Pay attention, boys and girls!

Most elementary schools curricula teach kindergarteners about body parts these days, but not necessarily about boys and girls. Except maybe sometimes to suggest that girls are better than boys.

Posted by: K.T. at 11:02 AM | Comments (339) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Classical Saturday Morning Coffee Break & Prayer Revival

***

Good morning Horde. I'm a bit confused, where did January go? Another month of Coffee Threads coming to an end.

Before we get to the Prayer Revival, just a few house keeping matters (rulz for those of you in North Hudson).

1) Open thread so feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate away.
2) Be kind and don't pick up the troll droppings.
3) If you are feeling brave, feel free to run with sharp objects.
D) Have a great weekend.

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 08:54 AM | Comments (356) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 27 January 2024

Top Story

• Apple has outlined its new fee structure under the new rules the company has been forced into by EU regulations. (The Verge)
  
  Taking as an example an app that has 10 million installs and makes $10 million in revenue per year - pretty normal stuff - the new fee structure would entail:
  
  - A 3% transaction fee on purchases.
  - A 10% commission on sales.
  - A 49% "Core Technology Fee" on because fuck you, that's why.
  
  So the new relaxed rules would double Apple's cut of your revenue.
  
  And if your app makes less than 57 cents per user on average - again, pretty normal with a free app - you would end up paying Apple for the privilege of them doing nothing for you.
  
  
  
• The EU's Bookburner General, Thierry Breton - yes, that guy again - is warning Apple of "strong action" if the company's new terms are utter bullshit which they are. (Reuters)
  
  Unlike Twitter which can operate from the US and safely ignore EU posturing, Apple could face an outright ban of its devices from one of its largest markets if the EU got serious.
  
  Apple claims that 99% of apps would save money under the new terms listed above... Which means that 99% of apps have no users.
  
  It's also entirely self-serving, because what it hides is that the 1% of apps that are actually successful would be worse off.
  
  
  
• That poison pill also applies to third-party app stores. (The Verge)
  
  Developers are not impressed.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (180) | Trackbacks (Suck)

ONT. ONT Never Changes

Howdy Horde! Welcome to Friday, the memeiest day of the week!

Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:01 PM | Comments (519) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Nerdy Dogs Cafe

Three Grand Tetons
wait they come in threes?
by @kurtisminister

Finland, Finland, Finland, a place that I'd quite like to be...

A walk at night.

A quaint, moody stone village in Swizerland.

Winter trainride.

Above the water and below the water.

Sunset in Da Lat City, Vietnam. A spoilsport says they're using a lot of effects on this video. Still pretty.

Me going to the store with some Ice Buddies, last week.

KayAAAAAAAAAHking, catch the fever.

Absolutely SICK highlight reel from the Farkus Family Rumpus Room.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 07:22 PM | Comments (272) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Week In Woke

Over a quarter of Gen Z people say they're "queer." I say the number is closer to 100%, myself.

Over 25% of Americans born between 1997 and 2012 identify as LGBTQ, significantly higher than previous generations, according to a Tuesday poll from the Public Religion Research Institute.

The poll found that nearly 50% of Gen Z are more likely to identify as liberal and tend to be less religious than their millennial, Gen X or baby boomer counterparts. Meanwhile, 28% of Gen Z consider themselves LGBTQ, compared to only 16% of millennials, 7% of Gen X and a mere 4% of baby boomers.

Gen Z was also more likely to identify as "liberal" at 43%, with one out of six of the generation now eligible to vote, according to the poll. The poll respondents said that 31% of them identified as Democrats, 30% as Independents and only 21% claimed to be Republicans.

It's not viral contagion at all, guys. It's that that the natural level of homosexuality in humans is at least 50%. We're not at that level yet only because of Society.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School has decreed that only white people can be racist and if a black person has a racist hatred of white people, that's not racism, that's just white people deserving what they're gonna get.

A mandatory diversity training at the University of Wisconsin-Madison teaches students "people of color" cannot be racist against white people.

The first-year law student training, developed by consultant Debra Leigh, also says it is racist for someone to say they are colorblind -- and to ask for help with not being racist.

The list, required reading prior to the "Re-Orientation" includes 28 ways in which certain attitudes and behaviors "indicate a detour or wrong turn into white guilt, denial or defensiveness."

A man won a women's golf tournament. Some ladies found their voices and objected, and now the organizers of the tournament are backpedaling.

Winning the tournament puts him in a position to win a entry on to the LPGT tour.

After Davidson's Women's Classic "win" and the heat that came along with it, NXXT responded brilliantly, allowing the players to vote on the Davidson situation -- basically killing the transgender golfer's progression without having to get their hands dirty. Brilliant!

"In light of recent events, we have initiated a poll among our tour players to gather their opinions on our gender policy. We believe it is vital to consider the perspectives of those directly affected by these policies," read the Monday statement from NXXT.

And it gets even better.

"Furthermore, in maintaining the integrity of our standards, we have requested Hailey Davidson to undergo additional testosterone testing to ensure compliance with the appropriate guidelines."

A vote sounds like a good idea. If the women vote against it, the cowardly organizers can say "It was out of our hands." If the women vote for it -- well, that's their doom, and they're welcome to it. I'll be entering the a women's tournament next year. I hit from the Ladies Tee anyway.

The Wall Street Journal writes that we may be seeing the popping of the DEI bubble.

Have we reached peak DEI? The unraveling of "diversity, equity and inclusion" initiatives had already begun--five states banning DEI programs; Google, Facebook and others cutting DEI staff; Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard--well before Harvard President Claudine Gay was demoted.

Author Christopher Rufo, echoing 1960s student activists, called the rise of DEI a "long march through the institutions"--a 50-plus-year ideology infiltration into universities, K-12 schools, government, media and corporations with the goal of telling us all how to live. That's why I enjoy that the word "rot" is back in style to describe what is happening inside the walls of academia.

Like everything based on the writings of Karl Marx--seeing oppressors and colonial struggles everywhere--DEI was doomed to fail. The uniformity of thought known as intersectionality, fostered by DEI, meant all oppressed people must support all others who are oppressed. But that idea burst on Oct. 7 when Hamas raped, murdered and kidnapped Israelis. Many liberals, especially Jewish ones, couldn't support genocidal "colonized" terrorists. Pop! The long march is in retreat.

But is it?

The Daily Caller warns that corporations aren't actually walking away from DEI --they're just hiding it, to avoid the backlash.

Many corporations are reforming their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives to be less overt in response to recent backlash, The New York Times reported on Monday.

Hundreds of firms recently have been reassessing their DEI programs after the Supreme Court ruled against race-based college admissions in June, prominent business executive resistance and technology layoffs impacting associated employees, according to the NYT. Many businesses are updating their programs to be less aggressive in order to avoid pushback and criticism.

For instance, some human resource workers have pushed their DEI initiatives "under the radar," Harvard DEI expert Frank Dobbin told the NYT. Business leaders have also been talking about how to implement DEI "in a less in-your-face way" at recent conferences he has gone to.

Law firm Jenner & Block partner Ishan Bhabha and his colleagues concluded that, following the Supreme Court decision, corporations would be likely to face legal backlash, according to the NYT. Bhabha started collaborating with numerous Fortune 500 firms to examine their diversity initiatives and make sure they do not violate any laws.

"'Look, if I was sued over this and I have to become the face of defending D.E.I. against a conservative backlash, I'd be happy to,'" some of Bhabha's clients say, but "the vast majority of my clients [are] not in that bucket. They think, 'We'd like to keep our heads under the parapet.'"

Certain corporations have been looking into swapping out notorious programs such as required anti-bias training for less controversial measures like diversity task forces, according to the NYT.

Welcome to DEI Airlines -- you're going to die. Free WiFi, though.*

* The WiFi on DEI Airlines is free. It also does not work. Enjoy. You're about to die.

The Bee:

My friend neither_steve_in_hb_nor_not_steve_in_hb likes to imagine, when he's feeling nervous about turbulence, that the pilot is a big Englishman (or Australian) named Nigel. The "Nigel" name helps get him through the storms.

NPR's new CEO is such a leftwing partisan she had to scrub her more obnoxiously leftwing tweets... to not embarrass NPR with her moonbattery.

National Public Radio's new CEO Katherine Maher appeared to have scrubbed her social media of hyper-partisan, left-leaning posts before rising to the helm of the government-backed news network.

"Donald Trump is a racist," the former chief executive of the Wikimedia Foundation -- the nonprofit behind the online encyclopedia -- posted on Twitter in 2018, according to a snapshot of the tweet on the site Archive.Today.

