Ace of Spades HQ

January 08, 2024

Back to School Cafe

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Alaska by @patrick_thun

Papa stork brings a piece of blanket to keep mama stork warm.

Capybara out for a Sunday ride.

Capybara aquatherapy.

Elephant has been on the computer too long today.

Are you awake...? How about now? How about now?

She moos at sunrise.


Master of Quack-Fu uses the Deadly Peck technique to incapacitate a foe.

Winter break is over: Back to school, kids!

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 07:50 PM | Comments (339) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Biden Summons the Press to "Friendly Chats" Where He Can Instruct Them Where Their Reportage Is Wrong and How to Report Better on His Successes

Awesome.

Via Semafor:


President Joe Biden's re-election campaign has begun organizing a series of off-the-record trips for top political reporters and editors to the team's headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware and meet top officials, including the campaign manager, deputies, and other senior advisors for background briefings on campaign strategy.

They're also using it as an opportunity to tell them what they're getting wrong. Two people with knowledge of the situation told Semafor that during meetings with reporters from outlets like The New York Times, the Washington Post, and others, campaign officials have invoked a coverage spreadsheet laying out areas where the team believes their reporting has fallen short.

In particular, campaign officials have chafed at some of the coverage of former President Donald Trump, feeling that outlets are too focused on his legal troubles and haven't paid enough attention to some of his incendiary recent statements on the campaign trail. A source familiar told Semafor that with the exception of its recent meeting with the Times, the campaign meetings had been "substantive" and "productive," and that Biden staffers were scheduled to meet in the coming days with political reporting teams from ABC, NBC, The Wall Street Journal, Fox, NPR, Reuters, Bloomberg, and others in Wilmington.

Speaking of massaging reports to boost Biden: the national recorded 439,000 fake phantom jobs as jobs created by Biden over the past year.


There's something wrong with previous U.S. jobs reports.

The government quietly erased 439,000 jobs through November 2023, a closer look at the numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows.

That means its initial jobs results were inflated by 439,000 positions, and the job market is not as healthy as the government suggests.

Since the government wiped out 439,000 jobs after the fact, the total percentage of jobs created by the government last year is even higher. Increased government hiring has been driving the jobs numbers higher.

...

"Time to stop trading off the payroll data," tweeted David Rosenberg, founder of Rosenberg Research Associates. By his calculations, he says the downward revisions came to "an epic 443,000," adding, "more than 40% of payroll growth in 2023" came from "the fairy tale 'Birth-Death' model" the BLS uses to "guesstimate" its jobs reports.

Again, the government sector in December ranked high in job creation. It created 52,000 jobs in the final month of 2023. As FOX Business's Edward Lawrence points out, that brings the three-month average of jobs created by the government sector to 50,000 per month. Lawrence says Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su "would not answer if this is sustainable when I pressed her."


Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 06:40 PM | Comments (158) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Quick Hits

Politi"Fact" has done the most important "fact" check of the new year.

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Hillary Clinton

Not a lizard. Not a liar.

81% of all political "jokes" on late night "comedy" shows targeted conservatives.

A new study from the Media Research Center found that 81% of all political jokes told on major late-night comedy shows in 2023 targeted conservatives.

The media watchdog analyzed each of the 9,518 political jokes told between six major daily late-night shows from January 3 through December 22, 2023, and found that 7,729 of them took aim at "someone or something on the right side of the political spectrum."

The shows analyzed were ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live!," Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," NBC's "Late Night with Seth Meyers," NBC's "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon", CBS's "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" and "The Late Late Show with James Corden" (until its cancelation in April).

MRC also put together a video of some of the "worst late-night moments of the year" to showcase several examples of late-night comedy's bias against conservatives.

Jimmy Kimmel had the highest rate of anti-conservative "jokes."

Wayne LaPierre has resigned as head of the NRA.

LaPierre cited health reasons for his resignation, effective Jan. 31, which NRA president Charles Cotton accepted. Head of General Operations Andrew Arulanandam will serve as the association's interim CEO and executive vice president, the release said.

The announcement comes before trial proceedings begin Monday in New York attorney general Letitia James's (D.) lawsuit against the NRA. James, who has accused the organization of diverting money to LaPierre and other leaders, was seeking LaPierre's removal, among other remedies. LaPierre stands as an individual defendant in the trial.

I missed this last week: The AP admitted that their article, claiming that conservatives had "discovered a new weapon against professors -- plagiarism," didn't meet AP's standards.

Well, you published it, assholes. It did meet your standards.


"Plagiarism charges downed Harvard's president. A conservative attack helped to fan the outrage," the AP's new headline reads.

"American higher education has long viewed plagiarism as among the most serious of offenses. Accusations of plagiarism have ruined the careers of academics and undergraduates alike," the AP's updated lede reads.

Gay resigned following several allegations of plagiarism on Tuesday, and claimed any attacks against her were fueled by "racial animus" in a letter announcing her decision.

...

"Reviews by conservative activists and then by a Harvard committee did find multiple shortcomings in Gay's academic citations. In dozens of instances first published by The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website, Gay's work includes long stretches of prose that mirror language from other published works," the AP's original piece said.

A paragraph placed high-up in the updated version read, "Reviews by Harvard found multiple shortcomings in Gay's academic citations, including several instances of "duplicative language." While the university concluded the errors 'were not considered intentional or reckless' and didn't rise to misconduct, the allegations continued, with new ones as recently as Monday."

The updated report included a paragraph pinning the original allegations to "conservative activists," and cited the Washington Free Becaon's report on the allegations.

Some took issue with the AP's definition of "scalping" in the original report, which called out Christopher Rufo, who wrote "scalped" on social media after Gay announced her resignation.

The original report read,"As if Gay was a trophy of violence, invoking a gruesome practice taken up by white colonists who sought to eradicate Native Americans."

"On X, formerly Twitter, he wrote "SCALPED," as if Gay was a trophy of violence, invoking a gruesome practice taken up by white colonists who sought to eradicate Native Americans and also used by some tribes against their enemies," the updated version read.

...

Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle said the AP "buried the lede" and added, "the GOP stole this weapon from colleges, which for years punished people for plagiarism with little to no input from conservatives."


Billionaire former Harvard donor Bill Ackman is on the absolute warpath. In this very long tweet, he says he wants to use AI to start scanning the papers of all professors in the Ivy League and other elite universities to find plagiarism, and is willing to fund a company to do just that.


Bill Ackman
@BillAckman

Last night, no one at @MIT had a good night's sleep.

Yesterday evening, shortly after I posted that we were launching a plagiarism review of all current MIT faculty, President Kornbluth, members of MIT's administration, and its board, I am sure that an audible collective gasp could be heard around the campus.

Why? Well, every faculty member knows that once their work is targeted by AI, they will be outed. No body of written work in academia can survive the power of AI searching for missing quotation marks, failures to paraphrase appropriately, and/or the failure to properly credit the work of others.

But it wasn't just the MIT faculty that did not sleep last night. The @Harvard faculty, its governing board members, and its administrative leadership did not sleep either. Because why would we stop at MIT?

Don't we have to do a deep dive into academic integrity at Harvard as well?

What about Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Penn, Dartmouth? You get the point.

While we are going to do a detailed review of plagiarism at MIT, we are not going to be the only ones who do so.

