December 13, 2023
Wednesday Overnight Open Thread (12/13/23)***
The Quotes of The Day
Unfortunately, a majority of the TSA agents are knuckle dragging booger eating bullys. There's a reason they don't carry sidearms.
Quotes I “You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of football team, or some nuclear weapons, but in the very least you need a beer.”Frank Zappa
Quote II “You have to have a little bit of common sense. You’ve got to make a decision. Is this sincere? Is this device being used for what they’re saying? I think every American could use a little more training in disability understanding and disability etiquette.” Neil Romano, the former chairman of the National Council on Disability
Unfortunately, a majority of the TSA agents are knuckle dragging booger eating bullys. There's a reason they don't carry sidearms.
Quote III "I did what I had to do to protect my store and my employees. I had no idea what she was capable of." Store owner Jeff Dennis
Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 09:30 PM | Comments (417) | Trackbacks (Suck)
I Know What's Mine Cafe
I can haz? Who is this head-tilting fluff-head I see in this reflective pool? Ever see a puppy pounce? The much-more common cat pounce. If I back up the stairs, he won't realize I'm moving past him, and he won't attack me. Wrong, he'll attack you either way he thinks you're going. Oh my goodness, either the dog is teaching the baby how to crawl, or, more likely, the dog is imitating the baby's clumsy efforts at crawling. "It's like a giant tongue on my balls"
I can haz? Who is this head-tilting fluff-head I see in this reflective pool? Ever see a puppy pounce? The much-more common cat pounce. If I back up the stairs, he won't realize I'm moving past him, and he won't attack me. Wrong, he'll attack you either way he thinks you're going. Oh my goodness, either the dog is teaching the baby how to crawl, or, more likely, the dog is imitating the baby's clumsy efforts at crawling. "It's like a giant tongue on my balls"
Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 07:18 PM | Comments (221) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Harvard's Biden-Campaign-Connected Media Flack Sends a Defamation Lawyer to Threaten the New York Post About Its Reporting on Plagiarizing Antisemite Affirmative-Action Dullard and Clown Claudine Gay
Huh -- a Biden campaign staffer attempting to silence the New York Post about a relevant political story.
The corrupt tyrannical Democrat Party will never change until we take a train spike and drive it through its head.Harvard University covered up a high-level investigation into whether its controversial president was a plagiarist -- and used an expensive law firm to threaten The Post over our own probe. The college announced Tuesday morning that it had investigated Claudine Gay over whether some of her academic work was plagiarized and had cleared her of breaching the college's "standards for research misconduct." Instead, it said that she would request four corrections in two publications to insert citations and quotation marks that were originally "omitted." But The Post can disclose that Harvard spent weeks failing to come clean about Gay being under investigation -- staying quiet even when she was hauled in front of Congress for disastrous testimony on how the Ivy League college is dealing with antisemitism on campus.Can you feel the pulsating support for free speech and free inquiry?
... The Post contacted the university on October 24, asking for comment on more than two dozen instances in which Gay's words appeared to closely parallel words, phrases or sentences in published works by other academics. ... When The Post brought the allegations to Harvard, Jonathan Swain, its senior executive director of media relations and communications, asked for more time to review Gay's work. A day later Swain, who was part of the Biden-Harris transition team and a one-time Hillary Clinton aide, said he would "get back in touch over the next couple of days." And two days later, on Oct. 27, The Post was sent a 15-page letter by Thomas Clare, a high-powered Virginia-based attorney with the firm Clare-Locke who identified himself as defamation counsel for Harvard University and Gay.
... Academics whose work appeared startlingly similar to Gay's differed in whether they felt she had appropriated their work without attribution. Among the papers under scrutiny are 2017's "A Room for One's Own? The Partisan Allocation of Affordable Housing," published in Urban Affairs Review and written while Gay was dean of social science at Harvard. In the paper, Gay uses phrases which closely parallel ones in a 2011 paper by Anne Williamson, a professor of political science at the University of Miami in Ohio. Williamson told The Post she was "angry" when she read the excerpts. "It does look like plagiarism to me," she said. "If they are going to do what they did, then I should be cited as a reference. My first reaction is shock. The second reaction is puzzlement. There was a way to draw from my paper. All she had to do is give me a credit."This Free Beacon article has slides showing side-by-side comparisons of Claudine Gay's "words" and the words she stole from the original texts. It's pretty damning. Check out just this one gif. Remember, she doesn't put quotes around the words and in some cases doesn't even provide a citation even alerting the reader that she's even read the person she's stealing from. Yesterday I heard Tucker Carlson chuckling over the fact that this 53-year-old "scholar," supposedly such a towering scholar that she's qualified to lead Harvard University, never bothered to write a f***ing book. She just wrote a smattering of articles. Almost all of which were partly or substantially plagiarized. You know, like Buzzfeed bloggers do. This article points out that Harvard is getting exactly what it paid for -- a DEI figurehead and raging leftwing firebrand. They never sought a scholar or an honest person.
