Gun Thread: Easter Edition!

There's a hare in my scope!

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 Jumping Shitballs! How in the ever-loving Hell did it get to be Easter Sunday? Happy Easter! Once again, we go deep into the Gun Thread photo vault and dust off the hare in scope pic. I hope the day is a special one for you and you get to bite the head off of lots of chocolate bunnies!

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 (328) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Food Thread: Grits? Polenta? I Say Tomato...You Say Tomahto!

What's the difference between "Polenta" and "Grits?"

About $2/pound!

Other than that I think they are identical.

We had our delightful neighbors over for dinner last night, and I served, among many other delicious foods (more anon), polenta with Parmesan cheese. They are from Texas via Tennessee and New Orleans, so they are well acquainted with the glories of American cooking, but asked what the difference was.

The answer of course is that they are identical. Oh, the Italians do a few different things with their corn meal, and I love a good chunk of fried polenta. But the American use of corn meal is second to none, and I suggested last night that the classic preparation of shrimp and grits is one of the glories of American cooking, and a dish that can hold its own against the best that the rest of the world has to offer. But...my comment about the difference being price was a bit hyperbolic. There are gourmet grits that are just as expensive as the fancy-pants polenta at the gourmet store.

Luckily even cheapo grits tastes pretty good, and I usually order it when I see it on the menu, especially in the more sophisticated food regions in America. it's usually just okay in the Northeast (probably instant), but in the South it is often excellent.

If you want a starch to go along with your meal, it's hard to beat, especially if you mix in a large amount of fat....cheese or bacon works nicely!

Posted by: CBD at 04:00 PM | Comments (314) | Trackbacks (Suck)

First-World Problems...

Look...I understand how complicated an instruction this can be. I mean...you have to be able to read English, understand what the word "stop" means, translate that to the complex physical activity of stopping your car, AND comprehend that the thick white line painted on the street RIGHT NEXT TO THE WORD STOP is where you have to...um...STOP!

That line isn't just a good idea! It allows cars turning left to be able to negotiate the intersection without contortions. It also provides the sensors that control some intersections' lights with the information that there is a car in the (usually) left-turn lane. Too far from the line and the sensor won't detect a car, and the system will assume that no left turn arrow is necessary.

Is it a capital crime to ignore the stop line? Well, maybe I am a bit harsh, but yes. Although I wouldn't be averse to a 20 year mandatory sentence for the first infraction.

Posted by: CBD at 02:00 PM | Comments (249) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Banana Republic Status? It's Worse! More Like Stasi-On-The-Potomac

The process is the punishment, and the Biden/Obama junta, ably abetted by the Deep State^TM is conspiring to destroy the career and livelihood of an attorney whose only "crime" was representing his client.

Two corrupt apparatchiks of the left lead the effort, Yvette Roland (a judge of the State Bar Court of California's Hearing Department), and Fani Willis (the DA of Fulton County Georgia). They are both bought-and-paid-for whores of the Democrat cabal that seeks total power over our lives, and is willing to do anything to succeed...including bankrupting and imprisoning anyone with the temerity to challenge their rule.

The heroic sacrifice of John Eastman

People ask how John Eastman perseveres. They spike his driveway. They graffiti the streets of his neighborhood to dox his address. They send death threats. They protested outside his home for more than a year. They frisk him with armed FBI agents in a restaurant parking lot and detain his wife. They seize his phone and hold it and its contents for almost two years and counting.

His “friends” strip him of board memberships after decades of service. They suspend his membership in academic conferences, claiming he is a threat. They cancel his university classes and force him to retire. The Bank of America and USAA de-bank him. They humiliate him by forcing him to surrender himself to a prison facility, taking his mug shot and saddling him with a bond amount typically reserved for violent criminals. They burden him with millions in legal fees when he seeks the protection of our great Constitution.

Then they disbar him when they disagree with him and decide that a former president does not deserve legal counsel.

This isn't merely the Deep State^TM...this is a concerted effort on the part of the left's millions of operatives: their street thugs; their fellow travelers at corporations across America; their academic drones who always do their bidding. It is the destruction of the rule of law, and the horrific misuse of the idea of free association.

