but did not define what it meant by "incomplete." In that earlier report, the ministry acknowledged the incompleteness of 12,263 records. It is unclear why, after just three more days, the number fell to 11,371 -- a decrease of more than 900 records.

Prior to its admissions of incomplete data, the health ministry asserted that the information in more than 15,000 fatality records had stemmed from "reliable media sources." However, the ministry never identified the sources in question and Gaza has no independent media.

"The sudden shifts in the ministry's reporting methods suggest it is scrambling to prevent exposure of its shoddy work. For months, U.S. media have taken for granted that the ministry's top-line figure for casualties was reliable enough to include in daily updates on the war. Even President Biden has cited its numbers. Now we're seeing that a third or more of the ministry's data may be incomplete at best -- and fictional at worst." -- David Adesnik, Senior Fellow and Director of Research

I mean, this is nonsense -- Hamas isn't guilty of slip-shod record-keeping. They're guilty of just making up numbers completely, as this excellent article at Tablet ably demonstrates.

The number of civilian casualties in Gaza has been at the center of international attention since the start of the war. The main source for the data has been the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, which now claims more than 30,000 dead, the majority of which it says are children and women. Recently, the Biden administration lent legitimacy to Hamas' figure. When asked at a House Armed Services Committee hearing last week how many Palestinian women and children have been killed since Oct. 7, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the number was "over 25,000." The Pentagon quickly clarified that the secretary "was citing an estimate from the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry." President Biden himself had earlier cited this figure, asserting that "too many, too many of the over 27,000 Palestinians killed in this conflict have been innocent civilians and children, including thousands of children." The White House also explained that the president "was referring to publicly available data about the total number of casualties."

Here's the problem with this data: The numbers are not real. That much is obvious to anyone who understands how naturally occurring numbers work. The casualties are not overwhelmingly women and children, and the majority may be Hamas fighters.

If Hamas' numbers are faked or fraudulent in some way, there may be evidence in the numbers themselves that can demonstrate it. While there is not much data available, there is a little, and it is enough: From Oct. 26 until Nov. 10, 2023, the Gaza Health Ministry released daily casualty figures that include both a total number and a specific number of women and children.

The first place to look is the reported "total" number of deaths. The graph of total deaths by date is increasing with almost metronomical linearity, as the graph in Figure 1 reveals.

The graph reveals an extremely regular increase in casualties over the period. Data aggregated by the author and provided by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), based on Gaza MoH figures.
The graph reveals an extremely regular increase in casualties over the period. Data aggregated by the author and provided by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), based on Gaza MoH figures.
This regularity is almost surely not real. One would expect quite a bit of variation day to day. In fact, the daily reported casualty count over this period averages 270 plus or minus about 15%. This is strikingly little variation. There should be days with twice the average or more and others with half or less. Perhaps what is happening is the Gaza ministry is releasing fake daily numbers that vary too little because they do not have a clear understanding of the behavior of naturally occurring numbers.

Another sign of fakery is the lack of correlation between women's deaths and children's deaths. In real mass casualty data, you'd find a correlation between the two, as women and children are often in the same place during a tragedy. But Hamas' fake number generators don't even attempt to keep the numbers consisent with each other.

They similarly don't show a proper correlation between male and female casualty counts. If a bomb hits an apartment building, as Hamas claims happens every other day, then a rougly equal number of men and women will be killed. But Hamas wants to claim that virtually all casualties are women, so they claim that huge numbers of women are being killed, and, on some days, zero men.

Are Israeli bombs hitting all-female religious convents? What can account for these bizarre death statistics, apart from simple fraudulency?

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 06:30 PM | Comments (153) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Taxpayers Will Be Paying Democrat Get-Out-the-Vote Drives This Election Season

Ben Weingarten for RCP:

Progressives are using legal loopholes and the power of the federal government to maximize Democrat votes in the 2024 election at taxpayers' expense, RealClearInvestigations has found.

The methods include voter registration and mobilization campaigns by ostensibly nonpartisan charities that target Democrats using demographic data as proxies, and the Biden administration's unprecedented demand that every federal agency "consider ways to expand citizens' opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process."