What none of them, least of all the members of the Harvard Corporation, want to say out loud is that Gay wasn't tapped for her scholarship, and they aren't about to hold her to the standards of a serious scholar. Obviously. No, Gay was chosen for a different set of credentials--her race, gender, political views, and religious devotion to DEI--and she is delivering on her promise to rededicate the university to identity politics. To that end, she engineered the defenestration of Roland Fryer, allegedly on Title IX charges, after the star black economist ruffled feathers by debunking myths of rampant police violence. She helped strip Ronald Sullivan, a black Harvard Law professor, of an administrative post because he served on Harvey Weinstein's defense team. She even dismissed allegations of research fraud against Ryan Enos, a Harvard government professor, who just so happened to find that Republicans are racist--a recurring theme in Gay's own (well, not really) work.Megyn Kelly and Andrew Klavan list Claudine Gay's long history of cancelling people over their heterordox views, such as cancelling the funding for one (black) professor finding that the stats simply did not support he BLM narrative of racial disparities in police shootings. Or of allowing her own DEI staff to ring-lead a trans-bullying crusade against a researcher into testosterone who felt she had scientific evidence that there were some sex differences between the two genders. (Two genders! Heresy!) This is the plagarizing, lying, thieving antisemtic unqualified cunt who claimed she only allowed chants of "intifada!" on her campus because of her absolute commitment to free speech.
Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 05:58 PM | Comments (294) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Hasbro Will Slash 1,100 Jobs, 20% of Its Workforce
A toymaker announces huge layoffs right before Christmas.
Boy this Bidenomics economy is redhot!Hasbro is slashing nearly 20% of its workforce amid an ongoing slump in toy sales. Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks announced layoffs for 1,100 workers in a Monday memo to employees, cuts which come in addition to the roughly 800 jobs eliminated earlier this year. Cocks said the decision to reduce Hasbro's workforce was made in light of market headwinds proving to be "stronger and more persistent than planned." "We anticipated the first three quarters to be challenging, particularly in toys, where the market is coming off historic, pandemic-driven highs," Cocks said. "While we have made some important progress across our organization, the headwinds we saw through the first nine months of the year have continued into Holiday and are likely to persist into 2024." Some Hasbro employees will find out whether their job has been eliminated this week, while the rest of the layoffs will happen over the next six months, Cocks said in the memo.Huh. So Hasbro's main brands are Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: the Gathering, huh? I guess it must just be slumps in those brands causing the massive implosion, huh? Think about a company whose name somehow always gets left out of negative media coverage. A company who the leftwing media always attempts to protect. A leftwing media company that is currently collapsing -- but you'd hardly know it, if you just watch and read the leftwing media. There's a major media company whose toys Hasbro sells, and because this major media company has alienated half of the country, and mismanaged its once gold-standard brands so badly that they're now second-rate and going unwanted in Ollie's discount bins. Have you guessed which major media company I'm talking about? Of course you have. The company that all other leftwing media companies always protect is, of course, Disney. Disney is a financial competitor, but they protect it because it is an ideological leader. They approve of Disney's mission. Disney is leading them in the race to theocratic fascist transnational Marxism, and they're ing in Disney's wake. If Disney can fly to the left without going bankrupt, then they can too. And yes, CNN is hiding the fact that Hasbro is Disney's partner in selling its no-longer-hot Marvel lines and its ice-cold Star Wars line of toys. (And it's barely an afterthought Indiana Jones toys, but they never caught on for some reason.)
Hasbro, known for making toys such as Transformers and Play-Doh, and games like "Magic: The Gathering" and "Dungeons & Dragons," had 6,300 employees prior to the layoffs, according to its website. Shares of Hasbro fell more than 4% in after-hours trading on Monday. Layoffs at the toy company come after Hasbro cut its full-year revenue guidance in October -- just before the holiday season, which is usually the strongest sales period for toy makers. On the company's earnings call, Hasbro's Chief Financial Officer Gina Goetter warned that the company was seeing "broader toy category declines." However, not all toymakers are expecting weakness this holiday season. One of Hasbro's competitors, Mattel, said in its most recent earnings that it benefited from the success of the "Barbie" movie and the company "expects to gain market share in the fourth quarter and full year."
Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 05:50 PM | Comments (306) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Potentially Hugenormous: Supreme Court to Hear Appeal of Indictment of January 6th Defendant on Key Claim of "Obstructing an Official Act"
It is a bedrock principle of constitutional and criminal law that citizens have a right to know what the law actually is. It should be readily discoverable, if someone goes looking. They should not have to guess, and it should not be so malleable that prosecutors may claim it means whatever they may wish it to mean retroactively.
Making this challenge even more salient: the Very Special Counsel in the Trump prosecution, Jack Smith, is prosecuting Trump under this same silly-putty interpretation of the same vague clause.
Julie Kelly writes that the "untested legal imagination" -- the unfettered legal imagineering and dreamcasting of Jack Smith and Fani Willis and Alvin Bragg and "Tish" James -- is the mother of all the Trump prosecutions and the J6 prosecutions.
If it falls for the J6ers, it falls for Trump. And I think it will. This would be the neatest, cleanest, most rational, most rule-based, and sanest way out of this for the Court and the country as well. Courts, at least a while ago, used to like just disposing of troublesome, bullshit cases by saying "void for vagueness." I don't know if they still do that, and I'm talking more about liberal courts just itching to overturn laws for any pretext, but... The court will have that out here. Because this law is vague, and it obviously is being twisted in a partisan bad-faith way. And what can the counter-argument be? This law is obviously vague. Throughout all of its prior history it was believed to only apply to altering a document. Now it is claimed oh, no, it's words are so vague they also apply to rioting in the Capitol, and we never even suspected they meant that, because they're so vague, they could mean practically fucking anything. Well, if the words are vague enough to also encompass rioting, then they're so vague that the statue is, what's the term?, Void for Vagueness. I have hopes you guys. I have hopes. But I've been wrong before, fellows and friends. You know that all too well. (Preferences are cascading you guys!!! Preferences are cascading!!!) I corrected -- I softened my language. I sounded way too sure, and also, I was basing my claims on stuff I remember from 20 years ago, not more current readings.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to decide whether a man involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol assault can be charged with obstructing an official proceeding, a case with potential implications for the prosecution of Donald Trump. The man is one of at least 325 people facing that charge for their alleged roles in the attack, which has also been brought against the Republican former president in the federal case charging him with trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat by Democratic President Joe Biden. The justices said nothing about the Trump prosecution in agreeing to take up the case, but legal experts said Trump's lawyers could argue that the court's move should delay the start of his Washington trial on election subversion charges, currently due to begin in March.Huh! Well slap me in the face and call me Sally!