Every college and university in the world is going to have to do the same for themselves. They will do so because they will need to validate all plagiarism accusations, or someone else will do it for them.

The best approach, however, is probably to launch an AI startup to do this job (I would be interested in investing in one) as there is plenty of work to do, and many institutions won't have the resources to do it on their own. Perhaps more importantly, the donors are going to demand that the review is done by an independent third party.

For who today is going to trust higher education to review itself?

The Gestapo Media dug up flimsy claims of plagiarism against Bill Ackman's wife and then gave her 90 minutes to go through them all before publishing.

She has 15 patents. I don't think you can plagiarize a patent application. The Patent Office strictly scrutinizes all patent applications for novelty. If it's not new, you can't patent it, period.

He says he will not be bowed:

Bill Ackman
@BillAckman

I will pursue these societally important issues including problems with how our media operates, the ideological take over of our education system, discrimination in all forms, and free speech to the end of the earth. It is the most important battle I have ever taken on.

And for investors who are concerned about my time management, other than words and ideas, the 'fuel' for my efforts comes from investment success.

Not that I wasn't incredibly motivated before, but if it is possible, I am even more motivated now.

And yes I am posting while on the elliptical for better time management.


US intelligence: Yes of course that hospital in Gaza is a Hamas terror base.


WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. is "confident" that Palestinian militant groups used Gaza's largest hospital to hold "at least a few" hostages seized during their bloody Oct. 7, 2023, attack and to house command infrastructure, an American intelligence assessment declassified Tuesday and shared by a U.S. official found.

The assessment offers the firmest U.S. support for Israeli claims about the Shifa hospital complex, which was raided by Israeli forces in November in an operation decried by global humanitarian organizations and some members of President Joe Biden' s party. Yet the information released doesn't fully back some of Israel's most significant allegations that the hospital served as the central node for activities by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The U.S. official shared the assessment on the condition of anonymity.

"The U.S. Intelligence Community is confident in its judgment on this topic and has independently corroborated information on HAMAS and PIJ's use of the hospital complex for a variety of purposes related to its campaign against Israel," the assessment states. It continues that it believes the groups "used the al-Shifa hospital complex and sites beneath it to house command infrastructure, exercise certain command and control activities, store some weapons, and hold at least a few hostages."

The U.S. believes that Hamas members evacuated days before Israel raided the complex on Nov. 15 and that they destroyed sensitive documents and electronics before Israeli troops entered the facility.

U.S. officials had previously pointed to classified intelligence, obtained independently from the Israelis, to offer support for Israel's raid.


PJ Media: Boy the media's doing a great job of hiding Biden's nuclear waste czar and felonious nonbinary Puppy Pervert Sam Brinton.


Fox News reported Sunday that Brinton, who "made headlines in mid-2022 after being appointed to lead nuclear waste policy at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Nuclear Energy as a nonbinary gender-fluid person," has "avoided jail in two criminal cases, while a third criminal case and a related lawsuit remain ongoing."

...

Now imagine for a moment that Brinton were, instead of a "they/them" perversion enthusiast with a taste for women's clothes, a family-first, devout Christian Trump administration appointee who had likewise been accused of several thefts. Do you think that proceedings in his case would, in that scenario, have been delayed multiple times? Do you think that he would still be a free man with nothing but a 180-day suspended sentence levied against him? Neither do I.


wretchardthecat
@wretchardthecat

The failure of Biden's Iran containment policy, as with his border and economic policy is being driven by catastrophic results and not as spuriously alleged, by 'bigotry'.


These disasters are being exploited by Republicans, conservatives, libertarians and even civilization's foes. But they are not its cause. Institutional incompetence and madness are primarily to blame. Reality is striking back.

Menendez, Santos, Hunter, Epstein, the porn shoot in the Senate, the emergence of weird cults in academia are symptoms of an underlying condition. Despite our denial the system is bound for the ER of history. Ignore the intellectuals who insist that we're alright. We're not.

Women boxers are standing up to rail against new rules which will permit men to physically pummel them and perhaps murder them in the ring.


As Bounding Into Sports recently reported, USA Boxing has announced a new "transgender policy" that allows biological males to compete against women in a combat sport. While there are some conditions on eligibility, the main, horrible point remains: the U.S. governing body for Olympic competition is now OK with men hitting women.

This must please Ray Rice.

The move faced vehement opposition from some of the most outspoken voices for protecting women's rights and women's sports, including Riley Gaines and Dana Loesch. But now, women's boxing champions are making their voices heard as well. And those voices are saying, "Hell no!"


...

As the example of Fallon Fox demonstrates, allowing this injustice in women's boxing will definitely result in women getting seriously injured, and possibly even killed.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 05:30 PM | Comments (353) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Latest Epstein Documents Name the Clintons, Richard Branson, Prince Andrew -- and Donald Trump

This witness, however, makes some wild, unsubstantiated claims -- and has retracted them, for whatever reason.

She admits she lied about one major thing: She claimed she had video of the men who "raped" her. She was never able to produce these when asked, and later admitted she made it up.

She claims she made this up to protect herself from reprisals.

Deb Heine at American Greatness:

Business magnate Richard Branson, Prince Andrew, Hillary Clinton and former presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump were named in the latest Jeffrey Epstein documents released Monday.

Sarah Ransome, one of Epstein's victims, claimed sex tapes were taken of the Duke of York, Bill Clinton and Branson, according to the newly unsealed court files. She has since retracted all of her claims, allegedly out of fear for her family.


...

"When my friend had sexual intercourse with Clinton, Prince Andrew and Richard Branson, sex tapes were in fact filed on each separate occasion by Jeffery," wrote Ransome to then-New York Post columnist Maureen Callahan in 2016. Callahan is now a DailyMail.com columnist.

"Thank God she managed to get a hold of some footage of the filmed sex tapes, which clearly identify the faces of Clinton, Prince Andrew and Branson having sexual intercourse with her," she continued. "Frustratingly enough Epstein was not seen in any of the footage but he was clever like that!"

Ransome alleged the footage was "backed up" on "several USB sticks" sent to Europe.


"When my friend eventually had the courage to speak out and went to the police in 2008 to report what had happened, nothing was done and she was utterly humiliated by the police department where she went to report what had happened with Epstein, Clinton, Branson and Prince Andrew," she said.

Ransome was 22 when she first met Epstein.

...

Ransome made a number of other wild allegations in the emails, including an accusation that her friend was approached "by Special Agents Forces Men sent directly by Hillary Clinton herself."

She also claimed that Trump had sex with "many girls," including an unnamed friend of hers.

She told Callahan that Trump "liked flicking and sucking" her friend's nipples "until they were raw." She wrote: "They looked incredibly painful as they were red and swollen and I remember wincing when I looked at them." She added: "I also know she had sexual relations with Trump at Jeffery's NY mansion on regular occasions."

Ransome also took aim at Hilary Clinton in her emails, saying: "I will make sure that neither that evil bitch Hillary or that paedophile Trump gets elected."


...

Ransome did later retract her claims, telling Callahan she wanted to "walk away from this," citing fears for her family.

In 2019, The New Yorker reported that Ransome admitted to "inventing" the tapes story "to draw attention to Epstein's behavior, and to make him believe that she had 'evidence that would come out if he harmed me.'"