It's unclear when or why Maher deleted the post from her account, or if it was related to her new gig at NPR, which touts its "fact-based reporting; opinion and commentary are secondary."

...

Maher, who is slated to take the reins at NPR on March 25, has made several hyper-partisan posts in the past.

She once justified the shoplifting epidemic in Los Angeles on the sins of slavery.

"I mean, sure, looting is counterproductive. But it's hard to be mad about protests not prioritizing the private property of a system of oppression founded on treating people's ancestors as private property," Maher wrote in 2020 on Twitter, which has since been rebranded as X.

Maher, 40, also told her 26,500-plus X followers that same year that "white silence is complicity."

"If you are white, today is the day to start a conversation in your community," she urged.

However, she had admitted shortly prior to using "that hysteric white woman voice."

"I was taught to do it. I've done it. It's a disturbing recognition. While I don't recall ever using it to deliberately expose another person to immediate physical harm on my own cognizance, it's not impossible. That is whiteness," Maher posted.

Maher said "whiteness" is something she's fallen victim to in a thread on X...

She is the Ultimate AWFL Karen:

And the GOP is still funding this anti-American, racist, pro-terrorist propaganda mill.

James Fishback examines what the NAMBLA Left claims are "banned books."

Over the last couple years, the media have peddled a narrative of "book bans" sweeping the nation. Book bans (ostensibly by the right) are "eating away at democracy," according to The Guardian, and are "taking an emotional toll," warned CNN. The outrage has reached such a fever pitch that free-speech advocacy group PEN America co-filed a lawsuit (along with parents, authors, and publisher Penguin Random House) against Florida's Escambia County School District and School Board, accusing them of removing books "discussing race, racism, and LGBTQ identities." Oral arguments in the court case began on January 10.

But the truth is a lot more complicated.

Last spring, I wrote about the hijacking of high school debate for The Free Press. I detailed how judges disqualify students for advancing conservative arguments that the judges personally disagree with--effectively taking the debate out of high school debate.

Since that article, I've spent time meeting with students, parents, teachers, and school board members. Several students complained that their school libraries had become one-sided, offering only books in line with progressive orthodoxy.

So I decided to investigate just how one-sided things actually are. I surveyed the library catalogs of 35 of the largest public school districts in eight red states and six blue states, representing over 4,600 individual schools. All of these records are publicly available online. (Here are just three online catalogs I searched: Broward County, FL, Austin, TX, and Oklahoma City, OK.) What I discovered isn't so much a problem of banned books. It's that kids are often exposed to only one side of the story.

For example, How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, which argues that the "only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination," is stocked in 42 percent of the U.S. school districts I surveyed.

Meanwhile, only a single school district--Northside Independent School District (ISD) in San Antonio, Texas--offers students Woke Racism by John McWhorter, a book that challenges the borderline religious "anti-racist" ideas advanced by Kendi.

Felix Ever After, a book by Kacen Callender that claims that girls who hate "being forced into dresses and being given dolls" are transgender, is available in 77 percent of the districts I surveyed. But not a single school out of the nearly 5,000 I searched offers books critical of trans theory. Students won't find books like Trans by Helen Joyce or Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by Abigail Shrier, both recent bestsellers that present skeptical takes on the rapid rise of transgender identification among adolescents.

Much more at the link.

In Illinois, the morbidly obese Slobbering Ham of a governor is bragging about how much pot they're selling.

Governor JB Pritzker
@GovPritzker

For the third year in a row, Illinois had record-setting growth for adult-use cannabis sales.

We’re building the most prosperous and accessible cannabis industry in the nation – taking steps to repair the damage of the past and creating real opportunity for all Illinoisans.

Wow! Another civilizational milestone! Keep your feet on the ground, everyone, but keep reachin' for the stars!

Jacob McHangma writes of the left ginning up its latest hysteria.

AI-powered lies and manipulation constitute the gravest threat to humanity. At least this is the dystopian scenario espoused by the collective wisdom of 1,500 experts surveyed in the World Economic Forum's 2024 Global Risks Report last week.

Unfortunately, such outbreaks of "elite panic" are a recurring phenomenon. Whenever the public sphere is expanded through new communications technology, the traditional gatekeepers fret about the dangers of allowing the general public -- too fickle and unlearned -- unmediated access to information.

As the WEF's annual meeting in Davos begins this week, the fear of democratic institutions drowned by lies in a "tech-enabled Armageddon" supercharged by AI marks the third wave of elite panic in the digital age. The first wave was ushered in by the widespread belief that Russian disinformation campaigns on social media contributed decisively to Donald Trump's 2016 election victory.

Weird -- no mention of the RussiaGate hoax foisted on the public by this same crew as one of the "waves of misinformation." No mention of the Hunter Biden laptop disinformation campaign.

The second wave was the so-called "infodemic" unleashed by Covid-19.

The "infodemic." You know, the information that was 90% true and which the elites and puffed-up "guardians of the truth" suppressed, oppressed, and stressed about.

...

Quite often, it is the panic that causes more problems than the issue itself. Over the years, top-down measures used to "combat misinformation" have resulted in higher degrees of censorship, which can also be weaponised. The first two waves of elite panic demonstrate this danger vividly: between 2016 and 2022, 91 laws were passed to target false or misleading information around the globe, leading to the arrest of journalists and others who questioned official government policy.

...

Elite panic doesn't just have serious consequences for the ecosystem of free expression necessary for the pursuit of truth. The tendency to focus on the dangers of technology and its users ignores that much misinformation -- not to mention outright lies -- comes from the very politicians and governments who want coercive powers to define what is true or false. Optimising a rapidly evolving information environment for trust and reliability is a crucial task in the years ahead. Achieving this goal will be difficult; guided by elite panic, it might just be impossible.

And right on cue, Al Gore was at Davos -- he basically lives at Davos -- shrieking about AI disinformation sparking off "artificial insanity."

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 06:10 PM | Comments (234) | Trackbacks (Suck)

DOJ Preparing Another "Sweetheart Deal" for an Approved Criminal; Merrick Garland Is Gearing Up to Let The Guy Who Leaked Trump's Taxes Off Lightly

Merrick's Secret Police have a nice list and a naughty list.

Illegally leaking Biden's opponent's confidential tax records gets you on the "nice" list.

Oh, and he also leaked the records of 7,500 other Americans.

And he's getting a sweetheart deal.

But this is still America, right?

James Varney:

Former IRS contractor Charles Edward Littlejohn, who stole and helped publicize the confidential tax records of Donald Trump and an estimated 7,500 other wealthy Americans, could face little or no jail time when he's sentenced later this month, because the DOJ allowed him to plead guilty to a single felony count.

In a new court filing, prosecutors acknowledge the plea deal "does not account for the fact that he leaked thousands of individuals' tax returns. His [sentencing] range would be the same today if he had leaked only a single return."

But instead of seeking prison time for each of his offenses -- or even for the two separate mass thefts he committed, one in 2019 and another in 2020 -- the DOJ is asking a federal judge to sentence Littlejohn to just 60 months, the maximum for a single offense under the statute. Some political leaders angry over the plea deal say he should get 60 years, not months, for his crime -- the biggest heist of IRS taxpayer data in history.

Attorneys for Littlejohn, 38, argue he actually deserves an even lower sentence, closer to the presentencing report's range of four to 10 months, in part because he leaked the reams of stolen private income-tax data to "reputable news organizations -- the New York Times and ProPublica -- that he knew would handle the information responsibly."
...

The Times and ProPublica published dozens of stories based on the personal tax files the former Booz Allen Hamilton contractor electronically smuggled out of the IRS. Those articles largely advanced Democratic calls for further investigations into Trump and the need to raise taxes on the wealthy.

Against the backdrop of prosecutions of Donald Trump in an election year and the collapse of Hunter Biden's earlier no-jail plea deal, which a Delaware judge rejected because it was "not straightforward" and contained "atypical provisions," Littlejohn's plea agreement is raising new questions about the politicization of justice.

Invasion USA Updates:

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 05:12 PM | Comments (248) | Trackbacks (Suck)

REZOLUTIONZZZ

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon this Silicon Valley millionaire, Bryan Johnson, who calls himself the World's Most Analyzed Man, because he pays a literal team of medical specialists to monitor his health every single day.

His goal: To test and evaluate all methods of slowing or reversing aging that he can find in medical literature.