John Eastman's plight is a perfect metaphor for what ails America. We now have a legal system that has institutionalized its use as a political bludgeon. We have a media that are perfectly content to do the left's bidding, and are curiously incurious about the real dangers to our republic. We have a controlled opposition to the left's overreach that is interested in -- at best -- managing the decline, and --at worst -- actively participating in the looting and destruction of our country.

But worst of all, we are still mostly passive in the face of all of these terrible affronts to the basic framework of America. While the left busily undermines everything we hold dear, most of us (me included) try very hard to maintain a balanced life, free from the misery that awaits us if the left succeeds.

But what can we do? Something...anything...even the most trivial pushback! Send a few bucks to John Eastman. Go to your town council meeting and speak for freedom and against the many small tyrannies that surround us. Go to church or synagogue and show your support for that traditional priest or rabbi who defends Judeo-Christian culture. Go to your board of education meeting and agitate for an education for your children that honors and respects American Exceptionalism.

And vote! Yes, it is easy to mock, and I will not insult your intelligence by defending the integrity of our elections. But if enough of us vote, maybe we can swamp the Deep State^TM and its minions in oceans of legal votes.

A fella can dream....

Posted by: CBD at 12:00 PM | Comments (220) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sunday Morning Book Thread - 03-31-2024 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

They asked her, "Woman, why are you crying?"

"They have taken my Lord away," she said, "and I don't know where they have put him." At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

He asked her, "Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?"

Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him."

Jesus said to her, "Mary.""

She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, "Rabboni!" (which means "Teacher").

Jesus said, "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'"

Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: "I have seen the Lord!" And she told them that he had said these things to her.

--John 20:11-18 (NIV)

HAPPY EASTER!

Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading (SPOILER: It's not about Jesus). Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...(eggs may contain delicious salmonella filling...)

So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, eat the ears off your chocolate bunny rabbit, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:00 AM | Comments (381) | Trackbacks (Suck)

EMT 24 Mar 31

Happy Easter.

Ham and duck is on the menu.

Posted by: krakatoa at 06:54 AM | Comments (190) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 31 March 2024

Top Story

• A little more background on that security disaster that almost was. (Substack)
  
  It looks like it started with "social engineering" - a confidence scam - two years ago, with one person attacking the maintainer of the xz utility and another one offering to help, and then actually helping. That warped over time into slipping more and more suspect code into the package, until they got caught.
  
  It's a bit of an odd one because it took a lot of care and planning but was guaranteed to get caught and removed if it ever went mainstream. So it's not a targeted attack on particular groups, and not subtle enough to pass unnoticed long-term.
  
  If you infect one server you're likely to get away with it, but if you infect every server in the world, there are literally hundreds of honeypot servers set up by security researchers specifically to detect weird stuff like this.
  
  Purely speculation but I'm wondering if this was North Korea rather than China or Russia. It looks like the kind of miscalculation they would make.
  
  

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (64) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Overnight Open Thread (3/30/24)

*****

The Saturday Night Joke

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 09:54 PM | Comments (601) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Music Thread: Jersey Shore Sound (The Way It Should Be...Not The Springsteen Style)

[From Garrett's 70s Disco look]

Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes is a bar band. They know it. Their fans know it, and their success over more than 40 years is a testament to the power of simple rock and roll, well played and well performed.

Shockingly, when one checks the fetid swamp of the internet for Southside Johnny's (John Lyon's) politics, nothing comes up! Oh, I'm sure he is a reliable leftist, but he and his band don't shove their politics in my face, so I will continue to listen! Hell...I might even go see them, even though that apparently entails being around other people.

I'll even forgive him for Miami Steve van Zandt and Bruce Springsteen. After all, nobody's perfect.

Posted by: CBD at 07:30 PM | Comments (185) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Weekend Hobby Thread (3/30/24)

*****

Good afternoon Horde. Welcome to the Weekend Hobby Thread. Some of you have been very busy and found time to share your adventures with us today.

So let's enjoy a couple of hours of fun and serenity until CBD comes along later with his music thread.

Please leave politics and current events outside at the curb. We appreciate it very much.

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 05:29 PM | Comments (125) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ace of Spades Pet Thread, March 30

* * *

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 03:42 PM | Comments (94) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, March 30

Happy Easter Weekend, everyone! Got any outdoor plans?