In other words: They're not allowed to target registered Democrats as independents.

So instead they're using socioeconomic data like race and socioeconomic class as very strong predictors of who the Democrats are.

We're not targeting Democrats! We're just trying to register 150% of the black population of blue cities in red states!!!

The full Detroit, in other words.

A dizzying array of overwhelmingly "democracy-focused" entities with ties to the Democratic Party operating as charities and funded with hundreds of millions of dollars from major liberal "dark money" vehicles are engaged in a sprawling campaign to register the voters, deliver them the ballots, and figuratively and sometimes literally harvest the votes necessary to defeat Donald Trump.

These efforts, now buttressed by the federal government, amplify and extend what Time magazine described as a "well-funded cabal of powerful people ranging across industries and ideologies," who had worked behind the scenes in 2020 "to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information" to defeat Trump and other Republicans. The "shadow campaigners," Time declared, "were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it."

Heading into 2024, "there is not a 'shadow' campaign," said Mike Howell, executive director of the Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project. "There is an overt assault on President Trump and those who wish to vote for him occurring at every level of government and with the support of all major institutions."

By contrast, Republican Party stalwarts lament that no comparable effort exists on their side. The GOP's turnout and messaging efforts seek to thread a difficult needle by encouraging early and absentee voting and ballot-harvesting -- pandemic-era measures that Trump and supporters blame for his 2020 electoral defeat -- while the party simultaneously fights the mainly blue-state laws that made the practices possible. The party's position is further complicated by its standard-bearer's warnings of a rigged election bigger than in 2020, which some speculate could turn off moderate swing voters.

The IRS permits tax-exempt nonprofit groups to engage in voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives so long as they do not "refer to any candidate or political party" nor conduct their activities "in a biased manner that favors (or opposes) one or more candidates prohibited."

These entities have become magnets for funds not only from wealthy donors, who can contribute without traditional campaign finance limits -- and get a tax break to boot-- but also abundantly endowed private foundations that are prohibited from engaging in partisan activities.

In recent years, dozens of progressive-oriented 501(c)(3)s, now pulling in upwards of $500 million annually, have engaged in purportedly neutral efforts to impact elections, according to Hayden Ludwig, director of Policy Research at the election integrity-focused advocacy group, Restoration of America.

In practice, critics like Ludwig argue, left-leaning charities flout the law by registering and mobilizing demographics that tend to vote disproportionately Democratic behind a veil of non-partisan democracy promotion.

During the 2020 election, for example, the Voter Participation Center solicited millions of ballot applications in swing states -- many of them prefilled for respondents. This nonprofit, like its peers, is clear that it isn't targeting just any voters, but what it and progressive activists have dubbed a "New American Majority" of "young people, people of color and unmarried women."

Tom Lopach, a longtime Democratic Party operative and the center's president and CEO, told RCI in a statement: "We do the work that state election officials typically do not do -- seeking out underrepresented voting-eligible Americans Tom Lopach ... This is difficult but necessary work that brings democracy to eligible Americans' doorsteps."

In 2020, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan showed how supposedly neutral efforts can have a partisan impact when they funneled some $400 million through two progressive-led but purportedly nonpartisan nonprofits into election offices across the country.

That money disproportionately went to jurisdictions that Joe Biden won in the pivotal battleground states that delivered his victory, often flowing to left-leaning nonprofits to whom election offices outsourced the administration of sometimes critical functions.

And that effort continues now, with a whole new range of "Zuckerbucks" payments to turn out the Democrat vote.

And you're paying for it.

Read the whole thing. We're not ahead; we are desperately behind.

And most Republicans refused to do anything about this because they're not-so-secretly on the other side.

And because Trump, and MAGA people in general, apparently have "cooties" that these faggot liberals-in-GOP-clothing are afraid to catch.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 05:40 PM | Comments (129) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Idaho Government Signs Bill Giving Teachers the Freedom to Use Correct Pronouns without Being Sued or Fired

That's where we are now -- it takes a special act of a state legislature to give people permission to speak the obvious truth.