His motive: I believe that he believes that, as we approach the AI Singularity, medical science will discover a way to arrest/slow or even reverse aging within the foreseeable future. Therefore, he believes that among us will be some of the last unfortunate people to die of pure "old age." If we can just live to the day that breakthrough happens, we can have our lives extended another 40-60 years, and then, mostly likely, in the following 40-60 years, AI will figure out how to stop aging completely.

That's why his motto is "Don't Die." He wants everyone to cling to life to get to that aging-reversal singularity.

The New York Times wrote him up.

Is he an idiot? A visionary? A little from column A, a little from column B?

Probably the latter.

"Ready, on three," Jamie Love said to the group of hikers as they huddled for a photo. "One, two, three ..."

"Don't die!" they shouted in unison.

The dozen or so strangers were gathered at the foot of Temescal Canyon Trail along the Pacific coast in Los Angeles on a cool Saturday morning in mid-December. Several of them, including Ms. Love, 38, who had organized the outing, wore black T-shirts with the bold white text, "DON'T DIE."

The hikers had come together with a shared goal: to extend their life spans through diet, sleep, exercise and whatever technologies might come along.

Not present was the spiritual leader of the gathering, the internet celebrity and centimillionaire tech founder turned longevity guru Bryan Johnson. In the past year, Mr. Johnson has arguably taken the lead in the race among Silicon Valley rich guys going to extremes in a quest to live forever. (Move over, Messrs. Bezos, Zuckerberg and Thiel.) Now he's turning that longevity mission -- and the online infamy he has earned because of it -- into a lifestyle business, selling supplements and prepackaged meals to less-rich people who would also like to live for a very long time. The hike, one of more than 30 "Don't Die Meet-Ups" around the world that day, was a cross between community-building and a guerrilla marketing tactic.

Mr. Johnson's deal, in a nutshell: In 2021, he began spending $2 million a year, by his own account, to measure every aspect of his body, from lipid levels to urination speed to brain plaque, with the goal of reversing his aging process. He called it Project Blueprint.

Every day, between 7 and 11 a.m., he eats the same three vegan meals: "Nutty Pudding" (a blend of nuts, seeds, berries and pomegranate juice), "Super Veggie" (black lentils topped with broccoli and cauliflower) and a third, rotating dish consisting of vegetables, roots and nuts. He exercises for an hour every morning and takes up to 111 pills a day. (His pharyngeal muscles may be the strongest of all.)

In the video I link below, he says he's looked for every type of food reputed to have longevity benefits, and only eats the most nutrient-dense food in existence. "Every calorie on my plate has to fight for its right to go into my body," he pronounces. He's putting it archly but he's quite serious.

Mr. Johnson claims that his regimen (or "protocol," as he calls it) has already slowed his speed of aging, giving him, at 46, the maximum heart rate of a 37-year-old, the gum inflammation of a 17-year-old and the facial wrinkles of a 10-year-old, according to his website. He publicizes his test results so anyone can see images of his bowels or learn the duration of his nighttime erections. His "biological age," he claimed until recently, is 42.5, according to one measurement of changes in DNA over time known as an epigenetic clock. In other words, he has spent about three years shaving off -- maybe -- a little more than three years.

If the original goal of Project Blueprint was to perfect his health, Mr. Johnson now describes it as preparing humanity to thrive in a world dominated by artificial intelligence. Thus the new slogan: "Don't Die."

In an interview, Mr. Johnson said he didn't care what present-day people thought of him. "I'm more interested in what people of the 25th century think of me," he said. "The majority of opinions now represent the past."

Mr. Johnson is gifted at getting attention online and from the press.

Mr. Johnson has an almost Trumpian ability to stay in the news. Since 2020, he has been the subject of five articles on Bloomberg documenting his quixotic pursuits: the brain-reading helmet developed by his company Kernel; his bid to become, as he has put it elsewhere, the "most measured person in human history"; his decision to receive blood plasma from his 17-year-old son and pass his own along to his 70-year-old father; and a recent round of experimental gene therapy in Honduras. In September, Time photographed Mr. Johnson in his private gym, naked but for a carefully positioned kettlebell -- an instant meme. The New York Post has gleefully followed his every move, running more than a dozen articles on Mr. Johnson in the past year, including three about his penis.

Fani Willis' gigolo says "Hold muh beer."

On social media, where he has more than 700,000 combined followers on X and Instagram, he knows how to trawl for attention. He lists his stringent requirements for a romantic partner (8:30 p.m. bedtime, "no small talk," "must give plasma") and compares himself to religious figures ("Jesus fed bread and alcohol, impairing and aging/I will feed you nutrients that awake and create life"). His flat manner and uncanny looks have drawn comparisons to "American Psycho"'s Patrick Bateman, a "'Lord of the Rings' elf," a vampire and a "jacked cyborg." One podcaster called him "blood daddy." He likes to pose in crop tops.

Now, Mr. Johnson said, after three years of self-experimentation -- which he called "Phase 1" of Blueprint -- he's ready for "Phase 2": helping others replicate his process. Late last year, he began selling Blueprint-branded olive oil.

Of course. Just in terms of supplements -- his Blueprint plan calls for several thousand dollars worth of supplements per month (he takes something like 110 supplements per day). The guy in the below video avoids the priciest and most obscure of the recommended supplements, and he still spends a thousand bucks for a one month experiment.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 04:00 PM | Comments (433) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Victor Davis Hanson: "The Hysterical Style in American Politics"

Cruelty aficionado Victor Davis Hanson is always interesting.

The post-Joe McCarthy era and the candidacy of Barry Goldwater once prompted liberal political scientist Richard Hofstadter to chronicle a supposedly long-standing right-wing "paranoid style" of conspiracy-fed extremism.

But far more common, especially in the 21st century, has been a left-wing, hysterical style of inventing scandals and manipulating perceived tensions for political advantage.

Or, in the immortal words of former President Barack Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste."

He takes us through a review of leftwing hysterias and moral panics, begin with Obama's drive to "fundamentally transform" the US, through the Trump Red Scare, through the predations of #MeToo opportunists.

...

The outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States during the winter of 2020 prompted an even greater hysteria.

Without scientific evidence, federal health czars Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins were able to persuade the Trump administration to shut down the economy in the country's first national quarantine.

Suddenly, it became a thought crime to question the wisdom of 6-foot social distancing, of mandatory mask-wearing, of the Wuhan virology lab's origin of the COVID-19 virus, or of off-label use of prescription drugs.

Left-wing politicians and celebrities, from Hillary Rodham Clinton and Gavin Newsom to Jane Fonda, all blurted out the political advantages that the lockdowns offered--from recalibrating capitalism and health care to ensuring the 2020 defeat of Trump.

The COVID-19 hysteria magically ended when Biden won the 2020 election. Suddenly, the explanations about the bat or pangolin origins of the virus faded. The damage from the quarantines could no longer be repressed. And herd immunity gradually mitigated the epidemic.

The lockdown caused untold economic chaos, suicides, and health crises.

One result was the 120 days of looting, arson, death, destruction, and violence spawned by Antifa and Black Lives Matter in the aftermath of the tragic death of George Floyd while in police custody in May 2020.

Suddenly, a hysterical lie took hold: American police were waging war against black males.

The details around Floyd's sudden death--he was in the act of committing a felony, resisting arrest, suffering from coronary artery disease and the after-effects of COVID-19, and being high on dangerous drugs--were off limits.

The riot toll reached $2 billion in property damage, more than 35 deaths, and 1,500 injured law enforcement officers. A federal courthouse, a police precinct, and a historic church were torched.

It has been just one hysteria and one irrational, crazed crusade after the next.

One thing: Hanson writes as if this may be a tactic of the left.

I don't believe it's a tactic.

I believe this is real: They are literally insane. They are in the spasms of an untreated 8-year-old nervous breakdown.

I really want someone to analyze the phenomenon of an entire social order having an ongoing nervous breakdown for eight years straight, but never seeking treatment for it, because all of their social peers and political allies -- all other occupants of The Bubble -- tell them that it's not crazy to be crazy 24/7/365, but in fact insanity is the right response to Trump, Covid, and a drug-dealing thug having a heart failure due to the prodigious amounts of fentanyl and amphetamines he had swallowed.

Obviously, it was caused by Trump. But why? Here's my guess. Think about the average Uniparty Bourgeois Bohemian voter. Think about, say, Allahpundit.

All of his life his tribe been in control of politics. Yes, sometimes the faction of the Uniparty he (slightly) favors loses, but when he "loses," someone like Obama who he likes an awful lot takes over. He either gets his first pick or his second pick, and everyone permitted to be president has been vetted and approved by his social class.