Above is a photo of a Lady Banks' Rose not too far from where we live. This is a prime season for lovely flowering shrubs and small trees. This rose only blooms once a year, but it stays in bloom for several weeks, and it is worth changing your traveling route a little to see it if you have one in the neighborhood.

Wee Kreek Farm Girl first alerted us that this rose, both the yellow one and the white one, grow in the desert, including a record-setting huge rose in Tombstone.

Posted by: K.T. at 01:40 PM | Comments (87) | Trackbacks (Suck)

What happens when journalists from the left decide they can criticize the left?

Dave Brown

It really seems to hurt the feelings of mainstream journalists when people they thought they knew stop following the herd

Are they just jealous? Or is there more?

April Harding:

Matt Taibbi was asked "why doesn't he pay much attention to the sins (or threats) from "the right"?"

He gave a great answer:

Why I don't spend a lot of time on the Republicans:

1) There is a enormous army of MSM reporters already going after them from every angle, with most major news organizations little more than proxies for the DNC, to the point where stations hire Biden spokespeople as anchors;

Humorous timing for this observation, don't you think?

Posted by: K.T. at 11:11 AM | Comments (339) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Classical Saturday Morning Coffee Break & Prayer Revival (3/30/24)

*****

Good morning Horde. Saturday again. And the last Saturday of March to boot. March was in like a lamb and going out like a lion here in the frozen tundra.

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

1) This is an open thread, feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate away.
2) Even trolls have feelings please practice "Tough Love".
3) Running with sharp objects will prevent you from your gift of jelly beans.
4) Have a nice weekend!

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 07:57 AM | Comments (519) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 30 March 2024

Tech News

• The man who saved the world: Andres Freund noticed that SSH logins - used by every server in the world - were taking half a second longer than they should. (Ars Technica)
  
  He was curious so he poked at it a bit and found the equivalent of the demon core being added for free to every school lunch in the world.
  
  In essence, had this been done with more care and not caught before it was added to production releases of Linux, a state actor - this is almost certainly the work of some place like China or North Korea - could have had access to everything, everywhere.
  
  You might be at AWS and have all your services behind a VPN, but that wouldn't help you at all because they'd just need to hack AWS first.
  
  All the development for this hack was done in public, either by a developer who spent a lot of time building up trust by writing useful code, or by hacking that developer's GitHub account.
  
  Expect GitHub to force 2FA on all users in short order, even if that wouldn't have prevented this incident. Every warning sign has a story behind it, and Andres is the Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin of the age, except that he didn't die of radiation poisoning.
  
  
  
• However, some not-really-production releases of Linux were impacted. (CyberKendra)
  
  Fedora Rawhide and Kali Linux were affected for the past three days. Arch Linux has been affected for five weeks, and Debian's unstable release seems to be the worst hit, with the new packages added eight weeks ago.
  
  Fedora 40 Beta might be affected if you set up the test library versions as well as the regular beta libraries.
  
  AWS Linux is not affected, nor are stable releases like Ubuntu LTS or RedHat Enterprise Linux.
  
  
  

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

Good Evening Ladies And Gentlemen, And All The Ships At ONT

Happy Friday night! Anyone hungry?

Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:00 PM | Comments (360) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Good Friday Cafe

Birthing Cave Trail at Sedona, Arizona
at RoamtheUSA
by @cayleighanddavid

Dogs enjoying a gigantic hose.

The TV plays "where's the ball" with a dog.

Mother and cub wombat.

You want to see a miracle? This dum-dum didn't break his neck.

Highest-elevation mountaintop roller coaster.

How to fly (under special circumstances).

Icy coasts (with some sea stacks, don't even worry about it mate).

American-Southwest-Style rock formations, but out in the snow and ice of Belogradchishki, Bulgaria.

Ice is more interesting than I thought. Slightly.

Frightening: being stalked by a bear.

In the Italian Alps.

This makes me want to finally read more than the first sixty pages of the Aubrey Maturin books.

Who's up for a moody winter drive?

Some last lovely glimpses of winter weather.

Bitches be shopping. I mean, I'm saying the dog looks female, and she's obviously coming from the market.