I mean, you can't just suddenly declare a law means something that it has never before meant just because you really want it to and there is no law on the books to criminalize the conduct you want to punish. If there is no law criminalizing the conduct, guess what? It's not a crime. You don't just get to rewrite the law on the fly to make it a crime retroactively. This is a foundational part of the law! There's a whole part of the Constitution forbidding the application of a new law to prior crimes!
Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination to challenge Biden, is facing four concurrent criminal prosecutions. But the Washington case brought by U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith is scheduled to begin first and is seen as the likeliest to be resolved before the Nov. 5 election. The case taken up Wednesday by the justices involves defendant Joseph Fischer, who was indicted on seven charges following the Jan. 6 riot. Among his charges is one count under a provision of federal criminal law for anyone who "corruptly ... obstructs, influences and impedes any official proceeding." The Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments in the case in the coming months and issue a ruling by the end of June. Typically, the Supreme Court agreeing to review an issue in one case would not be a basis for pausing a separate case that raises the same issue, said Barbara McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan and former top federal prosecutor appointed by then-President Barack Obama. Still, McQuade said she expects Trump's legal team to make the argument because delay "has been his strategy throughout all of these cases." U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, granted Fischer's pretrial motion to dismiss his obstruction charges, ruling that the statute applied only in cases in which a defendant had taken "some action with respect to a document, record or other object."
Federal prosecutors appealed that ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. A divided three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit in April reversed Nichols' ruling, saying the statute was not limited to documents and records, but instead "applies to all forms of corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding." The charge carries a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison with a conviction. Fischer is awaiting trial on his other criminal charges, including one count of assaulting, resisting or impeding officers and one count of civil disorder, among other charges.
Julie Kelly writes that the "untested legal imagination" -- the unfettered legal imagineering and dreamcasting of Jack Smith and Fani Willis and Alvin Bragg and "Tish" James -- is the mother of all the Trump prosecutions and the J6 prosecutions.
The silly-putty "For Trump and Republicans only" spackle-law continued through the January 6th Moral Panic Witch-Trials. Read more at the link.
Donald Trump doesn't know Thomas Robertson. But the former president's fate appears inextricably tied to that of the former Army Ranger, who was convicted last year for his involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021 protest at the U.S. Capitol.
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That's because the prosecutions of Trump and his supporters, including Robertson, have often depended on reimagining the law in novel ways. To advance the narrative that Trump colluded with Russia, for example, the Department of Justice seized on the little-used Foreign Agents Registration Act to justify probes and wiretaps of Trump allies. In the Georgia election fraud case against Trump and numerous campaign advisers, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is using a law intended to combat organized crime, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act, in what even her supporters describe as a stretch. In Washington, D.C., prosecutors are using a financial crimes statute passed by Congress in 2002 in response to the Enron scandal to bring felony charges against hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants, including Trump and Robertson. Lawyers for both and for other Jan. 6 defendants argue the law is being misapplied. The controversy could soon wind up before the Supreme Court. Prosecutors getting creative with the law: To pursue Trump and supporters, they've tapped an Enron-era financial crimes statute ... ... and the RICO law used to go after mobsters like John Gotti. Defense attorneys say the government is using the power of law enforcement to misinterpret, and even weaponize, nebulous language in the legal code. ...
Federal prosecutors so far have charged more than 300 Jan. 6 defendants with obstruction under that statute. In August, Smith's office handed down a 45-page indictment against Trump, claiming his attempts to persuade Vice President Mike Pence to reject some electoral college votes and organize alternate slates of electors, among other acts, also represented an attempt to obstruct the certification of the 2020 election. Smith's indictment is hardly the first time the DOJ sought to nab Trump on the obstruction count. It represents the culmination of a years-long effort dating back to 2017, when Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigated Trump for violating 1512(c)(2) as part of his probe into Russia's role in the 2016 election. The second volume of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's "Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election" enumerated multiple instances where Trump allegedly violated 1512(c)(2). Mueller concluded that Trump's behavior in office met the statute's largely undefined language regarding obstruction. "Section 1512(c)(2) applies to corrupt acts -- including by public officials -- that frustrate the commencement or conduct of a proceeding, and not just to acts that make evidence unavailable or impair its integrity." Robert Mueller, special counsel: His Trump-Russia probe cited multiple instances where Trump allegedly violated 1512(c)(2). But charges were never brought.
Mueller, however, did not refer Trump to the Justice Department on the obstruction count even though he repeatedly suggested the then-president should be investigated accordingly. Attorney General William Barr disagreed with Mueller's assessment and did not charge Trump. But the government's desire to broadly interpret the statute in Trump-related cases did not end there.