But now comes Trump, who definitely has not been vetted and approved, and even worse come Trump's voters, who Allahpundit has been in a not-so-hidden alliance with leftists to keep from ever having a meaningful say in America's politics.

And in a few hours on November 8, 2016, all of the certainty and safety of a system built to champion and perpetuate Upper Middle Class "Elite" Educated special rights and special privileges to rule and order society as they like comes tumbling down.

Suddenly members of what are called "The Protected Class" feel completely Unprotected. They know they've been holding the "uneducated" and non-socially powerful classes down, and suddenly get very, very panicked about what these newly-empowered classes might do in revenge.

And thus: The shrieking. Eight fucking years of degenerate lunatic shrieking and the justification of Nazi-like authoritarian measures to put the "lower classes" down, back down to their low places, where they belong, where they always belonged, before they got uppity and attempted to rise above their natural level.

John Hindraker at Powerline looked through that Scott Rasmussen poll showing that the elites are narcissistic fascists and wonders: Are they simply crazy?

These "elites," so defined, are living in another world than the rest of us. They are extraordinarily loyal to the regime; 84% of them approve of Joe Biden's performance as president. I wouldn't have thought you could get that high an approval rating if you sampled the Democratic National Committee. And 70% of the "elites" trust the government to do the right thing most of the time; that rises to 89% among those who are "the most politically active members of the elite."

These elites even trust journalists: 79% have a favorable opinion of them, as do 84% of the "Ivy League elite."

When it comes to policy, these people are crazy. Forty-seven percent say that America suffers from too much freedom, compared with only 21% who think we have too much government control. Among the Ivy League elite, 55% say America is too free, with only 15% saying we have too much government.

So how do the elites want to limit our excessive freedom? A shocking 77% say they favor the "strict rationing of gas, meat and electricity." That basically means living in a poor, totalitarian state like the USSR. And by 89% to 10%, the Ivy League elites want to see "strict rationing" of these most basic commodities.

These "elites" are fascists. Large majorities want to ban gas stoves (69%), gasoline powered cars (72%), non-essential air travel (55%), SUVs (58%) and air conditioning (53%). The Ivy League elites are even worse: the corresponding numbers are 80% for gas stoves, 81% for gasoline powered cars, 70% for non-essential air travel, 66% for SUVs, and 68% want to ban air conditioning. There is no polite way to put it: they are fascists.

There is more at the link. The people whom Rasmussen has identified are obviously dangerous to our democracy. If they take over, we are finished. More study needs to be done to figure out who, exactly, they are, so we can root them out and negate their influence. In the meantime, some moderate measures probably need to be taken. Like abolishing the Ivy League.

I'd really like to read a book about that. Not a screed like I'd write, but a genuine analysis informed by psychology and the history of moral panics and witch hunts and viral contagion lunacies.

What happens when the entire Ruling Class becomes functionally insane? It's purely rhetorical question -- we're living it. You see it every day.

Soon planes will be falling out of the sky and killing 300 people in one very fell swoop and the Regime will say, "That didn't happen, and it's good that it did."

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 03:00 PM | Comments (370) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Demented Tyrant Biden Gives Abbott a 24 Hour Deadline To Allow His Agents to Throw Open the Borders to Invaders; Abbott Says He's Not Budging

The deadline passed an hour ago. Abbott says he will not allow federal agents access to Texas land to cut the razorwire barriers and effectively merge the US with Mexico and points south.

Abbott says that if Biden attempts to nationalize the Texas Guard, he will send non-Guard back-ups from Texas and other states to man the border.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 02:04 PM | Comments (576) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Claim: Barack Obama Told Joe Biden to Stop F***ing Everything Up or Get Out of the Race

Barack Obama can talk really tough when he's protecting his legacy or ordering around a bull.

President Joe Biden is stubbornly ignoring polls, pals, and former President Barack Obama, who are all allegedly telling the 81-year-old he needs to quit the 2024 race to save America and the Democratic Party, RadarOnline.com has learned.

Insiders snitched that tensions between the two presidents recently exploded after irate Obama rushed to a secret meeting and confronted Biden about his fading chances to fend off surging Republican candidate Donald Trump in the upcoming November election.

"Obama read Joe the riot act," spilled a Beltway insider to the National Enquirer. "He told him to up his game or step aside for a candidate who can win the race."

The Obamas are said to not support Biden in his run.

News of the shocking showdown came on the heels of damaging comments from former First Lady Michelle Obama, who politicos say is being pressured to mount a primary challenge to her hubby's aging former Veep.

Yes -- speaking of that, Megyn Kelly further gossiped about the possibility of Michelle Obama entering the race. The story goes that the scheme is already plotted -- Joe will announce his exit from the race in May, and then the delegates will choose Michelle Obama as the nominee at August's DNC.

Supposedly she already informed/polled the biggest Democrat donors and told them she's in.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 01:15 PM | Comments (453) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Biden Has Spent 20 BILLION CITIZEN TAXPAYER DOLLARS "Resettling" Illegal Aliens in the Past Two Years Alone

Cost a lot of money to move "refugees" into people's communities at midnight so they can't object to what "their" government is doing.

Fake asylum seekers, future (current?) Democrat voters. Here's $20 billion.

The Biden administration has poured billions of taxpayer dollars into the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) since October 2022, according to a new report from Open the Books.

The Biden administration spent $8.925 billion in fiscal year 2022 and $10.928 billion in fiscal year 2023 on the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at ORR to accommodate, transport, and provide migrants with various other services like medical care and loans, according to the report, which was released Tuesday. In recent months, HHS has faced scrutiny for ORR's alleged mishandling of cases of unaccompanied migrant children, some of whom have been released to poorly vetted sponsors where they are used for child labor, according to The New York Times.

...

The agency has lost contact with 85,000 unaccompanied migrant children, according to the NYT. Meanwhile, the Biden administration has spent more than $5.5 billion separately in fiscal years 2022 and 2023 on unaccompanied migrant children, according to the Open the Books report.

I saw Matt Walsh talk about this -- you'd think the media would be in full "KILL THE INSURRECTIONISTS!" meltdown mode over Governor Abbott's Fort Sumter letter. You think they'd be shrieking about the insurrectionist governors of 25 states provoking a civil war.

Instead, they're... ignoring it. Almost completely.

The reason is simple: They know that the American people are with Abbott and against Biden, so they're doing what they've done for three years -- ignoring the border crisis completely.

For some reason, the MSM has been downplaying the brewing constitutional crisis at the border. As Ben Shapiro noted yesterday, none of the major news outlets are giving any serious coverage of the standoff between Texas and the Biden Administration.

As of this morning, when I wrote this, you could go to the websites of The New York Times and Washington Post and not find the story on their front page. If you didn't already know what was happening, they had no interest in telling you.

...

The MSM's relative silence is simply an extension of their failure to cover the border crisis itself. When forced to choose between their loyalty to their readers and viewers, who deserve to know the scale of the crisis, and their loyalty to the Democrat Party, they chose the latter.

It's almost as if the media's mission is not to inform the public, but to keep it ignorant and gaslit.

Then number of illegal alien "gotaways" from just last year exceeds the combined population of Kansas City and St. Louis. No big deal.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., is raising the alarm about a massive number of "gotaways" at the southern border last year, after a new Congressional Budget Office report found that the number last fiscal year exceeded the population of Missouri's two largest cities combined.

Hawley, in a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, cited the new CBO report which found that there were a record-setting 860,000 illegal immigrants who evaded Border Patrol agents in fiscal year 2023.

"These "gotaways" outnumber the combined populations of Kansas City and St. Louis, the two largest cities in Missouri," Hawley said. "At the very least, you owe the American people full transparency into what your Department knows about illegal immigrants who have entered our nation without being stopped or tracked."

The New York Post reports that American travelers have seen illegal aliens being waved through security and they're outraged by the double standard against actual citizens.

American travelers are outraged by signs appearing at US airports appearing to allow migrants onto flights without showing proper identification.

US citizens traveling domestically have to show a valid identification card or a passport to board a plane, but signs at certain airports say there are different rules for some newly arrived migrants.

The signs claim the Transport Security Administration is working with Customs and Border Protection to "validate adult non-US citizen travel documentation when the traveler does not otherwise have an acceptable form of identification."

In practice, this means migrants who have entered the country using the CBP One app -- some 45,000 people a month -- can use it as their travel document and even choose whether to allow officers to take their picture.