"I frequently experience flashbacks and wake up in a cold sweat from nightmares reliving the awful experience," Ransome stated.

"I am hypervigilant, experience dramatic mood changes, and avoid certain places, situations and people. I will sometimes start crying uncontrollably and without apparent reason. I have worked hard with several mental health professionals who have diagnosed me with extreme symptoms of anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, PTSD, and tendencies to self-harm," she added.

Ransome told the court that she twice attempted to kill herself and it is "only by the grace of God" that she continues to live.

More at the link.

So I've done my due diligence and reported the claims, as well as the reasons to be skeptical of them.

If you say I haven't been forward-leaning enough in denouncing these claims: Name me a single instance where Trump or any of his surrogates has thrown cold water on an allegation against Ron DeSantis.

Shiiiiiiit, they make most of them up themselves.

Did you know that Ron DeSantis is a groomer and also An Gay? Donald Trump told me so, and Donald Trump never lies.

Trump can dig himself out of this himself as far as I care.


Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 04:30 PM | Comments (353) | Trackbacks (Suck)

More Chatter About Biden Dropping Out of the Race by the Convention

It could be that Biden is pushing this divisive, ugly "we will crush our political enemies using the power of the state" appeal because he's planning to drop out of the race by May, and figures that he'll do all the dirty work to allow the new candidate to just lightly run on Authoritarian Persecution of Political Enemies.

Even Biden's communications team at NBC "News" discusses Biden's possible withdrawal from the race.



"There's no way the president would go home to Delaware and voluntarily give up an office he pined for his entire political career," writes Eamon Javers of CNBC and NBC senior national political reporter Peter Nicholas. "That's the conventional thinking in Washington, anyway."

But what if Biden takes a hard look at his poll numbers and concludes he'd rather bail than risk losing to Trump, the GOP front-runner? Or if he is feeling every bit his age (81) and no longer wants all the travel and stress that come with the job? Or if he decides the negative attention heaped on his one surviving son, Hunter, would subside if he just took himself off the ballot and retired from politics?

None of that is expected; neither is it out of the realm of possibility.

Over the last 50 years, Democrats have grown accustomed to a comparatively orderly and transparent process that empowered voters, not party bosses, to choose the presidential nominee.

Biden's withdrawal from the race would disrupt all that, setting off a frenzied scramble for the nomination unlike anything that most Americans have seen in their lifetimes.

...

The possibility of Biden staying in the race is presented as equally risky for the Democrats. Citing Mitch McConnell's infamous brain freeze this past July, the authors ask, "What if something similar were to happen to Biden?"

What if? The alte kacher can't walk ten feet without stumbling, shakes hands with ghosts, and has to be wrangled by the Easter bunny.


A brain freeze of some sort, a bad fall on the steps of Air Force One, a speech that devolves into gibberish -- any fresh sign of frailty would reinforce Americans' impression that Biden is too old for the job. Biden's doctor proclaimed him "fit for duty" in February, but voters have their own ideas of how a president should look, act and sound -- and Biden isn't measuring up on that score.

The White House has organized itself in ways that minimize the chances of a Biden stumble -- physical or otherwise. It's no coincidence that Biden is forsaking the long staircase on Air Force One for the shorter one that unfolds from the belly of the plane.

Yeah, we'll just have to hope that Biden's speech doesn't devolve into gibberish. I can't even imagine what that would sound like.


A senior analyst at Democrat-connected bank JP Morgan predicts that Biden will in fact quit the race.

Or the race will quit him, actually.


In a report published on January 1, JP Morgan listed as its third prediction for the top ten surprises of 2024 that Joe Biden will drop out of the 2024 presidential elections due to health reasons.

The full prediction states that "President Biden withdraws sometime between Super Tuesday and the November election, citing health reasons. Biden passes the torch to a replacement candidate named by the Democratic National Committee."

...

Biden has the lowest approval rating of the last 10 presidents in the same time period, at 38%.

...

These predictions were written by Michael Cembalist, Chairman of Market and Investment Strategy for JP Morgan Asset & Wealth Management, in honor of market strategist Byron Wien, who passed away last year at the age of 90.


Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 03:30 PM | Comments (471) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Elise Stfanik Calls January 6 Prisoners "Hostages," and Piggish Liz Cheney Snorts Her Way Through Another Feeding Trough of Outrage

Stefanik referred to the unjustly-imprisoned political prisoners as "hostages," and to show that she did not misspeak, she's posted the quote to her Twitter feed:

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 02:23 PM | Comments (351) | Trackbacks (Suck)

With Border Crisis Metastizing, Biden Feels Pressure to Strike Deal With Republicans on Deporting Illegals

Don't be too optimistic.

Republican Failure Theater is real, and it's spectacular.

Pressured by the record levels of migrant crossings reported in December, the Biden administration is weighing whether to restrict a key presidential immigration authority to convince Republican lawmakers to approve more aid to Ukraine and border funding.

A small bipartisan group of senators has been negotiating with the White House since December to see if they can strike a deal on stricter asylum and migration laws, which Republicans have demanded in exchange for supporting President Biden's request for billions of dollars to fund border operations and military assistance to Israel, Taiwan and Ukraine.

While the senators and the White House have reached high-level agreements on tightening asylum interviews, expanding expedited deportations and creating an authority to expel migrants without humanitarian screenings when border agents are overwhelmed, the negotiators have not resolved their differences on some key issues. Among those issues is immigration parole, a legal tool used by the Biden administration to resettle hundreds of thousands of migrants that Republicans want to severely limit.

That's a deal-breaker for me. Biden has created a de facto open borders regime by just "paroling" all fake asylum seekers into the country to await a hearing, which they will probably not bother showing up for, in eight years.

Plenty of time to have an Anchor Baby in eight years. Why bother with the asylum claims?


Senior White House officials have previously told Democrats in Congress that they would not accept the Republican demands to restrict parole. But during a White House meeting on Friday, Mr. Biden's advisers recognized that a border deal with Republicans would not be possible without the administration agreeing on limiting parole, people briefed on those talks told CBS News. Accepting restrictions on parole would be a significant concession to Republicans, since Biden has relied so heavily on the policy.

Ugh. The Republicans' top negotiator says he'll be releasing the text of a deal this week, which signals to me they've given up on the parole issue.

Because the important thing is protecting Ukraine's borders, doncha know.


Republicans' top negotiator on a potential border and immigration deal that could unlock tens of billions in aid for Ukraine said on Sunday that lawmakers could release the text of an agreement as soon as this week.

Sen. James Lankford's (R-Okla.) optimistic remarks are the latest sign that his discussions with Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) could bear fruit after several days of urgent talks in Washington last week and months of behind-the-scenes discussions. The trio and the Biden administration are honing in on an agreement that could raise the standard for claiming asylum and potentially deliver new expulsion and enforcement authorities to the administration. It would also provide significant new resources for border adjudication and staffing.

Nothing in there about limiting Biden's kingly power of parole.

Meanwhile, Biden schemes that he'll "flip the script" on immigration and use it against Republicans.


The Biden administration is attempting to flip the blame for the migrant crisis at the southern border onto Republicans.