Idaho school districts soon will have to remove any requirements that teachers use transgender students' preferred pronouns.

Gov. Brad Little quietly signed House Bill 538 Monday. The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Ted Hill, R-Eagle, broadly enacts protections for public employees, including teachers, who are unwilling to use someone's preferred name and pronouns. It had overwhelming support among Statehouse Republicans.

The bill bars teachers from referring to a student by a name or pronoun that doesn't align with their birth sex, unless the teacher has parental consent. It also gives teachers the right to sue their district if they're disciplined for refusing to use a transgender student's preferred name or pronoun.

Little "supports policies that advance free speech and parental rights," and "this bill does both," Madison Hardy, the governor's spokeswoman, said by email. "While Gov. Little expects state employees to treat each other and members of the community with dignity and respect, he does not support government compelling speech at risk of penalty or excluding parents from significant decisions impacting a child's health and wellbeing."

Even though most news is bad, it's important to recognize that some people are fighting on the right side of history, and sometimes winning.

John Sexton notes this in an article about The Cass Review -- which called "transgender" therapy untested, unproven, and dangerous -- being published in the UK.

Even the leftwing gonzo-gay Labour Party was forced to admit that the Cass Review raised "very troubling" questions about the insane Rush to "Affirm" policy that was made up, Deborah-Birx-like, a few years ago with no evidence to support it whatseover.

Today, The Cass Review was released in the UK and the Labour Party was quick to say it agreed with all of its recommendations. Yvette Cooper, who holds the title of shadow home secretary, told an interviewed at Sky News she found the report "very troubling." That came as a shock to Telegraph columnist Madeline Grant.

Ms Cooper, blinking as if she was seeing daylight for the first time (perhaps the effect of all those years with her head in the sand) replied that the report's conclusions were "very troubling". This fire is very troubling, said the man with a box of matches and a jug of kerosene.

She could have said "we were wrong about this, I'm sorry we spent several years monstering everyone who raised the alarm -- especially within our own party". But she didn't. "Labour accepts all of the recommendations" she nodded sagely. Black was now actually black after all, and all those years that we said it was white are just water under the bridge.

...What was really important about the report, said Ms Cooper, was "not having all this get caught up in culture wars".

Ah yes, culture wars. Those low-status squabbles which only the Right ever indulges in and which only ever go one way. For example, "don't mutilate children!" = culture war. "Let's mutilate children!" = not a culture war.

As Grant points out, if it weren't for the "culture wars" (again, meaning resistance to whatever the left is pushing) there would never have been a Cass Review and the Labour Party would not now be saying it agreed with all of these conclusions. It's only because people pushed back (the culture warriors as the media frames it) that we've gotten to this point. And for that reason, the culture warriors deserve some credit and some praise.

Related: On Talk TV, the interviewer flatly refused to use a guest's stupid "they/them" pronouns.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 04:50 PM | Comments (127) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Michael Benz Warns: The Regime and the "Foreign Policy Blob" Have Coordinated with Monster Tech to Wage War on "Wrongthink"

They are aggressively assaultive on the public.

The public must start fighting back.

The foreign policy establishment that once thrived under the control of both political parties has used Big Tech and the Biden administration to codify a "war on wrongthink" that stifles dissent from the elites' narrative, a journalist and an online censorship analyst warned.

"What we're up against here are not pink-haired, ambi-gendered LGBT-BLM-maximizing identitarian politics when we're talking about censorship on the internet," Michael Benz, a former State Department official under President Donald Trump and founder of the Foundation for Freedom Online, said Tuesday at an Oversight Project event at The Heritage Foundation.

It's not "partisan politics" driving censorship, said Benz, but "the foreign policy establishment." Conservatives and populists "don't think about the American empire, they don't think about the managers of the American empire, which is the foreign policy establishment, our State Department, our Pentagon, our intelligence services."

"When you go upstream on internet censorship and what's driving it, you will find that foreign policy establishment," Benz argued.