If it falls for the J6ers, it falls for Trump. And I think it will. This would be the neatest, cleanest, most rational, most rule-based, and sanest way out of this for the Court and the country as well. Courts, at least a while ago, used to like just disposing of troublesome, bullshit cases by saying "void for vagueness." I don't know if they still do that, and I'm talking more about liberal courts just itching to overturn laws for any pretext, but... The court will have that out here. Because this law is vague, and it obviously is being twisted in a partisan bad-faith way. And what can the counter-argument be? This law is obviously vague. Throughout all of its prior history it was believed to only apply to altering a document. Now it is claimed oh, no, it's words are so vague they also apply to rioting in the Capitol, and we never even suspected they meant that, because they're so vague, they could mean practically fucking anything. Well, if the words are vague enough to also encompass rioting, then they're so vague that the statue is, what's the term?, Void for Vagueness. I have hopes you guys. I have hopes. But I've been wrong before, fellows and friends. You know that all too well. (Preferences are cascading you guys!!! Preferences are cascading!!!) I corrected -- I softened my language. I sounded way too sure, and also, I was basing my claims on stuff I remember from 20 years ago, not more current readings.
Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 03:40 PM | Comments (330) | Trackbacks (Suck)
21% of All Mail-In Voter Admit To Violating the Law in Filling Out Forms For Other People or Voting in a State They Don't Live In, Also Known as "Fraud"
Despite the Democrats deliberately creating the perfect petri dish culture for mass bloom of thriving voter fraud, not a single bacteria of fraud grew.
That's the fascist Regime's claim. But people, when simply asked, tell a different story.
Update: Big E says
That's the fascist Regime's claim. But people, when simply asked, tell a different story.
Meanwhile, Dick Durbin demands that Clarence Thomas recuse himself in Supreme Court hearing over Trump's claim of 52% of Republicans say they won't vote for Trump if he "goes to prison," and I think the figure is that 40% won't vote for him if he's convicted. So it's obviously important to Trump to get primary votes in before jury votes. Whether that's good for the GOP, I'll leave it to you to decide.
One in five voters who cast mail-in ballots during the November 2020 election admit to committing voter fraud, according to a new poll by The Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports. The poll of 1,085 likely voters released on Tuesday, which was conducted from November 30 to December 6, asked, "During the 2020 election, did you fill out a ballot, in part or in full, on behalf of a friend or family member, such as a spouse or child?" A total of 21% of respondents who said they had cast mail-in ballots answered 'yes.' All states prohibit filling out a ballot for another person, but many states allow people to provide assistance with voting, The Heartland Institute noted. Furthermore, 17% of mail-in voters admitted they voted in a state where they "were no longer a permanent resident." Seventeen percent also said they signed a "ballot or ballot envelope on behalf of a friend or family member." Ballots that are cast by non-permanent residents or fraudulently signed are to be invalidated by election officials when they notice them, according to the institute. More than 43% of voters in 2020 cast their ballots by mail, a historical record. Also, 10% of all respondents (not only mail-in voters) said they know "a friend, family member, co-worker, or other acquaintance who has admitted ... that he or she cast a mail-in ballot in 2020 in a state other than his or her state of permanent residence." A total of 8% of all respondents said they were offered "pay" or a "reward" for agreeing to vote in 2020 by "a friend, family member, or organization, such as a political party."
Rolling my eyes at the idea that any of the liberal justices husbands or lesbian galpals' aren't rabid leftwing partisans. For God's sake, Kagan was herself the legal architect of Obamacare and refused to recuse herself from then deciding on the legality of Obamacare. And Thomas is supposed to recuse himself because his wife, like most other wives in DC, is politically invested? Anyway, I don't see why they're even working themselves up about Clarence Thomas for the 5,376th time, because I have never heard of some doctrine of permanent presidential immunity. Don't get me wrong, Fani Willis' RICO case is a trumped-up crime in itself. But I've just never heard of even a theory that a president is just immune to all criminal action. I've heard that criminal procedings can be delayed until after his term so that the public's right to his attention is not interfered with, but not that he's just generally personally immune.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and other Democrats on the panel argue that Thomas faces a conflict of interest because his wife Ginni was outspoken in support of Trump's false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. "There are so many unanswered questions about the relationship of the justice and his family with the Trump administration that I think in the interests of justice, he should recuse himself," Durbin said.
Update: Big E says
52 Trump is saying that like all government employees he has qualified immunity because he was just doing his job making sure the election was fair.Garrett says he makes a more expansive argument. I looked for a media outlet to explain what his legal argument was. Guess what? None of them were willing to tell me.
Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 02:30 PM | Comments (327) | Trackbacks (Suck)
THE CRIMINAL HUNTER BIDEN DEFIES CONGRESS, IGNORES SUBPEONA FOR TESTIMONY
He gave a public statement, not under oath, but refused to actually answer questions posed by impeachment officers under oath.
Hunter Biden arrived on Capitol Hill Wednesday, not to comply with his subpoena and be deposed at the House Oversight Committee, but to hold a press conference and again offer to testify publicly. He maintained that his father, President Biden "was not financially involved" in his business, and saying there is "no evidence because it did not happen." Hunter Biden offer to testify publicly is a de facto rejection of the GOP demand that he appear Wednesday for the closed-door deposition he was subpoenaed for. That deposition was scheduled to take place Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. Instead, he delivered a public statement on Capitol Hill Wednesday, blasting "MAGA" Republicans who have "invaded" his privacy, "attacked" his family, and "ridiculed my struggle with addiction." "They belittled my recovery, and they have tried to dehumanize me, all to embarrass my father, who has devoted his entire life to public service," the president's son said. "For six years I have been a target of the unrelenting Trump attack team. 'Where's Hunter?' Well, here's my answer. I am here." Hunter Biden added that "my father was not financially involved in my business," saying he was not involved in his dealings with Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings, or his Chinese investments and others in the U.S. "No evidence to support that my father was financially involved in my business because it did not happen," Hunter Biden said. The White House and President Biden have maintained that the president was "never in business" with his son. Biden has also said he never spoke to his son about his business dealings, but evidence--like email records and testimony from Hunter Biden's former business partners--presented by House Republicans in their investigations seem to contradict those statements.
Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 01:15 PM | Comments (389) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Many of the Same Enemy Agents Who Ran the Hunter Biden Laptop Disinformation Operation Against the US Are Now Demanding Expanded Power to Spy on US Citizens
Of course. Let's give hostile enemy intelligence agents all the powers.
Instapundit linked this article at RealClearPolitics by Gene Sheer about this "alternative" bill proposed by the House Intelligence Committee goons. These fascists are really in tune with the GOP voters who elected them when they propose massively expanding the Deep State's ability to spy on Americans. First of all, this "reform" is no reform at all. It is barely even disguised as reform.
Several of the 51 former intelligence officials who signed a letter casting doubt on the authenticity of Hunter Biden's laptop before the 2020 presidential election are now pushing Congress to enhance the surveillance of Americans, according to a Tuesday letter. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Deputy Director for the National Security Agency (NSA) Richard Ledgett, former Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell, former CIA Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash and former NSA General Counsel Glenn Gerstell signed a letter in 2020 arguing that the leak of documents from Biden's laptop had the "earmarks of a Russian information operation." The former officials railed against a bill that would limit intelligence agencies' ability to surveil Americans without a warrant, while praising a bill that would enable surveillance of any location that provides internet access, according to the recent letter to House lawmakers. "We cannot hamstring the U.S. Intelligence Community either by failing to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or by limiting it in ways that would make it difficult for the government to protect Americans," the letter states. "To be clear, Section 702 saves American lives and helps keep Americans safe from international terrorist attacks, foreign cyberattacks, overseas fentanyl suppliers, and other threats to our national security. There's no substitute for it." The House Judiciary Committee's reform to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act would broadly prohibit warrantless searches of Americans, according to its text. However, it is "seriously flawed and would hurt our government's ability to protect Americans in the current heightened threat environment," the intelligence officials assert in the letter. Alternatively, the House Intelligence Committee has a bill that would massively expand domestic surveillance by altering the definition of "electronic service communications provider" to cover "equipment that is being or may be used to transmit or store such communications,'' which would lead to any entity or business that offers an internet connection being required to help with surveillance, according to experts. The former intelligence officials say it "represents a thoughtful alternative approach to Section 702 reforms."
That culture of deception even seems to infect the so-called FISA Reform and Reauthorization Act, proposed this week by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, a bill that represents the wish-list of the intelligence community. First, the bill's marquee "reform" is the prohibition of only a handful of searches or "queries" of information about Americans under Section 702, the authority enacted by Congress to enable foreign surveillance but often used by the government for domestic spying. The type of search the bill would prohibit is "evidence-of-a-crime only" queries. But in 2022, out of over 200,000 queries of Americans' data, there were only two instances of the FBI accessing Section 702 data under this rubric. And even if that prohibition were in place, the FBI could easily evade it simply by claiming in every instance that agents were looking for some (hypothetical) terror threat in addition to possible crimes.Wow, what a reform! Out of 200,000 Deep State intrusions into Americans' personal information, this "reform" would stop two. Except it wouldn't, because Deep Staters could just categorize these inquires as something else. If you remember, last week I linked Mike Lee grilling Christopher Wray about this non-reform. I didn't understand the context of his questions of "evidence of a crime" queries but I do now. Here's that video again, with Mike Lee asking if these "reforms" would have stopped any of a list of prior abuses Lee rattles off, and Wray either admitting "no" or claiming he's not sure.
That's the so-called "LOVEINT" -- "intelligence" searches to find out information about a man or woman you're interested in, or about the guy who's banging your ex-girlfriend. What could actually cut down on that kind of abuse is firing these people and sending them to jail, as the law actually demands, for invading people's privacy on a false pretense of investigating matters of national security... but of course the Deep State looks out for its own, and these people literally never go to jail and are rarely even fired. Note that in the Mike Lee interrogation of Wray I linked above, Wray cannot say that any of the FBI agents, or any other Deep State agents at the "intelligence" agents who committed section 702 abuses, have been fired. Because none of them have. (Or so few of them have that he can't think of any who have been. Mike Lee sure doesn't seem to think there's been a single firing.) And jail? Forget about it! Here's the part about massively expanding the Deep State's ability to spy on Americans:
The bill's non-reform "reform" would thus do nothing to stop the routine snooping on Americans, from 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign, to a House member and a senator, a judge, and numerous protesters of the left and right. Nor would this "reform" prevent known abuses, such as the NSA agents who used this powerful search program to check out online dating prospects and potential tenants.
And Jim Jordan recently suggested that those "51 Former Intelligence Officials" who ran a disinformation campaign against the citizens of the US, and who are now demanding expanded powers to spy on the citizens of the US, may not have been former intelligence officials after all - -he's demanding to know which of these enemy agents and traitors were actually on the government's payroll when they practiced their treason against the country.