In anticipation of Speaker Mike Johnson heading to the U.S. southern border on Wednesday, the White House issued a statement accusing House GOPers of ducking the chance to address the issue they've been attacking.

"Actions speak louder than words," White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement first obtained by POLITICO ahead of two days of Republican border visits. "House Republicans' anti-border security record is defined by attempting to cut Customs and Border Protection personnel, opposing President Biden's record-breaking border security funding, and refusing to take up the President's supplemental funding request."

Obviously, every Biden "solution" to illegal immigration is just to make more illegal immigrants legal ones and amnesty all the illegals already here.

In the Sanctuary City of New York, Eric Adams is suing the bus companies bringing illegals, claiming they violate a New York City law requiring anyone who brings a "needy" person to the city to be financially responsible for that person.

He's suing the bus companies for $708 million.

Seems to me that Biden as been flying illegals to his city, too. Will he be suing Biden?


New York City has sued 17 charter bus companies that transported migrants from Texas, the mayor, Eric Adams, announced on Thursday.

The lawsuit, filed in New York state court in Manhattan, says the city is seeking $708m from the firms because that was the cost it incurred to house the migrants and provide services to them over the past two years.

In that time, more than 33,000 people were bussed to the city as a part of Operation Lone Star, a joint effort between the Texas department of public safety and the Texas military department that began in 2021 to curb illegal immigration. Operation Lone Star was born from what the Texas Republican governor, Greg Abbott, called "Biden's reckless open-border policies".

But Adams said the transportation companies had violated a 19th-century New York state law that requires anyone who transports a needy person likely to seek government assistance from another state to cover their expenses.

New York City has been (unconstutitionally) blocking buses from discharging passengers in the city. The buses have been dumping them in the NY-adjacent cities of New Jersey.

Now, NJ's leftwing hoodlum governor Phil Murphy previously declared that his petty fiefdom would "welcome immigrants with open arms, and, more importantly, open hearts." He also declared that the Statue of Liberty, with her stupid fucking poem, was "a Jersey girl."

But now he's got his state police loading the illegals on to trains and sending them to NYC.


Migrants in Jersey? Fuhgettaboutit.

New Jersey officials are making sure the Big Apple doesn't dump the out-of-control migrant mess on the Garden State -- and are even deploying cops to usher asylum seekers from the US border onto Manhattan-bound NJ Transit trains as soon as they get off their buses.

The scrap across the Hudson comes as New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy tries to rally the state's mayors to form a unified front, while New York City Mayor Eric Adams pleads with Murphy to take on at least part of the migrant burden that is burying the five boroughs.

"New Jersey just said, 'F--k this,'" one source close to the situation told The Post on Wednesday. "New Jersey Transit cops were waiting for them in Secaucus to show them how to get on the train to New York."

Multiple Garden State sources described the scene as hectic over the last few days, as nearly two dozen migrant buses rolled into train stations with "chaperones" -- with NJ Transit cops then taking over and serving as guides to get nearly 1,000 asylum seekers across the river.

The process has been successful so far, with no migrants choosing to stay in Jersey.

LOL. People used to actually want to live in New Jersey, before Murphy.


Earlier this week, Abbott boasted online that he had sent 95,000 asylum seekers north -- including 33,600 to New York since August 2022 -- and would continue to do so.

"Sanctuary cities like NYC & Chicago have seen only a FRACTION of what overwhelmed Texas border towns face daily," he wrote on X. "We will continue our transportation mission until [President] Biden reverses course on his open border policies."


DHS Secretary and future prison punk Mayorkas says that the borders are flooded due to "climate change."


On Wednesday's broadcast of MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas stated that there are record numbers of people coming to the southern border because there has been "the greatest number of displaced people, not only at our southern border, not only in the Western Hemisphere, but across the globe" And "the effects of climate change, poverty, increasing level[s] of authoritarianism" are the root causes of this.

Meanwhile, Boston's anti-white racist mayor affirms that Boston is a sanctuary city and that she'd love to have some illegals bused there by Abbott.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 01:23 PM | Comments (370) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin -- Sixth In Line for the Presidency -- Was Hospitalized for Four Days and Kept It a Secret

In almost all cases I believe in medical privacy. I don't think anyone has any duty to share their medical information with the public.


Generally.

Because there are exceptions. Like when you're in the presidential line of succession, and your office has powers over peace and war.

Apparently there is also a law requiring disclosures about incapacitation.

Lloyd Austin covered up his hospitalization and now the leftwing propaganda media is covering for him, saying he's just a "private" person.

Shitico:

Pressure is growing on Capitol Hill and within the administration for someone to lose their job.

By Lara Seligman, Alexander Ward and Connor O'Brien


Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is one of the most reclusive Pentagon chiefs in recent memory. That's creating a major problem for him now.

Austin's failure to inform his most senior advisers, congressional leaders and even President Joe Biden of his hospitalization last week due to complications from a medical procedure has erupted into a controversy that's left senior White House and Pentagon officials infuriated and befuddled. Some Republicans quickly called for investigations or even for Austin to be disciplined or fired.

Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. C.Q. Brown was not informed of Austin's situation until Tuesday, the day after his hospitalization, a senior Defense Department official told POLITICO on Sunday. Even Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, who assumed some of his duties while he was in the hospital, did not know his whereabouts until Thursday, a second senior DOD official said after CNN first reported the news.

"My sense is his desire to be private about a routine medical procedure kind of backfired when it didn't go as planned," said one senior U.S. official. "He's so loyal and duty-bound. It's all just very odd."

Former and current U.S. officials who have worked with Austin say he is well-known as an introvert, shunning the cameras and keeping only a few close confidantes during his decades-long military career. As the four-star general overseeing U.S. Central Command during the Iraq drawdown, he rarely held press conferences. As defense secretary, in contrast to his predecessors, he takes only a handful of media on official travel. He has not done a press conference in the Pentagon since last July, although he regularly briefs the press during his travels.

...

The first time Austin and Biden spoke since the secretary's Monday hospitalization was Saturday evening, a senior administration official said, even as tensions in the Middle East have spiked and the war in Ukraine has intensified. The conversation followed reports, first from POLITICO, that the Pentagon boss waited three days to inform the White House that he was out of commission.

The DOD chief of staff helped cover it up, and even hid the news from the Deputy Defense Secretary who's supposed to take over Austin's duties when he's incapacitated.

While Austin entered Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Jan. 1, DOD chief of staff Kelly Magsamen didn't tell Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks -- who has occasionally assumed the duties of her boss -- or the White House of the secretary's status until Jan. 4.

...

The revelation doesn't explain the full story of the communication breakdown -- or why the White House wasn't notified. Gen. CQ Brown, the Joint Chiefs chair, was made aware of Austin's status on Tuesday but apparently didn't tell anyone. Austin also has other aides who could've informed relevant officials in Magsamen's absence.

...

Austin's job appears safe -- at least for the moment, but pressure is growing within the administration and on Capitol Hill for someone to lose their job.

...

Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, slammed the decision to keep Austin's hospital stay secret, calling it a "shocking defiance of the law." Former Vice President Mike Pence told CNN on Sunday that Austin's actions were a "dereliction of duty."

Concerns over Austin's absence are bipartisan. Though most members of Biden's party have either defended Austin or declined to comment on it, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee teamed up with his GOP counterpart to urge the Pentagon chief to provide more information.