Retired CBP Chief Patrol Agent Chris Clem told The Post this presents bad optics.

"I'm an American citizen and I'm quite offended that these migrants that have come in here are getting preferential treatment and being prioritized in so many ways," he said.

"The rest of us are paying the price at gas pump and grocery stores. Tax is going up. Yet [the US is] continuing to bring masses of people [in]."

"[The Administration's mentality is] to try and make it the most humane and pleasurable experience for these poor people under distress because it is such a tough ordeal to navigate an American airport...but you've gotta be kidding me, many of them just came from Middle East, traversed seven countries, used apps to get here, and we're supposed to believe Phoenix Airport might be all to much for them ...ridiculous!"

Illegal aliens, doing the smash-and-grab mass lootings that Americans just won't do.

Well, I guess some Americans will do them.

But honestly, it's not like we're looking for more.

A Chicago suburb has been battered by a string of recent crimes committed by migrants who live in or near the Windy City.

From Oct. 23 to Jan. 17, a total of 47 migrants were arrested in Oak Brook, Illinois, mostly for alleged property crimes, according to Brian Strockis, the chief of police for the Oak Brook Police Department.

Most of the migrants who were arrested were charged with retail theft and burglary, Strockis told Fox News Digital.

The latest incident involved an Ecuadorian migrant who resides in Chicago and is accused of stealing more than $3,000 worth of merchandise from retail stores and evading Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) supervision by cutting off his electronic monitoring device.

...

Last October, two Venezuelan migrants -- 28-year-old Luis Mendez-Gomez and 23-year-old Frank Montez-Davila -- were arrested after they allegedly stole nearly $3,000 in high-end cosmetics from the Oak Brook Macy's store.

Black Chicago Democrats are in revolt over their Democrat masters' open border obsession.

It started as a rumbling in Chicago's predominantly black neighborhoods on the city's south and west sides. Black Chicagoans are watching the city spending tens of millions of dollars on newly arrived migrants after years of unmet promises from the Chicago political establishment to black people in the poorest neighborhoods.
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"All these people, I have supported every one of them," Cata Truss, a 57-year-old mother on the West Side, says about Mayor Brandon Johnson and his progressive allies.

"I was like, 'Are you freaking kidding me,'" Truss added. She had just found out that the city was going to take over Amundsen Park -- what she calls "the crown jewel of the community" -- for use by migrants.

Chicago prides itself on being a "welcoming city" -- just not to black residents.

According to The Free Press, "Chicago has greeted nearly 35,000 new arrivals with resources like laundry services, mental health screenings, and $15,000 in rental support per person -- all funds that Truss says could've gone a long way in Amundsen Park in Chicago's Austin neighborhood, where nearly 28 percent of residents live below the poverty line."

Black Chicagoans are no longer trying to hide their resentment. They don't necessarily resent the migrants, although it's hard not to when the city is spending extravagantly on them. They resent the black Democratic establishment for allowing the situation to reach a crisis point with little or no input from neighborhood groups, who are the backbone of the Democratic Party in the city.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 12:05 PM | Comments (458) | Trackbacks (Suck)

THE MORNING RANT: P&G Just Took Another $1 Billion+ Charge Against Its Odious Gillette Brand

Back before Target, Disney, and Bud Light committed brand suicide with vulgar sexual wokeness that resulted in punishing consumer boycotts, there was Gillette’s suicide-by-wokeness.

Procter & Gamble is still paying the price, as it just took another write down exceeding $1 billion against its odious Gillette brand.

As you’ll recall, in early 2019 Gillette released its notorious “toxic masculinity” commercial, which effectively accused its loyal customer base of being bullies and sexual predators. That ad sparked an angry backlash from men who are fed up with attacks on them, and who vowed to stop buying Gillette products. (I was – and remain - one of them.) Six months later P&G had to take an $8 billion impairment charge due to Gillette’s declining sales and the declining book value of the Gillette brand, which caused P&G to have an overall $5 billion loss that quarter.

With malevolent curiosity, I’ve been reading P&G’s quarterly Securities & Exchange Commission filings ever since, especially because P&G has been teasing about another impairment charge against Gillette for a while. It finally came to pass.

This is a link to the 10-Q for the quarter ending 12/31/2023 (which is the 2nd quarter in P&G’s fiscal year.)

During the three months ended December 31, 2023, we determined that the fair value of the Gillette indefinite-lived intangible asset was less than its carrying amount. As a result, we recorded a non-cash impairment charge of $1.3 billion ($1.0 billion after tax) to reduce the carrying amount to its estimated fair value during the quarter ended December 31, 2023.

P&G is also keeping the stage set for further impairment charges related to Gillette.

Adverse changes in the business or in the macroeconomic environment, including foreign currency devaluation, increasing global inflation, market contraction from an economic recession and the Russia-Ukraine War, could reduce the underlying cash flows used to estimate the fair value of the Gillette indefinite-lived intangible asset and trigger a further impairment charge.

Puzzlingly, the reasons P&G gave for this massive charge-off did not include lost customers. As I’ve been reading these 10-Qs each quarter, I’ve observed that P&G first blamed Gillette’s problems on Covid, before segueing into blaming the Russia-Ukraine war, but never acknowledging that a consumer boycott resulted in permanently lost sales.

A little over three years ago I wrote about Gillette’s coy explanation to the SEC about its Gillette problems, and quoted this from P&G’s 10-K report for the fiscal year ending 6/30/2020: “The COVID-19 pandemic that occurred during the second half of fiscal 2020 [This means January through June 2020 because P&G’s fiscal-year-end is June 30 - Buck] resulted in a reduction in shave incidents by consumers and a weakening of certain currencies relative to the U.S. dollar, which led to a reduction in net sales for Gillette-branded products.” Yeah, that and a massive consumer boycott.

Although I had been waiting for the most recent 10-Q to learn about this latest Gillette write down, the business press actually picked up the story last month, but somehow I missed it.

“P&G to record up to $2.5 billion in Gillette writedown, operations revamp” [CNBC – 12/05/2023]

Procter & Gamble said on Tuesday it would record up to $2.5 billion in charges over two fiscal years as it writes down the value of its Gillette business and restructures certain markets.

The company’s shares fell about 2% in early trade. The consumer goods giant said it would take a $1.3 billion non-cash impairment charge before tax in the current quarter ending Dec. 31 on its Gillette business.

One thing that I can’t find anywhere is information on Gillette’s market share, more specifically, how much of the market share for men’s razors it has lost since 2019. I’ve heard that it is possible to hire companies to scrub the internet of negative information, and I wonder if that has been done on behalf of Gillette and its lost market share. There is abundant information about its 21st century market share, up until the mid-20-teens at which point the search engines can’t find me any data.

I’ve also contacted P&G’s media relations (mediateam.im@pg.com) and received no response to my request for Gillette market share data in 2018 and subsequent years. I even bought a couple shares of Procter & Gamble stock, and as a shareholder in the company I then requested (pginvestor.im@pg.com) market share information, but again, I received no response.

It doesn’t really matter what the market share figures are, I suppose. Procter & Gamble insulted and permanently alienated its core Gillette customers, and is taking billion-dollar hit after billion-dollar hit, rather than apologizing for its slander and asking for a second chance.

In conclusion, and since we’re all fans of philosophical razors around here…

Gillette’s Razor: “Go woke. Go broke.”

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

Posted by: Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM | Comments (356) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Mid-Morning Art Thread

A Month's Darning
Enoch Wood Perry

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (491) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Report — 1/26/24

Good morning, kids. While the situation at the border may very well be or at least has the potential to be the black swan event that changes the course of history (for better or God-forbid worse), there is absolutely no doubt that not only is the border catastrophe the central issue of the 2024 election, but that it has sealed the fate of the Democrat-Left at least for this election cycle. That is, if we even have an election cycle. A perfect Rahm Emanuel crisis-not-to-be-wasted is if the TX Rangers and Feds get into a gun battle. And then . . . Hi-chee-wah-wah.

But first to kick things off, here's the combination laugh riot/emetic that underscores my assertion. It comes from a glittering jewel of halitosis-tinged idiocy named Jim Himes, an ankle-biting Democrat backbencher from Connecticut:

On Thursday’s broadcast of MSN[SDAP]’s “Katy Tur[d & DD] Reports,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) stated that we “cannot have uncontrolled migration across the border. That is not acceptable. We see that here in New York City.” and “uncontrolled migration does put downward pressure on wages,” but this is the one issue Republicans have against [spurious fraud] President Joe Biden."