Even more outrageous is a problematic provision tucked away in this "reform" bill but not so much as mentioned in the committee's report. Section 504 of the House Intelligence bill requires that those who have access to the "equipment that is being or may be used to transmit or store such communications" shall be treated as "electronic communication service providers" and thus subject to Section 702's general requirement to (secretly) disclose our data to the government.... [T]he House Intelligence bill's expansion to include "equipment" would cover, for example, any small or medium-sized business that simply provides Wi-Fi or stores data. This means that your business landlord, Airbnb host, hotel manager, or coffee shop barista will have a legal obligation to give the government any of your emails, texts, or phone metadata that ran through their equipment. Larger entities, such as data centers, would also be enlisted in spying on Americans. To call the expansion of government-mandated spying to baristas and landlords "reform" shows the contempt the intelligence community has for Congress and the very idea of oversight. It is nothing less than a Trojan horse buried in the House Intelligence bill.
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, is investigating whether the 51 former intelligence officials who signed the infamous Hunter Biden laptop letter were paid by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). After Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop surfaced during the 2020 election, more than 50 former intelligence officials signed a letter in Politico saying the computer "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation." In a letter to CIA Director William Burns on Monday, Jordan, who leads the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, demanded the CIA chief come clean about the agency's alleged involvement in branding the laptop as Russian disinformation, which plainly amounted to election interference. "We understand that former intelligence officials often return to the intelligence community under private contract for their previous agencies," Jordan wrote. "It is vital to the Committees' oversight to understand whether any of the signatories of the public statement were actively employed by CIA as contractors or consultants at the time they signed the public statement." "If so," Jordan added, "this information would raise fundamental concerns about the role of the CIA as it pertains to the October 19, 2020, 'Public Statement on the Hunter Biden Emails' signed and published by 51 former intelligence community officials in the weeks preceding the 2020 presidential election." ... In his Monday letter to the CIA chief, Jordan demanded a list of all signatories to the letter "who were on active contract or consulting for the CIA at any time from January 1, 2020, to the present," as well as whether any of those potential contracts "pertained to Hunter Biden's business dealings, Biden family influence-peddling, Ukraine, or the Hunter Biden laptop scandal." Several of the intelligence letters' signatories have since doubled down on the debunked claims of Russian interference despite the laptop having been verified even by news outlets that first dismissed the computer's legitimacy.
Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 12:17 PM | Comments (292) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Wednesday Morning Rant
The Three Depraved Monkeys
🙈 🙉 🙊
You probably know this series as the "Three Wise Monkeys." They see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil, respectively. When not in emoticon form, it's often a sculpture or a painting or poster - ironically, produced even for the Manhattan Project. This Japanese symbol is likely rooted in Buddhism or Confucianism. Its meaning is also the topic of some debate. In some interpretations, it means that one should not dwell in evil or on evil thoughts. In others, it symbolizes the dodging of moral responsibility - of "looking the other way," to borrow a western idiom. I think this is closer in terms of metaphor for Current Year affairs, but nowadays I think it is slightly different, rooted in the avoidance specifically of truth. The virtuous man in our modern tyranny sees no truth, speaks no truth, hears no truth. Lies must be solicited, promoted, demanded and defended at all levels.
You probably know this series as the "Three Wise Monkeys." They see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil, respectively. When not in emoticon form, it's often a sculpture or a painting or poster - ironically, produced even for the Manhattan Project. This Japanese symbol is likely rooted in Buddhism or Confucianism. Its meaning is also the topic of some debate. In some interpretations, it means that one should not dwell in evil or on evil thoughts. In others, it symbolizes the dodging of moral responsibility - of "looking the other way," to borrow a western idiom. I think this is closer in terms of metaphor for Current Year affairs, but nowadays I think it is slightly different, rooted in the avoidance specifically of truth. The virtuous man in our modern tyranny sees no truth, speaks no truth, hears no truth. Lies must be solicited, promoted, demanded and defended at all levels.
Posted by: Joe Mannix at 11:00 AM | Comments (440) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Mid-Morning Art Thread
Defeat
Jacob Lawrence
Defeat
Jacob Lawrence
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The Morning Report — 12/13/23 
Turkish parliamentarian Hasan Bitmez suffered a heart attack and collapsed next to the podium at the Turkish National Assembly on Tuesday after delivering a tirade against Israel. The Grand Assembly of the Turkish parliament was ostensibly debating budgetary considerations on Tuesday, but Bitmez launched into a fiery condemnation of Israel’s war against the terrorists of Hamas in Gaza, accusing Israelis of “crimes against humanity” and “ethnic cleansing.” “Even if history remains silent, the truth will not remain silent. They think that if they get rid of us, there will be no problem. However, if you get rid of us, you will not be able to escape the torment of conscience,” he said. Bitmez’s last words before collapsing were reportedly, “Israel will not escape the wrath of Allah!” Bitmez, 54, reportedly suffers from diabetes. Fortunately, one of the fellow MPs who rushed to his aid, Turhan Comez of the IYI Party, is a trained physician. After Comez rendered aid at the scene, Bitmez was removed from the National Assembly chamber by stretcher after collapsing and taken to intensive care at Ankara’s Bilkent City Hospital. He was reported to be in critical condition as of Tuesday afternoon.Aww, looks like his Allah-who? got akbar'd. Is it pronounced "Bit-mezz" or "Bite-meez?" The world wonders. Let's all send this great statesman a Candygram or a selection of tasty bits from the Whizzo Quality Assortment. Or a live hand grenade enema. Let's hope it's a harbinger because the list of individuals who deserve that fate, not only because of what they've said and done in the wake of 10/7 but for what they have done to us and 2,000 years of human and cultural development is quite vast. And if I were, Biden, Blinken and Obama (let's be real; that jug-eared, purple-lipped hunk-of-piss egomaniac is running the show) I'd sit up and take notice. But hubris, ego and stupidity is the order of the day. With Israel on the cusp of, or actually full on moving in for the kill, the aforementioned along with much of the world is having a shit-fit that the Jews refuse to lay down and die like the so-called "arc of history" demands!