...

"Several questions remain unanswered including what the medical procedure and resulting complications were, what the Secretary's current health status is, how and when the delegation of the Secretary's responsibilities were made, and the reason for the delay in notification to the President and Congress," the lawmakers said.

"Transparency is vitally important," they added. "Sec. Austin must provide these additional details on his health and the decision-making process that occurred in the past week as soon as possible."

Don't worry, though: It's just because he's such a private person. A cipher, in fact.



"He's a cipher," said the senior DOD official. "He lets in very, very few people, and that can be a good and bad thing."


It's as if every Biden Administration official was instructed to flood the media with the same talking point: That Austin should be excused for breaking the law because he's just such a private person.


Austin's pursuit of a low profile gelled with the Biden administration's goal to turn the focus away from the Pentagon to the State Department and National Security Council...


Austin has long tried to stay out of the spotlight.

...

Others say Austin has always been private to a fault. Even during senior-level Pentagon meetings, Austin rarely goes off script.

"In every meeting, in everything, he says nothing," said one former senior Defense Department official, who worked closely with Austin in multiple senior jobs. "In a broad variety of meetings, he keeps his own counsel and you're never going to know what he's thinking."

Have you considered the possibility that he's just a fucking dummy?

He's a very, very private person, doncha know.

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A very unhealthy private person. Maybe people with multiple comorbidities should inform Congress when they're going to the hospital for any reason, huh?

Coming Soon: Politico liesplains that Hunter Biden took money from foreign oligarchs and gangsters only because, at heart, he's a person with a deep appreciation of the finer things.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 12:10 PM | Comments (508) | Trackbacks (Suck)

THE MORNING RANT: Wind Energy is Facing Stiff Headwinds and Falling Apart (literally); also, It’s Time for “Energy Sanctuary States”

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There is some welcome news regarding wind energy. These whale-killing, bird-chopping, "green" boondoggles that don’t produce any reliable electricity are facing some stiff headwinds, and in some cases, planned projects are now being canceled. The populace is turning against wind, the financing is no longer there, and existing wind projects are falling apart - literally.

What is especially heartening is that people are actually fighting to get existing wind farms torn down, successfully!

“Tribal sovereignty trumps wind in Oklahoma” [Politico – 01/04/2024]

A federal judge has just done something unusual — ordered the removal of an energy project that’s been generating power for nine years.

The December decision came as a shock even to the leaders of the Osage Nation, who have argued for more than a decade that the 84-turbine Osage Wind Farm interferes with the tribe’s mineral rights.

The Oklahoma district court agreed that the wind farm had to go to protect the Osage Nation’s sovereignty. The project’s developers — Osage Wind, Enel Kansas and Enel Green Power North America — failed to get mining leases, despite digging up and crushing rocks to use as support for the turbines.

Much praise to the Osage Nation for their persistence in winning this battle.

*****

An existing wind farm in France is also going to come down.

“Bird-slaying French wind farm must be demolished, judges rule” [Brussels Signal – 12/13/2023]

A French court has ruled that a controversial seven-turbine wind farm has to be demolished.

Only 40 pairs of Golden Eagles are known to live in the French Massive Central area, covering 15 per cent of the French mainland. In January, one was found dead at the Hérault site, apparently struck by a turbine blade. Prior to that, the bodies of a black vulture and hundreds of bats had been discovered.

In 2019 alone, more than 1,000 birds were reportedly found dead at the site. “This is a veritable graveyard at the foot of the wind turbines,” noted the environmental associations’ group lawyer Nicolas Gallon. Due to high wildlife mortality, the region’s prefect had ordered the wind turbines to be shut down in 2020. Local residents also complained about the loud noise made by the wind mills.

What’s not to love about wind energy. It slaughters birds, produces an awful noise, and despoils the landscape, all while producing zero kw of reliable energy.

*****

Future wind projects are also being killed off before they even start, including this one in New York.

“Equinor, BP cancel contract to sell offshore wind power to New York” [Reuters – 01/03/2024]

European energy firms Equinor and BP terminated their agreement to sell power to New York state from their proposed Empire Wind 2 offshore wind farm, citing rising inflation, higher borrowing costs, and supply chain issues.

Heh. “Supply chain issues” is a blanket excuse used by climatistas for every failed green endeavor, be it electric vehicles or “green energy.”

"This agreement reflects changed economic circumstances on an industry-wide scale and repositions an already mature project to continue development in anticipation of new offtake opportunities," Equinor said in a statement on Wednesday,

*****

It looked uncertain for a while, but it appears now that the Great Lakes will be spared from the nightmare of wind energy.

Posted by: Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM | Comments (349) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Mid-Morning Art Thread

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The Shipwreck on Northern sea
Ivan Aivazovsky

[Hat Tip: KT]

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (357) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Report — 1/8/24

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Good morning, kids. I suppose a corollary to the old "If a tree falls in the forest" aphorism would be "If the Secretary of Defense whose military he is charged with leading is dangerously unprepared to defend the realm from multiple national security threats that are the most serious since 1941 goes missing, does it really matter?"

When it was first reported on Saturday that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has been in the hospital since January 1, it was natural to assume that key figures in the Pentagon and the White House, for whatever reason, chose to keep his hospitalization a secret. What possible motive could there be for doing this? Who knows? It didn't make a lot of sense, but the Biden [junta] has an extensive record of covering up scandals, so it wasn't exactly out of character for the Biden [junta] to cover something up.

The truth that has been coming out over the course of the day suggests something far, far worse. According to the latest reports, not even the White House knew about Austin's hospitalization. 

"Senior Biden administration leaders, top Pentagon officials and members of Congress were unaware for days that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had been hospitalized since Monday, U.S. officials said Saturday, as questions swirled about his condition and the secrecy surrounding it," the Associated Press reported. "The Pentagon did not inform the White House National Security Council or top adviser Jake Sullivan of Austin’s hospitalization at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, until Thursday, according to two administration officials."

That's bad. Really bad. And it gets worse.

A source familiar with the situation told CNN that not even Joe Biden knew.

"National security adviser Jake Sullivan ultimately informed Biden late Thursday afternoon, soon after Sullivan himself learned that Austin had been hospitalized, that source said. Austin was admitted to the hospital on New Year’s Day due to complications from an elective surgery," CNN reported.

Let's think about this for a minute. Joe Biden, who is supposed to be the commander in chief, didn't know for four days that his own defense secretary, a member of his cabinet, was in the hospital. Now, considering what's going on in the world right now—the Israel-Hamas war, the Houthi attacks on container ships in the Red Sea, and many other things—how is it possible that Biden isn't talking to his defense secretary daily? Sure, he has time to give speeches about how Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, but he didn't even know his defense secretary was incapacitated for days?

And does anyone think it's a coincidence that the Pentagon waited to reveal Austin's hospitalization on Friday, really, really close to Biden's big speech? Was someone hoping this wouldn't get noticed?

Where to even begin to unpack what in normal times would be an unmitigated disaster of a raging clusterfuck of incompetence? While everyone is focused on how someone like Claudine Gay, who is barely competent enough to wipe down a blackboard can become not only a university president but the president of what supposedly is/was America's leading and most revered institution of higher learning, look who is running the country.