Himes began by stating that many Republicans “realized that the border is their one remaining political issue against Joe Biden,” and that’s why they don’t want a border deal.

In terms of the election, we have nothing to really fear from the Democrats. It's the GOP that is doing everything it can to sabotage Trump and tank 2024 if it can. Not only Trump but try to sabotage GOP candidates, especially MAGA-aligned, in both the Senate and House and hand control of Congress back to the Dems.

Later, host Katy Tur asked, “I was speaking to a black Democrat out of Chicago who said that she’s a Democrat, but she’s going to vote Republican because she feels frustrated, infuriated, in fact, with the way Democrats, she says, are handling the border, and the benefits and the help that migrants are getting, help that she says the black community has been asking for for decades and is consistently told there’s no money for. So, she sees an imbalance there, and I’ve heard that from others in various cities. Do Democrats — what is the Democratic response to that voter who says she’s gone?”

Himes responded, “Well, I’ve been in politics for a little while now, and you hear a lot of that, on a lot of different issues, we hear it on Israel-Gaza, when people get concerned about a particular issue, they say, this is what I’m going to do in the next election. Now, what’s going to happen is that, in November, I think, it looks like this is going to be the case, we’re going to have Donald Trump, with all that he represented for women’s reproductive rights and for chaos and attacks on democracy, and Joe Biden, you saw the numbers today, 3.3% economic growth. The contrast, you’re not choosing perfection, you’re choosing between two people.”

Emphasis mine and is this jag-off for real? Aside from Biden's intentional destruction our border and immigration controls that pose an existential and immediate threat to our national security, economy and whatever the fuck is left of our way of life despite 100 years of Leftism, according to Himes it's essentially a desperate nothing-burger of triviality.

And then, he ham-handedly tries to segue first the total bullshit about abortion then the blood-libel of Trump being literally Hitler and complete lie about 3.3% economic growth. That number primarily coming from the governmental sector which includes massive spending on Medicare and Medicaid. That's growth like cancer is a growth.

Of course, Katy Tur, with the silent "d" after her name and the screaming DD announcements on your screen, pretended to press him on the "Democratic response" but like all the other good little propagandists on MSNSDAP, her job is just to make him look and sound like the good guy. Newsflash to the Left: it's not working:

It started as a rumbling in Chicago's predominantly black neighborhoods on the city's south and west sides. Black Chicagoans are watching the city spending tens of millions of dollars on newly arrived migrants after years of unmet promises from the Chicago political establishment to black people in the poorest neighborhoods.

“All these people, I have supported every one of them,” Cata Truss, a 57-year-old mother on the West Side, says about Mayor Brandon Johnson and his progressive allies. 

“I was like, ‘Are you freaking kidding me,'" Truss added. She had just found out that the city was going to take over Amundsen Park — what she calls “the crown jewel of the community” — for use by migrants. Chicago prides itself on being a "welcoming city" — just not to black residents.

According to The Free Press, "Chicago has greeted nearly 35,000 new arrivals with resources like laundry services, mental health screenings, and $15,000 in rental support per person — all funds that Truss says could’ve gone a long way in Amundsen Park in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, where nearly 28 percent of residents live below the poverty line."

Black Chicagoans are no longer trying to hide their resentment. They don't necessarily resent the migrants, although it's hard not to when the city is spending extravagantly on them. They resent the black Democratic establishment for allowing the situation to reach a crisis point with little or no input from neighborhood groups, who are the backbone of the Democratic Party in the city.  That's not the half of it. One of the most Democratic cities in the nation is seeing its black politicians booed by angry residents in neighborhoods. The bottom line is that the crisis is leading a sizable number of black Chicagoans to consider sitting the 2024 election out or even voting for Donald Trump.

This wouldn't affect the presidential race. Illinois is going to go for Biden no matter what happens with the vote in Chicago, but in statewide races, a falloff in support from black voters could lead to some upsets. And it's not just Chicago seeing black support dwindle for Democrats. If Donald Trump gets even 15% of the black vote, he wins in a landslide. . .

. . . “What the Democratic Party doesn’t want black people to hear is that this is a Biden policy,” says J. Darnell Jones, another plaintiff suing the city. “Biden is allowing the borders to remain open.” This resentment that Chicago's black community manifested is not a permanent realignment — yet. But no voter likes to be taken for granted, and black Democrats are reaching a boiling point.

Psaki-Psircling back to Himes, there is something alarming in his bullshit about how the GOP doesn't want to cut a deal on the border. At least the seemingly more rational, pro-American non-RINO scumbag traitors and leftist flunkies of the party.

Not to beat a dead donkey, but this issue is not just political/electoral dynamite but it can be the opportunity to finally put a major dent in the traditional minority bloc blind support of the Democrats, if not totally cleave them from their political slave-masters. And it's the fucking GOP-e that is sabotaging this as it has sabotaged anyone who has ever posed a threat to their seat at the moneychangers' table that is DC.

Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell conceded defeat on additional Ukraine spending Wednesday night after former President Donald Trump’s decisive victory in New Hampshire. Now the Republican Senate chief is blaming Trump, whom he referred to as “the nominee,” for the destruction of an amnesty bill that Democrats cloaked as border security.

“The politics on this have changed,” McConnell told the Republican Senate Conference at a closed-door meeting. “We’re in a quandary.”

McConnell wanted to move forward with a deal cut with Democrats to provide more assistance for Ukraine in exchange for stricter immigration measures as border agents remain overwhelmed between San Diego and the southern tip of Texas. The latest framework for the border, however, would have green-lit Biden’s border crisis with the stamp of congressional approval by allowing millions more migrants to enter the United States without expulsion.

“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump,” Romney said. “The fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is really appalling.”

But the border bill only promises to exacerbate the current crisis. The proposed expulsion authority included in the bill would only kick in after 5,000 people crossed the border every day. The provision would allow 1.8 million migrants entry every year. According to the House Judiciary Committee, an estimated 1.7 million “known ‘got-aways'” have escaped apprehension by law enforcement since President Joe Biden took office.

Eric Teetsel, the vice president of government relations at the conservative Heritage Foundation, explained on X that the Senate border deal was not “designed to solve the border problem.”

“It’s designed to pass the Senate,” Teetsel wrote. “It’s designed that way because it’s tied to the money for Ukraine, which is the actual priority for those involved” . . .

. . . “It’s not that they’re bad at negotiation,” said Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at a press conference Wednesday. “It’s that they want this outcome and this outcome is terrible for the American people” . . .

. . . Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul complained on “Tucker Carlson Uncensored” that GOP Senate leadership was more interested in securing the border of Ukraine than the United States. “Half of my Republican caucus is, as we speak, ready to sell out, and they’re ready to sell out fake border reform in exchange for what they really want, which is to send more of your tax dollars to Ukraine,” Paul said.

Before my eyeballs shoot out of my head like champagne corks, let is compare and contrast what this filthy criminal spouted with that of the other filthy criminal across the aisle:

Jim Himes: . . . many Republicans “realized that the border is their one remaining political issue against Joe Biden,” and that’s why they don’t want a border deal.

Pee-Air Defecto: “I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump,” Romney said. “The fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is really appalling.”

Two party system, my ass. If I could, I would rip McYertle's arms from their sockets and beat Romney to death with them. Rhetorically speaking, of course.

It's bad enough that they're still itching to have us go to war with Russia over Ukraine, arguably the worst kleptocracy on the planet that's already swindled billions from us so as that the Romneys and Pelosis of this country can fatten their stock portfolios. But the $32 trillion dollar question remains:

Why in God's name are we negotiating with our executioners about the date, time, place and manner of our own demise?!

As we have seen time and time again for at least the past 40 years, on every issue under the sun (global warming pun not intended) the GOP considers bipartisanship as its prime goal. That is, they never challenge the premise or sanity of whatever the Democrats want, but mere the speed and cost at which it is always implemented. And whatever they have wanted is always implemented. They never declare "HELL NO!" let alone "no."

The only thing that we should be talking about, nay demanding is the sealing of our borders, the ending of the incentivizing to come here legally or otherwise, and the concerted, unceasing non-stop effort to deport every single illegal alien who is already here, regardless of when they arrived, until every last one of the well over 40 million who are here that we can identify is shipped as far south as the Ross Ice Shelf if necessary or whichever third world shithole they came from.

Short of that, I am not interested in anything the GOP has to say on this. If there is going to be any compromising on this, let the friggin' Democrats compromise and let them declare to their base of scum and gibbering loons that slowing us down by 5% is a victory, "for the children."