Bottle-feeding a baby manitee.

You cannot out-stalk a cat.

Girl boxer is a human buzzsaw.

Husky meets baby fox.

Dog adjusts the fan.

The lions of winter.

Guy shows off a floating walk illusion, which I think is cooler (and eerier) than the moonwalk.

This dog puts the floating walk into practice.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 07:30 PM | Comments (135) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Quick Hits

The Bee:

Stephen Green wonders why the media isn't talking about RFK, Jr.'s darkest open secret.

Quoting from the NY Post, 2012:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s estranged wife, Mary, who battled her husband's rumored philandering by turning to alcohol and prescription drugs, hanged herself in a barn on their Westchester estate yesterday, sources told The Post.

The 52-year-old mother of four -- the latest victim of a family dynasty cursed with tragedies -- may have taken her own life because she was haunted by her broken marriage, her friends lamented.

I'm sure Obama and the Clintons are giving the media their marching orders and we'll be hearing a lot about that.

Speaking of dynastic dum-dums with sketchy histories: Canada may finally be fixin' to boot Fidel Castro's bastard spawn out of office.

A new poll out of Canada found that if national elections were currently held, a political thunderquake would shake the nation, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party thrown out of power and the Conservative Party, led by Pierre Poilievre, completely dominating the Canadian Parliament.

Abacus Data, one of the country's most accurate pollsters, surveyed over 3,500 adults between March 16 and March 24, and found that 41% of committed voters would vote for the Conservative party, 23% would vote for the Liberal party, 19% would vote for the New Democratic Party, and 4% would vote for the Green Party.

Now I believe the New Democratic Party are absolute leftwing lunatics -- like our own new Democrat Party. So that means the left, collectively, has a near-majority of the vote.

There must be some wrinkle I'm missing because this article says that 41% would put the Conservatives in power.

59% of voters disapproved of the job Trudeau is doing as prime minister. 58% of voters had a negative impression of Trudeau with only 24% having a positive view, leaving him 34 points underwater, while 38% had a positive view of Poilievre and 34% had a negative impression, leaving him four points to the good. Only a paltry 15% of voters thought Trudeau and his party should be reelected. 52% of voters thought it was time for a change.

61% of voters thought Trudeau was focused on the wrong priorities; 48% thought him ineffective, and 53% thought he was not transparent about his actions.

Sounds like the American Democrat Party would welcome him as a candidate.

Star investigative reporter Catherine Herridge -- whose stories were frequently spiked by Fox's liberal editors and executives, and who was sidelined by CBS before being fired -- is in talks to do some kind of reportorial show for Twitter/X.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence wants to ban more terms as "hurtful."

The United States' top intelligence agency wants to ban its spies from using "biased language," including the terms "radical Islamists" and "jihadist," saying these words "are hurtful to Muslim-Americans and detrimentally impact our efforts as they bolster extremist rhetoric," according to a language guide published internally.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which is responsible for handling the country's spy apparatus, seeks to ban a range of common terms because it says they offend Muslims and foment racism against employees. In addition to terms describing Islamic terrorists, ODNI instructs employees to avoid phrases such as "blacklisted," "cakewalk," "brown bag," "grandfathered," and "sanity check."

"Blacklisted," for instance, "implies black is bad and white is good," while "cakewalk" is said to refer "to a dance performed by slaves for slave owners on plantation grounds."

I looked it up, and the presumed etymology of "cakewalk" is indeed about blacks walking as pairs in the south in the 1860s and winning a cake as an award. The source didn't say anything about slavery but I think it's fair to guess that was in play.

This is still stupid.

"Brown bag," a term most often used to describe a paper bag that holds one's lunch, actually "refers to the 'brown bag' test practices in the 20th century within the African American community," according to ODNI, which outlined these terms in an internal magazine produced by the agency's Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility.

That's just conspiratorial crankery.

A New Hampshire Congresswoman says she won't seek re-election in 2024.

In a surprise announcement, longtime Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster of New Hampshire says she won't seek re-election to the House of Representatives this year.

"I always said I was not going to stay in Congress forever -- I will not be seeking re-election in 2024," the six-term representative in the key general election battleground state said in a statement released on Wednesday.