I don't know if I'd say that foreign policy is driving tech censorship. Transgenderism is a stronger component than foreign policy.

But everytime you lift a censorship rock, you find the British intelligence services underneath it.

Benjamin Weingarten, editor-at-large at RealClearInvestigations, also attributed "the leading edge of all the attacks on Donald Trump as an avatar for tens of millions of dissenting Americans" to the administrative state and the "deep state" within it. (The "deep state" refers to bureaucrats who oppose the agenda of the duly-elected president.) These entrenched bureaucrats "felt most threatened that [Trump] would upend the uniparty foreign policy blob," he said.

"You also had the tech companies identify that what happened in 2016 could never happen again," Weingarten said, referring to both the Brexit referendum and Trump's election victory.

"They kind of used the pretext of Russian mis-, dis-, and malinformation, grafting a Cold War paradigm" to define a new enemy--Americans who disagree with their agenda, he said. "We are the enemy that's engaging in wrongthink that threatens to undermine their power."

Lee Fang published a similary story in the Intercept: The US foreign policy/intelligence community is funding NGOs to smear critics of the war in Ukraine.

U.S. Funds Ukraine Groups Censoring Critics, Smearing Pro-Peace Voices

American taxpayers are footing the bill for Ukrainian NGOs focused on smearing proponents of a diplomatic solution as "Russian disinformation" agents.

Ukraine's American-backed fight against Russia is taking place not only in the blood-soaked trenches of the Donbas region but also on what military planners call the cognitive battlefield -- to win hearts and minds.

A sprawling constellation of media outlets organized with substantial funding and direction from the U.S. government has not just sought to counter Russian propaganda but has supported strong censorship laws and shutdowns of dissident outlets, disseminated disinformation of its own, and sought to silence critics of the war, including many American citizens.

Economist Jeffrey Sachs, commentator Tucker Carlson, journalist Glenn Greenwald, and University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer are among the critics on both the left and the right who have been cast as part of a "network of Russian propaganda."

...

There's no evidence of Kremlin influence over their viewpoints, but their comments alone are enough for a network of U.S.-backed Ukrainian media groups to tarnish these experts as Russian propagandists.

U.S. taxpayer dollars are flowing to outlets such as the New Voice of Ukraine, VoxUkraine, Detector Media, the Institute of Mass Information, the Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine and many others. Some of this money has come from the $44.1 billion in civilian-needs foreign aid committed to Ukraine. While the funding is officially billed as an ambitious program to develop high-quality independent news programs; counter malign Russian influence; and modernize Ukraine's archaic media laws, the new sites in many cases have promoted aggressive messages that stray from traditional journalistic practices to promote the Ukrainian government's official positions and delegitimize its critics.

VoxUkraine has released highly produced videos attacking the credibility of American opposition voices, including Sachs, Mearsheimer, and Greenwald. Detector Media, one of the most influential media watchdog groups, similarly produces a flow of social media and posts branding American critics of the war as part of a Russian disinformation operation. The outlets are also devoted to domestic disputes. Detector Media's broadcasts have lampooned critics of Ukrainian government moves to shut down opposition media outlets.

It's not only dissident voices targeted by the USAID-funded groups.

Detector Media went after the New York Times in February over a news report about hundreds of Ukrainians in the battle for Avdiivka who were captured or missing. The Ukrainian fact-check site offered little in terms of a rebuttal. Detector Media only cited a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Defense Forces disputing the Times' story, which it labeled "disinformation." The New Voice of Ukraine quoted a Ukrainian official describing the Times story as a "Russian Psyop," a term for psychological warfare.

Unlike similar media development programs that the International Agency for International Development (USAID) has led throughout the Middle East, Ukrainian outlets tend to produce a great deal of English content that trickles back into the domestic American audience and explicitly targets American foreign policy discourse.

The New Voice of Ukraine syndicates with Yahoo News. VoxUkraine is a fact-checking partner with Meta, which assists in removing content deemed "Russian disinformation" from Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Detector Media has similarly led a consortium of nonprofit groups pressuring social media platforms to aggressively remove content critical of Ukraine.