Meanwhile, should Trump miraculously survive the GOPe and whatever the Dems are going to throw at him, he's going to run into the same buzz saw of insubordination he encountered his first go round.

he lesson I learned was that even your friends can screw you.  I also learned that people like to create failure for their opposition when they know they are going to lose.  Joe Biden is doing this right now, and what he is doing will most assuredly ail Trump if/when he wins the 2024 election.  Biden knows that Trump has a good shot at winning, so the president is using his time left and deliberately pouring syrup into the engine of the White House.

Within less than eleven months, and if nothing else goes wrong, Trump, as the newly (re-)elected president, will inherit no less than three wars, a flailing economy, a 34-trillion-dollar federal deficit, high crime rates across the country, a broken Southern border that has spilled at least nine million new people into the country without being vetted, and a Deep State that doesn’t want him to succeed.  If that isn’t pancake syrup gutting up an engine, then I don’t know what is. . .

. . . This is Trump’s reality.  He must not only prepare for the worst, but also be mindful that he is likely surrounded by people who want him to fail.

Trump’s team — his inner circle, if you will — must comprise competent members who truly share his vision of remedial care.  They must be consumed with but one desire: to get the machine running and to root out the impurities.  Javier Milei, the newly elected president of Argentina, has made headlines showing that it is possible to reduce the waste of big government, something Trump did not do in his first term.  He needs to make it a top priority this time around. . .

. . . The only question is how much the engine has been damaged by President Biden.  America is a resilient country.  I’d like to believe that no one person can do so much damage to a country as great as ours, but gosh darn it if Biden didn’t try like hell.  We don’t yet see the damage under the hood.

History will not be kind to Biden’s legacy, and that is why he becomes more dangerous with each passing day.  Don’t forget that Biden still has his hands on the levers.  Pray he takes more vacations in the coming months and not fewer, and that Trump doesn’t change his mind between now and November.

And that bit about his inner circle is his Achilles Heel. At least it was the last go round. Has he learned his lesson?

If Tim Scott is his pick for veep, as I fear it might be (Lee Zeldin in a bid to get NY is interesting and not at all illogical, if unlikely to garner the shocker) then there's your answer. Ugh.

Be sure to read and comment on my latest effort over at Taki's Magazine. It's a Lieu-Lieu!

Have a great weekend.

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
• Daniel Greenfield: "9/11 mastermind gets a plea deal while a racist supermarket shooter gets death."
  Biden Puts the DEI in the Death Penalty
  
• "New documents strengthen—perhaps conclusively—the lab-leak hypothesis of Covid-19’s origins."
  The Story of the Decade
  
• "Imagine the mess Trump will have to clean up if he is elected in November. Can he handle the task? . . . This is Trump’s reality. He must not only prepare for the worst, but also be mindful that he is likely surrounded by people who want him to fail." (He must go scorched earth, roll like Abbott, and purge any insubordination with the most extreme prejudice. Constitution be damned, since it is no more anyway - jjs)
  Is Biden Poison-Pilling Trump?
  
• David Horowitz: "In the end, the stigma 'white skin privilege' serves the same purpose for contemporary radicals seeking to re-imagine and transform America according to socialist designs as it did for the Weathermen, who embraced and popularized it. If America is a white supremacist nation, and has been since its inception, then by the very values of equality and tolerance that Americans cherish, America and its institutions are not worth respecting or defending. 'White skin privilege' is a racist weapon to dismantle and destroy the nation we have known, loved and prospered in."
  White Skin Privilege

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 08:00 AM | Comments (453) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 26 January 2024

Top Story

• Apple is bringing third-party app stores and side-loading to the iPhone. (The Verge)
  
  But only in the EU.
  
  
  
• Apple will allow full versions of Firefox and Chrome browsers to run on the iPhone, instead of just hastily-drawn skins on top of Safari. (The Verge)
  
  But only in the EU.
  
  
  
• Epic Games will make its app store and the game Fortnite available on iPhones. (The Verge)
  
  But only in the EU.
  
  
  
• Twitter has been flooded with risque AI-generated images of Taylor Swift. (The Verge)
  
  But only in the EU. Wait.
  

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (199) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Then Join In The Fight That Will Give You The Right To ONT!

Getting a little sporty out there, innit?

Image courtesy of @ChestyPullerGst

So it this our Fort Sumter moment? I don't think so. I don't think anything is going to happen. But a resurgence of the 10th Amendment would be nice. I did notice one small error Ace made earlier. He said it was 25 states. Nuh-uh.

It's 25 states supporting Texas. That's 26 states, also known as, as I like to point out to those always screeching about “Muh Democracy!”, a majority. Also, the red is contiguous, but we really need KS, KY and NC. Then we could let those eastern and western bastards freeze in the dark.

Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:00 PM | Comments (522) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Elephant Dunking Clinic Cafe

The main drag in Banff, Alberta, Canada
by @stevint from roaming the planet on IG

How many drones does it take to screw in a lightbulb? (Answer: One.)

but why

The entire nation of Japan has dedicated itself to freaking me out.

On the other hand, their work in the rain gutter design space is faultless.

Elephants are given Christmas trees as snacks at the Berlin Zoo. Now that's recycling I can get behind.

Man saves a baby deer which has fallen down a well and winds up with a herd of new frenz.

It may be an 80 million year old "frill shark." It might just be an ugly wet Muppet. Who can say for certain?

Catch as cat can.

Crazy BMX.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 07:30 PM | Comments (268) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Quick Tigs

The attorneys for a RICO defendant have warned the "law" partners of Darrius "Sweetdick" Honeycum, Esq., Attorney-at-Schlong, that they should expect to be subpoenaed in the Fani's Felonious Fanny hearing.

CNN, which is gay and stupid and unprofessional:

A current and former law partner to Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor leading the 2020 election subversion case in Georgia, have been told to expect a subpoena to testify at a hearing next month on whether he and the district attorney who brought the case should be disqualified over their alleged affair and financial ties, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.

The district attorney, Fani Willis, also is expected to be subpoenaed, sources say, and possibly others in her office.

...

In the days since leveling the allegations of the affair in her motion to dismiss the case, Merchant told CNN that she and her team have uncovered more evidence to buttress the claims, including confirming the trips Willis and Wade took were personal vacations, and not work-related business trips.

"I think what's relevant is to look at the personal nature of the trips. These are trips that neither Fani nor Nathan got reimbursement for. They didn't get reimbursement through the county, they didn't get reimbursement through her campaign," Merchant said when asked about the nature of the trips.

Trump has also joined the motion demanding that Fani and her Felonious Fanny recuse themselves to spend more time with their Marital Aids.

Note: Error deleted and unacknowledged. That's how Disinformation Experts like Ben Collins do it, so that's how I do it, too.

NPR is continuing to completely embargo all news about Fani Willis and her Hungry Vaj.

NPR hasn't reported on the scandal of Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis potentially ruining her election-interference case against Donald Trump by having an affair with her married special prosecutor, who took her on vacations with the money she was paying him. No, they were too busy sounding like State-Run Radio on Thursday night by offering a four-minute press release for Vice President Kamala Harris, who's now "taking a more front-and-center role on addressing gun violence" on the campaign trail.

The closest thing to negativity was anchor Juana Summers noting Harris is trying to "court younger voters, who, right now, aren't showing a lot of enthusiasm about voting for President Biden."

Hope you enjoyed that -- you paid for it. Against your will, of course. (Biden-style, we call that.)

Even an Obama judge is forced to conclude that "DEI trainings," when they devolve into mere racial scapegoating and bullying (which is the entire point of them), can give rise to discrimination and racial harassment lawsuits.

Judge Wendy Beetlestone of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled on Jan. 11 that Professor De Piero had solid grounds to proceed in his race discrimination lawsuit despite Penn State's request for it to be dismissed.

Beetlestone said that discussing the "influence of racism on our society does not violate federal law." But when considering whether to allow the professor's suit to progress, she considered the type of CRT training used at Penn State Abington.

"Training on concepts such as... critical race theory can contribute positively... to form a healthy and inclusive working environment," she said. "But the way these conversations are carried out in the workplace matters: When employers talk about race -- any race -- with a constant drumbeat of essentialist, deterministic, and negative language, they risk liability under federal law."

De Piero "was individually singled out for ridicule and humiliation because of the color of his skin," according to the original lawsuit filed by the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR).

When he complained about "the continuous stream of racial insult directed at White faculty," he was told by the director of the Affirmative Action office that "There is a problem with the White race." The administrator went on to say that the professor should attend "antiracist" workshops "until you get it."