...

During her years on Capitol Hill, Kuster became known for working across the aisle on key issues, and for her openness in sharing personal experiences, including that she was a survivor of sexual assault during her youth.

A woman in England has fought a lawsuit against her, and the complaining party withdrew it.

So it's not illegal -- yet -- for a woman in the UK to say that only women can menstruate.

Elspeth Duemmer Wrigley, a UK government lawyer, successfully defends her right to express gender-critical views after being sued for stating that only women can menstruate.

Legal Battle Withdrawn: The lawsuit against Elspeth Duemmer Wrigley, known for her remarks on biological sex, was formally withdrawn, yet the claimant still seeks remedies that could impact gender-critical voices within the Civil Service.

Freedom of Expression: Wrigley defends her statements under Articles 9 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, emphasizing the legal protection of beliefs regarding sex and gender, akin to religious or philosophical beliefs.

Support for Gender-Critical Views: As chair of the Sex Equality and Equity Network (SEEN), Wrigley champions a space for civil service staff to express gender-critical perspectives.

The case of Elspeth Duemmer Wrigley, a lawyer for the UK's Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs, stands as a testament to the enduring value of free speech and the complexity of gender debates. According to the Daily Mail, Wrigley found herself at the center of controversy for stating, during a work seminar, that only women can menstruate--a view that led to a lawsuit accusing her of creating a hostile work environment.

An illegal alien shelter in Chicago has a second outbreak of measles, particularly among the unvaccinated children.

Illegal aliens don't have to get any vaccinations. They are Above and Beyond US law. It's only the Sucker Citizens who have to keep up with the government's allegedly-required vaccines.

The Chicago Department of Public Health said the new policy was necessary because of the continued increase in measles cases among young children at the Halsted Street shelter. The second dose will help protect preschool children until their immunity to measles is fully developed and will also help stop the spread to other children who haven't received a second dose of the shot.

The city has reported 26 measles cases, 19 of which have been in children younger than 5. Most of the cases have been associated with the Pilsen migrant shelter.

Measles are breaking out in a blue city due to its Sanctuary City policy.

That must mean it's time to attack Ron DeSantis for Florida due to ten cases of measles:

The Washington Post published an opinion piece by former Planned Parenthood head Dr. Leanna Wen called, "Florida's measles outbreak is a devastating -- and preventable -- tragedy." Fewer than 10 kids in the state came down with measles, and none of them died, despite it being called a "devastating tragedy."

Ron DeSantis wants to know why she failed to notice Chicago's much-worse measles problem.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 06:20 PM | Comments (238) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Open Border Means Crime Without Borders

Indeed. We're back to the days of Pancho Villa conducting armed raids into the US.

The Many Ways a Porous Border Means Crime Without Boundaries

By James Varney & Abigail Degnan, RealClearInvestigations

When President Biden's supporters attacked him for describing the man who allegedly murdered Georgia co-ed Laken Reilly as an "illegal," they shined a light on one of the most contested words in American politics.

The progressive push to describe border crossers as undocumented or unauthorized can also serve to downplay and obscure the massive issue of crime perpetrated and spawned by the influx of millions of migrants since Biden was elected -- often in ways that leave the migrants themselves as victims.

While migrant advocates argue that illegal arrivals commit crimes at lower rates than Americans, the claim is unverifiable because the federal government and most states do not break down crimes by immigration status.

Criminologists also note that it ignores the vast web of statutory crimes concurrent with illegal immigration -- drug smuggling, human trafficking, child labor violations, prostitution, the black market in employment, and so on.

What remains undeniable by the law of averages is that the massive surge in immigration since the Biden administration relaxed border policies -- a surge that it puts at more than 4 million people, but other sources millions more -- has been accompanied by much more crime, however unquantifiable.

Millions of migrants, though not all, run afoul of laws by their situation more than by overtly malign criminal intent. But their first step across the border is a lawbreaking one, and it is often followed by life on the law's margins: living in the U.S. without insurance or proper work papers, providing illicit labor for unscrupulous or blasé employers, turning to black markets for counterfeit Social Security cards, and often becoming targets for robbers or extortionists. Their desire to come to America creates a vast pool of criminality involving them or those illegally profiting from them.