More at the link.

The US used to have a law against the government running propaganda operations against its own populace.

Barack Hussein Obama repealed that law.

For decades, a so-called anti-propaganda law prevented the U.S. government's mammoth broadcasting arm from delivering programming to American audiences. But on July 2, that came silently to an end with the implementation of a new reform passed in January. The result: an unleashing of thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs for domestic U.S. consumption in a reform initially criticized as a green light for U.S. domestic propaganda efforts. So what just happened?

Until this month, a vast ocean of U.S. programming produced by the Broadcasting Board of Governors such as Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks could only be viewed or listened to at broadcast quality in foreign countries. The programming varies in tone and quality, but its breadth is vast: It's viewed in more than 100 countries in 61 languages. The topics covered include human rights abuses in Iran, self-immolation in Tibet, human trafficking across Asia, and on-the-ground reporting in Egypt and Iraq.

The restriction of these broadcasts was due to the Smith-Mundt Act, a long-standing piece of legislation that has been amended numerous times over the years, perhaps most consequentially by Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright. In the 1970s, Fulbright was no friend of VOA and Radio Free Europe, and moved to restrict them from domestic distribution, saying they "should be given the opportunity to take their rightful place in the graveyard of Cold War relics." Fulbright's amendment to Smith-Mundt was bolstered in 1985 by Nebraska Senator Edward Zorinsky, who argued that such "propaganda" should be kept out of America as to distinguish the U.S. "from the Soviet Union where domestic propaganda is a principal government activity."

Zorinsky and Fulbright sold their amendments on sensible rhetoric: American taxpayers shouldn't be funding propaganda for American audiences. So did Congress just tear down the American public's last defense against domestic propaganda?

BBG spokeswoman Lynne Weil insists BBG is not a propaganda outlet, and its flagship services such as VOA "present fair and accurate news."

The Deep Staters demanding that this be repealed claimed that VOA broadcast baseball games to Cuba. And you wouldn't want to ban VOA from sending those baseball game broadcasts to Florida, would you? It's baseball -- as American as apple pie.

Well, the US government is now paying foreign governments to defame and harass anyone critical of its policies.

We're a long way from "this isn't propaganda, it's just baseball!" now, aren't we?

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 03:50 PM | Comments (220) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Planet Fitness Suffers the (Checks Notes) "Planet Fitness Effect"

Coincidentally, like when Lou Gerhig caught Lou Gerhig's disease.

You know, before Lou Gerhrig got it, it was called Bert Handleman's Disease, but Lou Gehrig just wouldn't let Bert Handleman have a win.

Anyway:

Planet Fitness put out the word that it welcomed perverts exposing themselves to women in their "women's" locker rooms.

The perverts heard the call, and are stepping up.

Last month, Planet Fitness reportedly revoked the membership of a female who recorded a video of a male, who identifies as "queer LGB," shaving his legs in the women's locker room in front of a young girl in Alaska.

Planet Fitness stood by the man using the female locker room. Some patrons responded by giving the fitness franchise the Bud Light treatment, tanking its stock.

A similar incident occurred last week at a Planet Fitness in North Carolina. According to WSOC-TV, a 38-year-old bearded man stripped naked in the women's locker room while claiming to be a woman.

The man cited a Planet Fitness policy that allows members to use locker rooms, bathrooms, and showers based on their "gender identity."

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 03:00 PM | Comments (323) | Trackbacks (Suck)

House Passes FISA Renewal Bill Without Any Additional Warrant Requirement For Spying on Americans

Of course.

Vote harder, everyone.

A bill to renew a key federal government surveillance tool passed the House of Representatives on Friday, teeing it up for a Senate vote about a week before it's set to expire.

A modified version of the original bill passed a procedural hurdle late on Thursday after a group of 19 conservative privacy hawks sunk the House GOP's chance at passing it earlier this week.

The legislation is aimed at reforming Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows the government to surveil foreigners abroad with suspected terror links without a warrant. Section 702 allows the FBI to collect communications of a narrow list of foreign targets, even if the person on the other end of the suspect's communications is an American.