I continue to be fascinated by this game being played by hateful minority activists in which they attempt to see how hard they can bully the majority population until the majority population decides it's had enough and it's officially time for Backlash (TM).

It's like playing the highest-possible-stakes version of Press Your Luck. Nowhammiesnowhammiesnowhammies...

It's an interesting strategy, Cotton, we'll see how that works out for them.

I got this from Ed Morrissey, who points out this is the same case we've been discussing here and there for a couple of weeks. This ruling isn't new -- it came out a week or two back -- but FoxNews is just getting to it now. They do report some of the verbiage used in the ruling. (Though, of course, that could be had by anyone looking up the case.)

Sad: Hunter Biden sold $1.5 million worth of -- wait, let me check this, this must be a typo -- no, apparently he calls them his "artworks," and the crackhead whoremonger doesn't mean it as a joke -- but that still doesn't cover his "massive debts."

Don't worry. His "Sugar Brother" will just launder some more money and clear the rest of those debts himself.

Hunter Biden's artwork has sold for $1.5 million to 10 buyers, but it is still not enough to cover his millions of dollars of debt.

Art dealer and gallerist Georges Berges received 40% of the sales while the first son received 60% under their agreement, The Washington Post reported. This means President Joe Biden's son has received about $900,000 for his artwork.

The largest art buyer was Hunter Biden's attorney Kevin Morris, who also loaned the first son $5.9 million between 2020 and 2022 for his tax payments and personal expenses. Morris purchased 11 paintings for $875,000 in total.

At least one Democrat is calling on Biden to Go Full Tyrant and nationalize the Texas Guard so that it cannot be used to defend the state and people of Texas.

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) is calling on President Biden to take control of the Texas National Guard if the state defies a Supreme Court ruling that allows U.S. Border Patrol officers to take down the border barriers.

"Governor Greg Abbott is using the Texas National Guard to obstruct and create chaos at the border. If Abbott is defying yesterday's Supreme Court ruling, @POTUS needs to establish sole federal control of the Texas National Guard now," Castro wrote in a Tuesday post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

The Supreme Court didn't tell Texas to do anything or not do anything -- it issued no orders to Texas. What it did was relieve the federal government of an injunction imposed by the appeals court. The federal government is no longer under court orders.

But Texas was under no prior court order, and still isn't.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 06:42 PM | Comments (214) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Showdown In Texas: The Texas Military Department Says It Will "Hold the Line"

Boy it sure is important to Democrats to open the borders to millions of new illegal voters.

I guess that's just because they can reliably count on 81 million "Americans" voting for them every election, huh? You know, like they got last time?

Right?

The Texas Military Department says it will continue to "hold the line in Shelby Park" in their efforts to "deter and prevent unlawful entry into the State of Texas." Under Operation Lone Star orders from Governor Greg Abbott, the Texas National Guard's actions continue despite a second demand letter from the Department of Homeland Security to release control of the park seized by the State earlier this month.

Governor Abbott pledged to continue deploying razor wire along the Rio Grande border with Mexico.

"We remain resolute in our actions to secure our border, preserve the rule of law, and protect the sovereignty of our State," TMD officials wrote in a post on X.

Shortly after DHS officials issued a second letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton demanding accesses to Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, Texas, a defiant Governor Abbott posted, "We will continue to deploy this razor wire to repel illegal immigration."

Charlie Kirk
@charliekirk11

Gov. Abbott is being very smart. The Supreme Court didn't actually order Texas to DO anything. The Court gave the Biden Regime permission to do something. Those are two very different things! Texas is simply laying more wire and moving in more resources. Also the court deferred on the majority of the case that is still before the 5th Circuit. Abbott is exploiting this window to rally more governors, more personnel, and to secure the moral high ground.

Good for Abbott, good for Texas, good for America.

HOLD THE LINE TEXAS!

John Daniel Davidson
@johnddavidson

This is correct as far as it goes, but a lot of commentators are missing that we have left the realm of the strictly legal and are in the realm of the political now.

Speaking of:

As Governor Abbott issues his "When in the course of Human Events..." notification to the feds, patriotic governors rally around him and pledge their support.

Ron DeSantis
@GovRonDeSantis

If the Constitution really made states powerless to defend themselves against an invasion, it wouldn't have been ratified in the first place and Texas would have never joined the union when it did.

TX is upholding the law while Biden is flouting it.

FL will keep assisting Texas with personnel and assets.

Glenn Youngkin
@GlennYoungkin

Virginia stands with Texas.

@GregAbbott_TX is doing the job Joe Biden and his border czar refuse to do to secure our border.

The Biden administration has turned every state into a border state. We must stop the flow of fentanyl, save lives, and secure our southern border.

Brian Kemp
@BrianKempGA

Enough is enough. Our southern border is in crisis thanks to the Biden administration's refusal to do their job.

@GregAbbott_TX and the state of Texas have our full support.

Kristi Noem
@KristiNoem

.@GregAbbott_TX is exactly right to invoke Texas' constitutional authority to defend itself.

The Biden Administration has created a national security crisis and put Americans in danger. Their failure is an unconstitutional dereliction of duty.

South Dakota has been proud to help Gov. Abbott's efforts to secure our border.

Governor Greg Gianforte
@GovGianforte

Governor @GregAbbott_TX is doing what @POTUS won't.

By refusing to act, President Biden is inviting cartels, illegal drugs, and human trafficking into the United States.

We must secure the southern border.

GovJeffLandry
@LAGovJeffLandry

Louisiana stands with Texas.

Enough is enough.

Utah Gov. Spencer J. Cox
@GovCox

The border is a disaster that continues to spiral out of control, both in terms of people and deadly fentanyl traffic. This is not a partisan issue. This is a national security issue. This is a common sense issue. This is an American issue.

Utah thanks Texas and Gov. Abbott for stepping up where the Biden Administration has failed over and over again.

In fact, 25 governors have signed a letter in support of Abbott.

A quick-and-dirty back-of-the-envelope guestimation tells me that that's half the states. I was in Track 2 in math (as were most other Disinformation Experts), so my expertise in fraction and goesintos is uncontestable.

Marina Medvin
@MarinaMedvin

Here is the official letter from the Republican Governors in support of Texas. #IStandWithTexas

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- 25 Republican governors released the following joint statement in support of Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Texas' constitutional right to self-defense.

The statement comes as the Biden Administration continues to attack Texas and refuses to take action or responsibility for the crisis at the Southern border.

"President Biden and his Administration have left Americans and our country completely vulnerable to unprecedented illegal immigration pouring across the Southern border. Instead of upholding the rule of law and securing the border, the Biden Administration has attacked and sued Texas for stepping up to protect American citizens from historic levels of illegal immigrants, deadly drugs like fentanyl, and terrorists entering our country.

"We stand in solidarity with our fellow Governor, Greg Abbott, and the State of Texas in utilizing every tool and strategy, including razor wire fences, to secure the border. We do it in part because the Biden Administration is refusing to enforce immigration laws already on the books and is illegally allowing mass parole across America of migrants who entered our country illegally.

"The authors of the U.S. Constitution made clear that in times like this, states have a right of self-defense, under Article 4, Section 4 and Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution. Because the Biden Administration has abdicated its constitutional compact duties to the states, Texas has every legal justification to protect the sovereignty of our states and our nation."

Signatories include: Governor Kay Ivey (AL), Governor Mike Dunleavy (AK), Governor Sarah Sanders (AR), Governor Ron DeSantis (FL), Governor Brian Kemp (GA), Governor Brad Little (ID), Governor Eric Holcomb (IN), Governor Kim Reynolds (IA), Governor Jeff Landry (LA), Governor Tate Reeves (MS), Governor Mike Parson (MO), Governor Greg Gianforte (MT), Governor Jim Pillen (NE), Governor Joe Lombardo (NV), Governor Chris Sununu (NH), Governor Doug Burgum (ND), Governor Mike DeWine (OH), Governor Kevin Stitt (OK), Governor Henry McMaster (SC), Governor Kristi Noem (SD), Governor Bill Lee (TN), Governor Spencer Cox (UT), Governor Glenn Youngkin (VA), Governor Jim Justice (WV), and Governor Mark Gordon (WY).

###

Now even the independent candidate RFK, Jr. has declared support for the letter. Dishonest neocon hag and Town Bike Nikki Haley is also now pretending to support the letter, as she heads into a make-or-break primary in her home state.

Donald Trump declared his support, of course.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 05:32 PM | Comments (436) | Trackbacks (Suck)