...

"Even people who may come here with no criminal intent at all may find themselves involved in some sort of criminal activity because the cartels that control the immigration channels are going to get their money one way or another," said Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation of American Immigration Reform, which seeks policies to seal the border from illegal penetrations. "Going to work for the cartels is one way they can pay off their debts. Others may find themselves pressed into indentured servitude or, even worse, being trafficked in the sex trades."

Thanks to Biden inviting illegal aliens to flood the border, massive amounts of crime and victimization begin in the cartel-organized caravans.

"It's not all about killings -- they are getting raped and robbed, too," Bensman said. "There are loan sharks who let victims know they know where family members are located -- that's a crime. And people are desperate, they are forced to steal food, there have been assaults on police, and recently a camp in Panama was burned down."

Criminologists say part of the problem in measuring migrant-related crime in the United States is "sanctuary" jurisdictions that do not cooperate with federal immigration agencies. Sanctuary enforcement is also not a category traditionally tracked by law enforcement agencies. Nowrasteh said that several years ago he sent Freedom of Information Act requests to all 50 states seeking data on crime committed by or on immigrants and only Texas offered a response. Since then, he believes, Georgia has begun amassing statistics, but the state has not yet issued any public reports.

Grim arithmetic suggests the human costs of the unprecedented tide of illegal immigration under Biden, according to multiple reports and congressional testimony. A case in point is the hundreds of thousands of "unaccompanied alien children," the innocuous-sounding phrase employed by a bureaucracy focused on avoiding the use of "illegals" who are newly arrived in the Biden years. Their oversight and handling has been mishandled, unintentionally or otherwise, by federal agencies, with the results of minors being trafficked and U.S. child labor laws being violated.

...

RealClearInvestigations has reported that many of the drug dealers who have turned San Francisco's Tenderloin district into an open-air drug market are migrants connected to Mexico's Sinaloa cartel. "The drug pushers are easy to spot: Unlike the users, they look healthy and wear clean clothes," Leighton Woodhouse reported. "They're almost universally young men, mostly Honduran (on the streets of San Francisco they're called "Hondos")."

...

Other Americans fall victim to crime connected to migration. For example, seizures of fentanyl, the synthetic painkiller the Centers for Disease Control blamed for a record 112,000 overdose deaths in 2023, have skyrocketed. In 2021, law enforcement agencies seized some 11.2 thousand pounds of the lethal drug, but in just two years the Chinese-abetted trade through Mexico has more than doubled, hitting 27,000 pounds last year, according to Customs and Border Patrol figures. Some immigration and drug experts believe the vast numbers of people crossing the border make it harder to interdict the flow of narcotics into the U.S.

The article explores the left's claim that US citzens commit crimes at rates 2 to 2 1/2 times higher than illegal aliens. But the article notes that jurisdictions simply do not collect data on immigration status of offenders, making all of this guesswork. And further, the article repeatedly notes the huge amount of subterranean crime -- huge numbers of migrant children impressed into prostitution -- that simply never make it into the statistics.

Of course, all of this argumentation avoids the real issue: The correct number of crimes committed by illegal aliens in the US should be zero. They should not fucking be here. It wouldn't matter if they committed murder at 50% the rate of US citizens: We are forced to abide the presence of US citizen criminals. The US does not permit exile or deportation of criminals.

But we are not required to abide the presence of illegal aliens.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 05:23 PM | Comments (146) | Trackbacks (Suck)

America First Legal Accuses Disney of Financial Malfeasance In Pursuing a Toxic Woke Agenda at the Expense of Its Shareholders
Leak: Nelson Peltz Ahead in Proxy Ballots Cast So Far

They accuse Bob Iger and his handpicked board of violation of fiduciary duty.

Fiduciary duty is the obligation someone has when entrusted to manage someone else's money or property. The duty requires the person in control of the property to make choices for the benefit of the person who actually owns the property, and to not make self-serving decisions for his own benefit.

Disney's management has, of course, impoverished the shareholders so that they can have the (non-sharable, non-dividable) benefit of being praised by Hollywood lefties and groomers.