The Times of Israel reported that Biden accused Israel of “indiscriminate bombing” in Gaza. Biden provided no evidence. Biden also said that Netanyahu had to replace members of his democratically-elected governing coalition, and accept a 'Palestinian' state. In July, Biden made similar comments when explaining why he refused to meet with Netanyahu since his election the year before, saying that he had “extreme” Cabinet members. Biden routinely meets with autocrats from a variety of nations across the globe. On Monday night, as Breitbart News reported, Biden told guests at the White House that he “loved” Netanyahu, even though they did not agree on many things. Biden also said he was a “Zionist,” claiming “southern parts of the country” did not like that. In response to Biden’s claim about “indiscriminate bombing,” Israel Defense Forces spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told the Israeli press, in Hebrew, that Israel targets very carefully in Gaza, and has shown the U.S. proof to back that up. He noted that Israel had been especially careful in Gaza in the last several weeks, since it had a large number of its own soldiers on the ground. . . . . . Netanyahu has publicly opposed the U.S. insistence that Palestinians be rewarded with a state after the October 7 terror attack, and has also opposed the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza. His government is said to be ing an alternative plan.No doubt Biden's teleprompter was doing its best to calm down the blood-thirsty Muslims and Leftists of the Democrat Party especially as we move into the opening phases of an election year. They don't seem to give a shit that what's going on in Gaza puts Democrat leadership between a rock and a hard place. Plus the eruption of Jew-hatred in Democrat cities and college campuses kind of makes even wealthy self-gassing Yids reluctant to open their checkbooks to the DNC. It's hard to believe they don't understand that Kalorama is 100% on their side and have to put on a "stand by Israel" dog and pony show. On another battlefront of Democrat-Leftist Jew-hatred, in this case Harvard Yard and the rest of the poison Ivy League, as the wagons have circled around Spike Lee with tits Claudine Gay, a new wrinkle has emerged in her plagiarism revelations. Yes, her support for the right to call for genocide on campus as defense of free speech – while simultaneously censoring opinions not in keeping with Leftist dogma – is not really the issue.
Harvard University covered up a high-level investigation into whether its controversial president was a plagiarist — and used an expensive law firm to threaten The Post over our own probe. The college announced Tuesday morning that it had investigated Claudine Gay over whether some of her academic work was plagiarized and had cleared her of breaching the college’s “standards for research misconduct.” Instead, it said that she would request four corrections in two publications to insert citations and quotation marks that were originally “omitted.” But The Post can disclose that Harvard spent weeks failing to come clean about Gay being under investigation — staying quiet even when she was hauled in front of Congress for disastrous testimony on how the Ivy League college is dealing with antisemitism on campus. Harvard only disclosed the investigation when the university’s governing body, Harvard Corporation, said it unanimously stood behind her despite a firestorm of criticism for her evidence to Congress. Harvard’s public statement on the allegations of plagiarism came a day after a conservative activist posted questions on X about citations in Gay’s 1997 PhD dissertation. Gay had vigorously defended her academic record in comments to the Boston Globe after the dissertation questions were revealed, and said: “I stand by the integrity of my scholarship. Throughout my career, I have worked to ensure my scholarship adheres to the highest academic standards.” Tuesday’s statement, issued to “members of the Harvard community” said that the probe began in late October, after Harvard “became aware” of allegations about Gay. But the statement did not tell the full story — including how Harvard called in bulldog attorneys to protect Gay. The Post contacted the university on October 24, asking for comment on more than two dozen instances in which Gay’s words appeared to closely parallel words, phrases or sentences in published works by other academics. The 27 instances were in two academic papers published in two peer-reviewed journals between 2011 and 2017, and an article in an academic magazine in 1993. The Post was sent the material anonymously and had conducted our own analysis before asking Harvard to comment on whether Gay had plagiarized or failed to properly cite other academics’ work. We have continued to investigate since. When The Post brought the allegations to Harvard, Jonathan Swain, its senior executive director of media relations and communications, asked for more time to review Gay’s work. A day later Swain, who was part of the Biden-Harris transition team and a one-time Hillary Clinton aide, said he would “get back in touch over the next couple of days.”Yeah. Sure. There is no way Harvard is going to ditch Claudine Gay. To do so would completely undermine the sacred belief and illusion of the righteousness of Diversity. And fire a black woman? For plagiarism? No doubt, as Ace might have had as a quick hit last night, the Babylon Bee-esque angle that plagiarism is another tool of white supremacy is probably being shouted as a defense as we speak. In a way, all this is a sideshow and perhaps bordering on a distraction to the literal defense by her, the now fired Liz Massengill from U-Penn (just from the office of dean, her tenure is still intact, no doubt) and MIT's capo-di-tutti-Kapos Sally Kornbluth of genocide and the complete bastardization of the notion of free speech. As for Claudine Gay, her only qualifications to be the head of Harvard are that she's black and female. In a perverse sense, those are stellar qualities since Harvard, virtually all of higher education and most of this nation's public school system are no longer in the business of teaching. They are in the business of indoctrination and the intentional creation of a mass of useless human beings, incapable of thinking and working for themselves, and totally dependent on an all-powerful totalitarian government. With that in mind, you couldn't fine more qualified people than Claudine Gay and her ilk.