The battle over its renewal has put Johnson in a tough spot between privacy and national security hawks within his conference, while he also navigates a razor-thin majority of just two seats.

National security hawks and members of the intelligence community have called it a critical tool for preventing another 9/11-style attack. However, critics, including both conservatives and progressives, have been seeking to limit its scope after reported instances of abuse to collect data on Americans.

The national "intelligence" community considers Americans to be the greatest threat in the world. We're a threat to their cushy jobs and unchecked, undeserved power.

It was tense in the House chamber on Friday when that amendment [to require a warrant to spy on Americans] -- which ultimately failed to pass in a 212 to 212 vote -- was being considered. Johnson cast a critical and potentially decisive vote against the amendment.

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They were also backed by former President Donald Trump, who pushed back on the RISA bill on Wednesday morning, declaring on Truth Social, "KILL FISA."

The renewal is for only two years, so we can go through this whole Failure Theater production again in 2026.

And if you like that, you'll love this -- Johnson is negotiating with the White House about a Ukraine aid bill.

There will, of course, be no change in the country's illegally-imposed open borders "law."

House Speaker Mike Johnson is negotiating with the White House as he prepares for the treacherous task of advancing wartime funding for Ukraine and Israel through the House, a top House Republican said Thursday.

House Republican Leader Steve Scalise told reporters that Johnson had been talking with White House officials about a package that would deviate from the Senate's $95 billion foreign security package and include several Republican demands. It comes after Johnson has delayed for months on advancing aid that would provide desperately needed ammunition and weaponry for Kyiv, trying to find the right time to advance a package that will be a painful political lift.

"There's been no agreement reached," Scalise said. "Obviously there would have to be an agreement reached not just with the White House, but with our own members."

Johnson, R-La., is being stretched between a Republican conference deeply divided in its support for Ukraine, as well as two presidential contenders at odds over the U.S.'s posture towards the rest of the world. President Joe Biden has repeatedly chastised Republicans for not helping Ukraine, saying they are doing the bidding of Russian President Vladimir Putin and hurting U.S. security. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican candidate, has said he would negotiate an end to the conflict as he tries to push the U.S. to a more isolationist stance.

The Republican speaker is set to travel to the former president's Mar-a-Lago club in Florida on Friday to meet with Trump and has been consulting him in recent weeks on the Ukraine funding to gain his support -- or at least prevent him from openly opposing the package.

Trump would not oppose a funding bill that included border enforcement provisions.

So this "package" will not have it.

Failure Theater, Failure Theater, Failure Theater forever.

"Don't call my bluff," Obama famously said.

That's the entire GOP right there -- "Don't call our bluff which is obviously a bluff and also we want you to win. We just have to put on a bit of a show for our uneducated Bible-thumping racist voters, who we quite openly despise."

Hey everyone get out there and vote like dopes!

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 02:11 PM | Comments (293) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Grocery Stores in San Francisco Are Closing Due to City-Sanctioned Constant Looting.
But Don't Worry, San Francisco Politicians Have a Solution.

No, they're not going to demand that thieves be given long prison sentences.

Their solution is to force them to stay open or find a "successor store" which agrees to operate in this crime-ridden area in their place. If they don't, local residents -- minorities, I assume -- are allowed to sue because of Muh Racism.

A pair of progressive San Francisco lawmakers are pushing a bill that would allow residents in the crime-ravaged city to sue grocery stores that close up shop if they don't give six months' notice.

The proposal by San Francisco Board of Supervisors members Dean Preston and Aaron Peskin would require business to either find a successor grocer or work out a plan with residents in the neighborhood to ensure the availability of supermarket options.

The Grocery Protection Act -- which is based on a proposal the board approved in 1984 that was vetoed by then-San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein -- comes amid a rash of retail theft fueled by the city's drug and homelessness crisis that has led to several business closures.

Grocery stores in San Francisco may have to give six months' notice before closing up, according to a proposal by two local lawmakers.