As Fox News reports, a letter was sent to Disney on Wednesday by America First Legal (AFL) accusing the company of unlawful discrimination, as well as forcing political messages that have resulted in "damage to Disney's brand, properties, and commercial reputation by management's manufactured misalignment between its woke political and social agenda and the vast majority of the Company's customers."

SEC disclosure filings require the principles of a corporation to forthrightly admit all possible risks to the company so that investors will have the information necessary to make an informed choice in investing.

Disney acknowledged that their woke agenda caused a possible "misalignment" of their objectives and the public's sentiments. They disclosed the fact that their woke agenda was alienating the public and causing a huge loss of shareholder values by speaking of a "misalignment." Of course they put it in the weakest, most weaselly way possible.

AFL, which is run by Stephen Miller, a former senior adviser to President Donald Trump, further claims that Disney's upper levels of management "intentionally manufactured misalignment between the Company and its core customers" in recent years, which has led to the company's market capitalization losing over $100 billion since February of 2021.

"Disney has displayed an inexplicable disregard for its customers and shareholders, forcing radical gender-expansive, anti-White, and anti-police content on families while providing warnings about harmful content on uncontroversial content," said AFL in a press release, which went on to cite several examples of left-wing rhetoric and messages in Disney's various entertainment products, from TV shows to movies.

In February, AFL filed a civil rights complaint against Disney with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, claiming that the company implemented a "patently illegal" hiring program that overwhelmingly favored "underrepresented" groups.

More at the link.

The leftwing shill media even admits that Iger might be in trouble. This Hollywood Reporter shamelessly shills for Iger, but it does concede that the ISS endorsement of Nelson Peltz for the board moved the needle.

If Bob Iger were a Marvel superhero, his power would be persuasion. The Disney CEO has long leaned on his ability to convince others of his plans. From film and TV writers, directors and stars, to Disney shareholders, to the company's own board members, Iger's track record has been impeccable.

Consider possibly the most important deal he ever led: Disney's $4 billion acquisition of Marvel Entertainment in 2009. While Marvel's success since then is not in dispute, at the time the idea of Disney chasing young men via the comic book brand was seen as a real risk. In his 2019 memoir The Ride of a Lifetime, Iger recalls how he pitched a skeptical Steve Jobs on the deal.

Jobs, who had sold Pixar to Disney just a couple of years earlier, was Disney's largest shareholder and a member of the board. He also told Iger that he had never read a comic book in his life, "so I brought an encyclopedia of Marvel characters with me to explain the universe to him and show him what we would be buying," Iger recalled. Jobs ultimately bought into the idea and called Marvel chairman Ike Perlmutter to vouch for Iger, helping to seal the deal.

Okay, that's definitely shilling for Iger. The Hollywood Reporter thinks that Iger's action in picking up The Handbook of the Marvel Universe, which you can buy off Amazon, to show Jobs how many characters Marvel owned was some kind of fifth-dimensional chess.

My God, it's the most basic bitch thing you could possibly do.

Fifteen years later and Disney finds itself at a crossroads, facing a bitter proxy fight with Nelson Peltz and his Trian Partners, who are backed by billions of dollars in Disney stock owned by Perlmutter, all set to come to a head April 3 at Disney's annual meeting.

The former Marvel chairman, who was let go last year in a round of corporate cost-cutting, plays a shadow role in Peltz's push, with the Trian chief telling Financial Times in an interview, "Why do I have to have a Marvel that's all women? Not that I have anything against women, but why do I have to do that? Why can't I have Marvels that are both? Why do I need an all-Black cast?" -- comments that mirror critiques of Iger's strategy by Perlmutter. And Peltz said of Marvel chief Kevin Feige, "I question his record," again mirroring comments from Perlmutter, and sparking a rebuke from Disney, which noted that with $30 billion at the box office, Feige is the top-grossing producer of all time.

...

But the endgame (to lean on a Marvel reference) remains uncertain...

The Wall Street Journal received a leak of how the proxy voting is going so far. Nelson Peltz is ahead of the current board member he's running against, with 22% of ballots in. Jay Rasulo, who did not receive ISS's endorsement (I guess they wanted to play it safe and only endorse one challenger board member), is not getting the votes to defeat his opponent.