No, not just the rotting, criminal pervert vegetable acting as Obama's front (arguably the #1 national security threat to whatever's left of America) but everyone of their underlings in the most crucial leadership positions running our domestic and foreign policy apparatuses. Then again, you can look at Alejandro Mayorkas and rightly blast him for destroying any notion of border security and sane, rational immigration policy. But is it incompetence or intentional? I'd argue that mere incompetence, while bad enough, is nowhere near as destructive as intentional acts and policies that are ideologically driven.

And that is exactly what's going on at every level of the federal government, and every state and local government that has had Democrats and Leftists in control for even a nano-second, let alone the decades-long control in hell-holes like Detroit, to name just one.

As for Lloyd Austin, he's every bit the boot-licking lackey that every other apparatchik in this illegitimate criminal junta is. Whatever his record was as a soldier, everything he and the Joint Chiefs who have gone along with the dismantling of our military that started in Obama's first term to the level of degradation we now can see in his third, is a red pubic hair's width away from treason.

Here are the bullet points from his extensive rap sheet at the invaluable Discover the Networks:

* Was promoted to Four-Star General in 2010

* Retired from the Military on April 5, 2016

* Was sworn in as Secretary of Defense on January 22, 2021

* Voiced support for the Iran Nuclear Deal

* Vowed to rid the Military of “racists and extremists”

* Relies on the Southern Poverty Law Center for information

* Announced the establishment of the Countering Extremism Working Group

* Emphasizes “Diversity,” “Equity,” & “White Supremacy”

* Identified the 2020 coronavirus pandemic as America’s greatest national security challenge

* Declared climate change to be an “existential threat”

* Oversaw America’s abandonment of Afghanistan in 2021

With that, I'll excerpt two items from their dossier that in particular are most cromulent given some of the current events making headlines:

Austin Orders Hundreds of Trump Appointees in the Pentagon to Resign

By no means was the CEWG the only means by which Lloyd Austin had set out to purge America’s military of any members who held political opinions that differed from his. In his early days as Secretary of Defense, Austin ordered hundreds of former President Trump’s appointees from at least 31 Pentagon advisory boards and panels, to resign.

Austin Emphasizes Leftwing Indoctrination Regarding “Diversity,” “Equity,” & “White Supremacy”

Central to the worldview of the race-obsessed Defense Secretary Austin, is a belief that racism is America’s most salient and enduring feature. That belief animates Austin’s passionate crusade to impose racial “diversity” – by force – upon the military that he oversees. As Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said in May 2021 about Austin: “He’s certainly concerned about the diversity at the senior levels of the department. And this is not just senior enlisted levels, but senior officer levels, admirals, and generals. The numbers [of nonwhites] are not very high.” “[Austin] also believes there’s a sense of urgency here,” added Kirby. “The time is now to start to grow that [nonwhite] talent and develop that talent and provide opportunities for that talent to continue to advance of the ranks.” And for anyone who might wonder whether “diversity” is in fact a worthy goal for an institution whose main purpose is to defend a nation rather than to serve as a social laboratory for leftwing dogmas, Kirby explained that Austin “strongly believes that diversity is a readiness issue because it allows different perspectives, additional context, different lived experiences to inform the way we make decisions in the policies that we craft, the operations that we lead.”

. . . When Austin subsequently stated that “diversity, equity and inclusion is important to this military now, and it will be important in the future,” [Sen Tom] Cotton replied: “This is not about diversity in general, though; this is about a very specific kind of anti-American indoctrination that is seeping into some parts of our military based on the whistleblower complaints we have received.”

Yup. The phantom menaces within the United States of supposed white supremacy, Trump and "climate change," which even if real would be completely outside the purview of the DoD. Plus the notion that "diversity," that is prioritizing skin color, sex, sexual orientation and most crucially personal politics, over actual physical and mental qualification, are the keys to our preparedness is insanity writ large.

. . . Lloyd Austin isn’t exactly a standout in his role. Like everyone else in the Biden-Harris regime, he’s been lackluster at best, dreadful at worst. He bears at least partial responsibility for many of the foreign policy and military disasters throughout this dumpster fire of a presidential term.

Austin has issued orders to the military in support of convoluted leftist redefinitions of extremism in an effort to drive Republicans out of the military. Austin implemented mandatory use of untested COVID vaccines and supervised the dismissal of servicemen who refused, even on religious grounds. Austin was in charge of the DoD when it so severely mismanaged the pullout from 2021 Afghanistan, leaving tens of billions of dollars’ worth of sensitive equipment behind, not to mention abandoning thousands of employees and allies to the Taliban. And that’s just the highlight reel of his disastrous tenure. . .

. . . But all his failures notwithstanding – the Secretary of Defense remains a critical element of the decision process, whenever the United States has to make a quick policy decision.  Even when it’s just being the person to say the cursory “yes, of course, make it so” to an obvious question – still, he is the one to say it, the one who has to say it. And that means both the DoD and the White House have to be able to reach him at a moment’s notice. . .

. . . What’s most shocking about this story is that it provides a rare look inside the minds of the bureaucrats, the people we often think of as the technocracy, or even the Deep State.

Obviously, someone at the Department of Defense knew Lloyd Austin was in the ICU at Walter Reed.  Someone had to make up the lie that the man was working at home, to cover up the fact that he was suffering complications from some as-yet-unidentified elective surgery (if it was indeed elective, that’s a story in itself, as well). Some staffers, and presumably some undersecretaries, knew the truth of the situation and collaborated to keep both the whereabouts and the potentially life-threatening condition of the Secretary of Defense a secret from both his legislative and executive superiors.

Why?

Why did they think they had the right?

That’s the really interesting lesson in this story, isn’t it?

"Interesting" is a word and half.

So while Joey Sponge-Brain Shits-Pants was kept in the dark, the raging incompetence at the highest echelons of this government notwithstanding, a crucial command-and-control link between the commander-in-chief and the head of the Defense Department was severed. God forbid, something happened during that time. But, then again, as I stated at the beginning, all things considered, would it have really mattered all that much? On second thought, maybe. Maybe there is still some underling somewhere with the horse sense to do the right thing had the shit hit the fan despite the fools, retards and maniacs at or near the top of the national command authority.

And speaking of which, despite the obvious dementia rotting his preternatural, pre-dementia pea-brain, it's almost as if it makes him an idiot savant especially when it comes to preserving his power and going after his enemies. Witness his debasing our history and nation by oral defecation at Valley Forge. From Robert Spencer:

Barack Obama said it years ago: “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up.” On Friday, Old Joe proved his sainted predecessor right yet again in what was supposed to be a stemwinder campaign speech that would get his far-left base all fired up to do whatever it takes to get their favorite dementia-ridden kleptocrat back in the White House for four more years. The man who supposedly won eighty-one million votes after running a non-campaign from his basement called Trump a “loser” and charged that Bad Orange Man speaks “the same exact language used in Nazi Germany.”

What? Trump speaks German now? Is he going to start barking at us with a slushy Austrian accent? Okay, I get it: Old Joe means that Trump’s rhetoric is like Hitler’s. Trump’s going to be a great dictator, grow a funny little mustache, put on a lumpy uniform, and have us all goosestepping into Poland in no time. Sure, Joe. I understand. But to say that he speaks “the same exact language used in Nazi Germany” is as ineptly stated as it is inaccurate.