Whole Foods closed its Market Street location last year after there were 568 emergency calls lodged in a 13-month period due to incidents such as vagrants throwing food, yelling, fighting and attempting to defecate on the floor, according to the New York Times. At least 14 arrests were made at the location.

Preston, who introduced the legislation last week, floated the proposal in January when a Safeway supermarket in the Fillmore section announced it would close in March.

The day before the board was scheduled to vote on the resolution, the supermarket chain announced that it would keep the store open until next January.

The new ordinance would exempt supermarkets and grocery stores that close because of a natural disaster or business circumstances that aren't "reasonably foreseeable."

In those cases, the businesses do not have to provide six months' notice.

A proposed ordinance would require grocery stores in San Francisco to make a "good faith" effort to make sure another supermarket comes in its place if it closes up shop.

If a store closes without providing notice to the Board of Supervisors as well as the Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD) those affected by the closure would be entitled to sue for damages, according to the language of the proposed ordinance.

The bill would also require that grocery stores "meet and work in good faith with neighborhood residents" and the OEWD to find a workable solution to keep groceries available at the location.

Via Actual Justice Warrior.

There's a local news report at the beginning of this video.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 01:10 PM | Comments (372) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Demented Usurper Biden, On His Own Dictatorial Authority, Announces "Rule" That Presumes to Outlaw Most Private Gun Sales

As did Obama before him, Biden believes that anytime Congress refuses to pass laws that he demands it's a "crisis" which empowers the executive to assume the power of Congress and pass laws on its own authority.

It's been a quarter of a century since the shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado brought the "gun show loophole" into popular discourse, and the Biden administration has just announced it would move unilaterally to end the practice following decades of inaction by Congress.

A new federal regulation published by the Department of Justice on Thursday, titled "Final Rule: Definition of 'Engaged in the Business' as a Dealer," aims to greatly reduce the number of firearms sold without a background check and comes following the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, according to the Biden White house.

That's the media attempting to claim there is congressional support for this dictator's rule. There's not. Whenever Biden assumes tyrannical power he has his unethical lawyers spam out random references to actual laws which he claims creates Penumbras and Emanations giving him the power to impose whatever law his senile head fancies that day.

Loopholes in the nation's gun laws allow "domestic abusers, school shooters, violent criminals, and gun traffickers" to obtain firearms at local gun shows without criminal background checks, the White House said, and those same loopholes allow some gun sellers who should be required to run background checks to skirt the law and operate without a license to deal in firearms.

The main thing allowing criminals to buy guns is the Democrats' refusal to prosecute criminals, which results in them never being entered into the federal no-buy syndrome.

Once again, Democrats are attempting to reduce crime without causing any distress to the actual criminals, who are their voters.

Just like all of their feigned efforts to control illegal immigration never involve actually stopping any illegal aliens from entering or remaining in the country.

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The rule is the "largest expansion of background checks since the Brady Bill became the law," and includes a list of commercial activity that might qualify a person as a gun dealer. For example, if a gun owner were to frequently buy and sell the same model firearm, or offer to procure and sell more firearms during a private sale, or if they "repeatedly" sell firearms within 30 days of purchase, they may require a license.

The rule states that there is "no gun show or online sales loophole" and that any commercial activity that would require a Federal Firearms License if it were conducted in a brick and mortar location will now also require such a license.

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According to Dudley Brown, President of the National Association for Gun Rights, the rule "will outlaw virtually all private sales of firearms between individuals."

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A spokesperson for the National Rifle Association said the rule is an attempt to "coerce Americans to forgo legal activity" and that they are "already working to use all means available to stop this unlawful rule."

House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., hailed the move, saying the rule "honors the will" of the majority of Americans and that it will save lives, but cautioned there was more to be done.

"Now, Congress needs to build on that progress by fully closing the boyfriend loophole, enacting a nationwide red flag law, getting high-capacity magazines off the street, and reenacting the federal assault weapons ban," Clark said.

And I'm sure Biden's mob lawyers will "discover" hints and innuendoes in the US Code that empower him to impose those "rules" on his own authority, too.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 12:05 PM | Comments (312) | Trackbacks (Suck)