Big caveat: the big institutional investors, including the very woke capital management companies like BlackRock, have not voted yet.
In more woke Hollywood news:

Lefties are attempting to cancel Martin Scorcese for working with Fox to present a series about the lives of the saints.

The directorial legend is teaming with Fox Nation for a docudrama series, "Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints."

The show, according to the right-leaning platform, "will encompass eight one-hour episodes exploring the remarkable stories of eight men and women who risked everything to embody humanity's most noble and complex trait -- faith."

World of Reel noted the partnership is already raising eyebrows in Hollywood.

IndieWire admitted to having "conflicted" feelings about the project. Screen Slate went a step further and said there was even more reason to get "mad" since the docu series was being produced by "Hollywood Zionist" Matti Leshem. Filmmaker Ted Geoghegan called the news "disappointing." Variety writer Joe Leydon frustratingly tweeted "Nope."

The Indiewire headline says it all:

Jesus. Martin Scorsese Is Doing a Show on Fox Nation

The far-Left Daily Beast dubbed the announcement, "holy crap." The alert subtly attacks one of the film's producers, noting Matti Leshem "recently set up an installation commemorating Israeli hostages in Gaza outside Vanity Fair's Oscars afterparty."

Will more outrage follow?

Yes of course it will.

In Woke Videogame News: There's a rumor that an upcoming game race-swapped its main character after hiring Sweet Baby Inc.

This rumor comes from former World of Warcraft Team Lead Mark Kern as part of a thread based on information he alleges to have received from an ex-developer at Compulsion Games.

Kern shared on X, "EXCLUSIVE: Microsoft Xbox mandates changes at studios, hire Sweet Baby Inc, erases white characters. I spoke to ex-devs at two different studios who say DEI is ruining and altering games and studio culture. Changes happened after Xbox meddling."

XBox meddling? Indeed, Midnight's Edge reports that Microsoft and XBOX are now demanding that game publishers make their games woke if they want to get permission to sell the games at all. The new liberal Karen woman in charge of XBOX development has laid down the law that, quote, "If you're not intentionally including, then you're unintentionally excluding" to mandate checkbox diversity in games.

This new "framework" for inclusivity is required for all games to be released on Xbox.

Today was a great day for Team Xbox, as we shared publicly for the first time the Gaming for Everyone Product Inclusion Framework, a set of actionable resources meant to help game developers -- and the wider games industry - weave intentionality and inclusion into the products they make, in order to reach a broader set of players worldwide in a meaningful way.

This "framework" is not "help" for developers -- it's an order.

At Xbox, our mission is to deliver the joy and community of gaming to everyone on the planet. For years, we've been on a journey to help our teams with the tools and knowledge they need to deliver more inclusive products and games, as we aspire to reach the 3+ billion players on the planet.

In 2015, we formed Gaming for Everyone, our inclusive growth strategy and commitment to bring intentional inclusion through product. We wanted to help more players experience the joy of gaming and saw some early momentum and big wins across Team Xbox--like the Xbox Adaptive Controller, a wireless controller designed for gamers with limited mobility that launched in 2018, as well as Sea of Thieves' inclusive pirate customizations which allowed players to select characters that most represented themselves across gender, clothing, hair, body type, and more.

...

In 2019, we created what is now known as the Gaming for Everyone Product Inclusion Framework. Xbox has been using and evolving this framework internally since then and is thrilled to offer it for anyone to use starting today. The framework focuses on four key areas -- or what we call, doorways:

Approachability, which ensures all players, existing and new, experienced and novice, feel safe and welcome.

Representation is about reflecting the diversity of the player and creator community, so everyone can feel that they belong.

Globalization is about making global players feel at home -- and ensuring that their experience has local relevance and respect.

Accessibility is about making games and experiences playable for people with disabilities, and striving to make products accessible by design, from the ground up.

Together, we call these Inclusive Growth Doorways, which are the foundational element to the Product Inclusion Framework. We use the metaphor of doorways because gaming has often been considered a doorway to another world, but for some, those doors have been closed or even locked.

Well, I skipped the PS5, and there is no way in hell I'm buying a woke XBox, so I guess I'm out of this generation of videogames.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 04:22 PM | Comments (176) | Trackbacks (Suck)