By any measure, Trump certainly does not echo Hitler’s rhetoric. The National Socialist leader was openly antisemitic; although Trump is charged with this, he was the most pro-Israel president since the founding of the modern state of Israel. Hitler was gleefully racist, another charge Trump has borne, and another that is without foundation. And Hitler was openly contemptuous of republican governments, while Trump insists that he will protect our tottering republic, and that Biden, the Disinformation Governance Board president, is the real threat to “our democracy.”

Biden, however, is making it clear that his entire 2024 campaign will be a noxious mélange of fiction, fantasy and propaganda. He leaned heavily into the “insurrection” Big Lie, claiming that Jan. 6, 2021, was “the day that we nearly lost America.”

Yeah, sure, Joe. Thank you for saving “our democracy” from a guy with Viking horns, Ray Epps, and a bunch of old ladies who were let into the Capitol by police who opened gates for them and then stood by placidly as the “insurrectionists” wandered around snapping selfies. Insurrection is an actual crime. Yet while people languish in prison for trespassing in order to bolster the left’s sagging “insurrection” narrative and propel Biden back into the Oval Office for another four years of open borders, skyrocketing inflation, managed decline, and enforced misery, the worst thing that has happened to this nation since 9/11 and Pearl Harbor and the extinction of the dinosaurs remains an insurrection without any insurrectionists.

Old Joe, of course, didn’t see fit on Friday to make much of the fact that no one, not a single person, has actually been charged with that crime in connection with anything that happened on Jan. 6, 2021. On Saturday, however, Donald Trump Jr. wrote: “Happy Fake Insurrection Day!!! The first ever insurrection with armed tour guides and unarmed participants!”

Roger Kimball:

According to Joe Biden, January 6 is “a day forever seared in our memory.” Why? “Because that day, we nearly lost America.”  How’s that? Why, because that was the day Donald Trump showed he was willing to “sacrifice democracy” by unleashing a “violent mob” to storm the Capitol and undertake an “insurrection.”

But no one believes this. Why? Because the more footage we see from the events of that day, the clearer it becomes that what happened on January 6, 2021, was not an insurrection.  Moreover, Donald Trump, far from egging on his supporters to violence, went out of his way to urge them to protest peacefully.  “I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful,” he Tweeted that afternoon. “No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!”

The reaction to Joe Biden’s histrionic demonization of Trump has been swift and merciless.  Remember the chap who was photographed carrying a lectern across a room in the Capitol? He now Tweets under the handle “Lectern Leader.” He posted the photo and had this to say about Biden’s speech: “Throwback to the time I brought America to its knees by moving furniture tens of feet and became king.”

. . . As well it might.  Joe Biden’s Valley Forge speech was supposed to inaugurate his 2024 campaign.  I would not be surprised if future historians singled it out as the moment his campaign began its final retreat into senile collapse.

Maybe. But lest we forget that all the instrumentalities of government, as well as a rigged voting system and laws that grease the wheels of Democrat fraud and muscle in the form of a corrupt judiciary and black-clad Antifa/BLM brownshirts, the situation remains in doubt until no more phony ballots can be found to overcome a potential Trump victory.

Miranda Devine notes:

Joe Biden let slip a telling boast after his latest Dark Brandon speech.  “I understand power,” he whispered into the microphone as the first lady wrangled him off stage to stop him impersonating a Roomba.

While ostensibly a self-deprecating cliché about wives’ control over men, “I understand power” also was a statement of unwavering confidence in his own mastery of today’s political landscape. It’s hard to admit, given Biden’s manifest frailties and incompetence, but he’s right. The [spurious] president does know how to use power to transform the country. 

By being willing to lie and cheat and break every political norm, by siccing his Department of Justice onto his main rival and ignoring cries of foul, by hysterically overhyping the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, by hatefully demonizing conservatives as domestic terrorists and white supremacists, by dividing the country when he promised to unite us, he achieves his political ends. 

By dismantling border protections, for instance, he has allowed 8 million — and counting — illegal aliens to upend demographics and refresh Democratic voter rolls in the future. That is his legacy of change.  As well, his corrosive “equity” agenda has entrenched in the psyche of a growing number of Americans a gnawing racial grievance and entitlement that knows no end.

What did Donald Trump achieve of any lasting value in the four years he had power? Clearly, he was a better president on every important measure: the economy, the border, foreign affairs, energy policy.  But every achievement of Trump’s was undone on day one by Biden, and many of his aspirations were foiled by Biden’s Deep State allies.  Power is all Biden has ever cared about. In his dismal first speech of the election season near Valley Forge in Pennsylvania on Friday, Biden used the word 13 times. He said “insurrection” or “insurrectionists” 11 times, because that is how he intends to hang on to power, by fashioning his entire campaign pitch around Jan. 6 and Trump’s threat to “democracy.”

“Democracy” came up 30 times in Biden’s speech, too. Apparently it’s “on the ballot.”  “The alternative to democracy is dictatorship,” he thundered. It’s a bizarre statement for the president of a nation that was founded deliberately, not as a democracy, but as a constitutional republic, precisely to avoid the “tyranny of the majority,” which James Madison warned about. That’s why we have an electoral college, and not a presidential election determined by popular vote, where New York would overrule Iowa. . .

. . . [Biden's] polls have stagnated at around 40%, a sore point he reportedly scolded his staff about last November. But the marvel is that they’re not worse.

In the past 50 years, Trump, both Bushes, Carter and Nixon have all suffered from lower approval ratings. It’s too easy to dismiss him as a corrupt decrepit old fool. He likes to be underestimated. He plays the fool to that effect. But he became president despite the naysayers, and Democrats keep winning elections despite his record of ruin.

If Trump does end up as the Republican nominee, as the polls suggest and the pundits insist, the ferocity of the attacks will be unprecedented. The 91 felony counts, the criminal trials, the efforts to throw him off the ballot, the media vilification, the doomsday rhetoric, all will accelerate. They are softening him up, like picadors poking at the bull, to drive him mad and sap him of energy so that by the time the broken down old matador enters the ring he is already half-dead.

You may understand that the various legal prosecutions against Trump are bogus, and that Biden has weaponized the justice system in a deliberately explosive way. But there are a lot of independents in the country who don’t keep up with the news and still believe that you don’t get indicted on 91 felonies, and you certainly don’t get convicted, unless you did something wrong. Some may even still believe in “Honest Joe.” You may rail against their ignorance and naivete, but they will decide the election.

Maybe, Miranda. My guess is the factor that will decide this election is if enough people across the political spectrum have had enough of getting kicked in the teeth and the wallet while the world is set to go up in flames, to show up in enough numbers to beat the cheat, especially in the swing states. And with no border, no military and no law and order, it's going to get hotter than hell here too. With what's going on all around us, I don't think there are any more independents in any significant numbers.

    ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY

  • Victor Davis Hanson: "American civilization has been turned upside down, and we have a rendezvous soon with the once unthinkable and unimaginable."
    A Culture in Collapse
  • "Essentially a kind of Hegelian synthesis of what appear to be dialectical opposites: the combination of oppressive government power against the innocent and the law-abiding and, simultaneously, a grotesque paralysis of the ability or the will to use that power to carry out basic public duties such as protection or public safety. And, it is characteristic of anarcho-tyranny that it not only fails to punish criminals and enforce legitimate order but also criminalizes the innocent."
    Anarcho-Tyranny, Perfected
  • "He suspects it is in part because the town is more than 90 percent white, a factor that makes it hard to secure federal aid under a little-known federal initiative established in one of Biden’s first executive orders. The program, Justice40, which the White House describes as a "whole of government effort," decreed that 40 percent of the beneficiaries of federal climate and environmental programs must come from "underserved communities." (And yet Johnson and Schemer just concluded a budget deal. Feh - jjs)
    How the Biden Junta Put Race at the Center of Government Spending
  • "This spring, the Supreme Court will review the federal government’s alleged efforts to pressure social media companies to censor protected speech."
    A “Coordinated Campaign”

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 07:55 AM | Comments (386) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 8 Centaurus 2023

Top Story


Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (172) | Trackbacks (Suck)

January 07, 2024

Sunday Overnight Open Thread (1/7/24)

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***


The Quotes of The Day


Quote I

“I have been working to make sure that Donald Trump will be able to be on the ballot, and I am happy our motion to dismiss this lawsuit was granted,” Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray


Quote II

“This was a riot and at some point, mature minds have got to kick in here and say, look, he has never even been charged with incitement, let alone rebellion and insurrection.

“But more importantly, putting aside the fact that he hasn’t been convicted, this wasn’t a rebellion or insurrection."Jonathan Turley


The Comments of The Week


Vacation is done. The Holidays have passed. It is time to feature the best commenters on the web.

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Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 09:46 PM | Comments (474) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gun Thread: Numbero Uno of el 2024 Edition!

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(has begun)

Howdy, Y'all! Welcome to the wondrously fabulous Gun Thread! As always, I want to thank all of our regulars for being here week in and week out, and also offer a bigly Gun Thread welcome to any newcomers who may be joining us tonight. Howdy and thank you for stopping by! I hope you find our wacky conversation on the subject of guns 'n shooting both enjoyable and informative. You are always welcome to lurk in the shadows of shame, but I'd like to invite you to jump into the conversation, say howdy, and tell us what kind of shooting you like to do!

Holy Shitballs! How in the ever-loving hell fire did it get to be January of 2024? Why, it seems like 2023 was practically just seven days ago!

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 (388) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Food Thread: One Side Dildo, One Side Only Please

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It's rare that cooks of a certain age discover a new technique. That's not bragging, but if one is 29, then one has cooked a lot of meals and read a lot of recipes! But the French cooking term 'unilateral' is a new one for me, and I am damned glad I found it and tried it!

Here's a recipe for one variation of the technique, but it is so simple and obvious that you should try it posthaste!

I used the basic technique of cooking on one side only, but added the additional step of covering the pan so the fish poached gently. I used cod tenderloin, which can be a challenge to poach because it becomes ridiculously delicate very quickly. But this worked! I got a modest amount of color on the presentation side (the pan side), and the fish turned out perfectly cooked.

Of course people like Thomas Keller make it more complicated, but it's a great way to cook fish with relatively gentle heat.

I am writing the recipe I used, which by the way I will modify slightly the next time I make it, but damn, it was delicious and easy and took away most of the complexity of cooking fish...the protein is delicate and it overcooks and dries out quickly, in particular salmon, which is the most popular fish in America, and one that suffers when overcooked.

Well, I guess all food suffers when overcooked, but salmon is particularly unpleasant; dry AND flaky...an unpleasant combination. Anyway, for those of you who cook fish, try this out. It is easy and quick.

Posted by: CBD at 04:00 PM | Comments (254) | Trackbacks (Suck)

First-World Problems...

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Why do suburban drivers move over to the right side of the street and angle their cars to the right when making a left turn? Is this some sort of glitch in the matrix? Are they really convinced that the six inches of extra visibility to the left is going to make a difference?

Because as they do that they also block anyone from making a right turn from behind them. But they don't care about anyone else on the planet, so I guess that makes sense.

I was taught to make left turns from as close as possible to the lane marker. And not cut the corner...but that's a different rant.

Get off my lawn...and my street!

Posted by: CBD at 02:00 PM | Comments (339) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Three Years After The Fact, And NOW Bill Barr Speaks Up?

And not even in a forceful manner. It is his usual lawyerly, smarmy, Deep-State-C*cksucking manner that is designed to keep him in the good graces of the people whose entire political philosophy is antithetical to what Barr claims to be...a conservative.

His comments, which come about two years and eleven months too late, are a mealy-mouthed attempt to remain in the good graces of the uninformed on the right, who are distinctly uncomfortable with the insanity of the prosecutions (persecutions?) of the protestors, but don't really have the facts. So here is Bill Barr to make them feel better about the whole thing.

Biden DOJ Went Too Far With Prosecuting Jan. 6 Suspects: Bill Barr

Former Attorney General Bill Barr said on Saturday—the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incident—that the Justice Department under President Joe Biden went too far when it comes to prosecuting individuals involved in the events of that fateful day and targeted people who merely “walked into open doors and hung around.”

Mr. Barr made the remarks in an interview on Fox News, where he said he has no intention of downplaying the seriousness of the events of Jan. 6, 2021, which he called a “shameful episode” for which some people should face prosecution.

“I don’t think it was an insurrection,” Mr. Barr said, rejecting a label that has been pushed in particular by opponents of former President Donald Trump, who faces over a dozen lawsuits seeking to bar him from the 2024 presidential ballot under the claim that he engaged in an “insurrection.”


A bit of overreach! Nothing to see...move along! Barr is the establishment Republican that everyone on the left just loves! He will never buck the Deep StateTM, and he will never criticize the process. You know, the process that has sold America's legal system to the highest bidder. Notice that he has no legal remedies in mind...no desire for a political solution to a profound miscarriage of justice...no honorable fight against this existential insult to our Constitution and the principles upon which our country was founded? Yeah...he wants to be on record that he has reservations about it, but he certainly doesn't want to do anything about it!

And remember, this is the same Bill Barr who found no evidence of voter fraud in the election of 2020. I wonder where he stands on that now? Actually...I don't. I know exactly where he stands, and that is on the side with the most money and influence in Washington. He is an acolyte of the process, that disgusting refuge into which all power-hungry government apparatchiks scurry to defend their destruction of the rule of law and the United States Constitution. In his squalid little mind, 18 U.S. Code § 1512 is more important than the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

He has no honor, and his only loyalty is to power. He is the tyrant that Jefferson warned us about.

And what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Posted by: CBD at 12:00 PM | Comments (266) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sunday Morning Book Thread - 01-07-2024 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]


240107-Library.jpg

Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! This is the first Sunday Morning Book Thread of 2024! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading (They came to kick ass and eat Scooby Snacks...and they're all out of Scooby Snacks!). 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...(rock polishing kit not included!)

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

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:00 AM | Comments (363) | Trackbacks (Suck)

EMT 2024

Welcome to the show. Strap in I suspect it going to be bumpy.

Happy Sunday.

Posted by: krakatoa at 06:01 AM | Comments (232) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 7 Medior 2023

Top Story

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:02 AM | Comments (94) | Trackbacks (Suck)

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