Gay’s refusal to deem genocidal calls to be a violation of Harvard’s code of conduct was grounded upon her entrenchment in the ideology of critical race theory, which finds its practical implementation in the policies of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Critical race theory divides people into a hierarchical system in which each person is designated either as an oppressor or as someone who is oppressed. In this ideological framework, Jewish people are classified as “white” privileged oppressors and Israel is cast as an oppressive “settler colonial” state. The aftermath of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens by Hamas made this perspective evident. As one example, the “Critical Race and Ethnic Studies” department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, released a statement that read, “What we are witnessing needs to be understood in the context of 75 years of settler colonial displacement, military occupation, and enclosure.” In 2022, Lori Lowenthal Marcus and Jesse M. Fried of the Wall Street Journal noted that radical ethnic studies has always been anti-Semitic in nature. “[T]he ethnic-studies movement has never been about representation or justice,” they explained. “A creature of 1960s radical left-wing activism, ethnic studies was from the start about attacking the U.S., capitalism and Zionism.” Gay, though she repeatedly said during her congressional testimony that this “type of hateful speech is personally abhorrent to me,” was careful to leave an opening to allow genocidal calls against Jews to take place at Harvard, as she knows that a large and powerful contingent at Harvard subscribes to the ideas that Jewish people are privileged “white” oppressors, Israel is a “settler colonial” state, and Palestinians are an oppressed people who should rise up against their supposed colonial subjugators. . . . . . Gay’s entire career is founded upon the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” movement. Not only is it the lens through which she studies politics in every one of her published works, but she also led Harvard’s total entrenchment in the ideology following the death of George Floyd. “This moment offers a profound opportunity for institutional change that should not and cannot be squandered,” Gay said alongside her 2020 announcement of Harvard’s initiatives to “address racial and ethnic equality.” Bill Ackman, a billionaire who has been outspoken about the anti-Semitism on Harvard’s campus, explained last week on X that an anonymous person told him that Harvard’s presidential search committee, which selected Gay, only considered candidates who met the “criteria” of Harvard’s DEI office. The ugly anti-Semitism and racism inherent in “diversity, equity, and inclusion” was laid bare for all to see through Claudine Gay’s testimony — as well as the similar witness of the University of Pennsylvania’s Elizabeth Magill and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sally Kornbluth. Magill was forced to tender her resignation as a result of the backlash after even Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro described her testimony before Congress as “a failure of leadership.” . . . Harvard faculty members sense that backlash against Gay is an indictment against critical race theory, and, for this reason, they have rushed to defend her. Hundreds — many of whose work rests entirely on the ideological framework of critical race theory — have signed letters affirming their support for Gay. One of these letters, from black faculty members, explicitly pushed back against efforts to connect Gay with the ideology of diversity, equity, and inclusion. “[A]ny suggestion that her selection as president was the result of a process that elevated an unqualified person based on considerations of race and gender are specious and politically motivated,” the letter said. The New York Times reported that backlash against Gay for her testimony was sparse on campus, stating, “The congressional exchange appears to have generated far more intense reactions among donors and alumni than among current faculty and students.”This is American academia, my friends. It's bad enough we have been pumping out useless, brainwashed brainwashers like Claudine Gay for decades. But this rot doesn't just affect bullshit subjects like sociology and ethnic studies. This crap is in the medical schools, the law schools, the engineering schools. Forget the color of skin; are you going to be filled with strength and confidence seeing a doctor under the age of 50? Are you going to be comfortable getting on an airplane or driving over a bridge (let alone getting into a car) designed by an MIT graduate? Just like Disney, MIT ain't the MIT of its reputation. Ditto Harvard and dare I say it ditto America. We have devolved into a Potemkin Village of what once was. There is going to have to be a reckoning if we are to survive, let alone even begin to claw our way back to something remotely resembling the free and prosperous nation we once were. And that is the Achilles heel of our freedom and our Constitution. We have to afford those who seek our destruction and subjugation the same freedoms we have, and in essence allow them the means to use those freedoms to destroy us. That has got to change.
Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 07:50 AM | Comments (524) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Daily Tech News 13 December 2023
Top Story
- How are things going with our friends at The Verge oh God. (The Verge)
Did you know chlorpromazine comes in tanker cars now?
I think two or three should do the job.
For today.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:04 AM | Comments (170) | Trackbacks (Suck)
December 12, 2023
Tuesday Overnight Open Thread (12/12/23)
***
The Quotes of The Day
Quote I The computer can't tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows. Frank Zappa
Quote II
"They had to make a landing urgently." Passenger Aditi Shankar
Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 09:54 PM | Comments (485) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Rescue Me Cafe
Ken James
@openshutter21
Ken James
@openshutter21
Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 07:50 PM | Comments (151) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Quick Hits
Will Biden actually agree to the rule change? Or just say he'll "consider" it in the future if we agree to the money for Ukraine now? We'll have to see. No money without an agreement on this provision, now.
Now that the Boy Scouts -- I'm sorry, I mean the Scouts; it's no longer for boys -- is fully woke, it's also no longer fit for purpose. But a new organization is stepping up. Trail Life USA seeks to provide boys with mentorship and what I think is crucial in this derangedly virtual age, vital contact with the real.
Big: Biden says he'd be willing to consider the GOP's demands on the border in exchange for Ukraine funding.
From CBS News:The GOP's demands are pretty minor. One of them will be helpful, however: the provision that anyone who came through Mexico to apply for asylum in the US will have his asylum claim automatically rejected. The idea is that if you're really an asylum seeker fleeing for your life, you can stop in a safe place like Mexico. You don't have to continue on to an economic powerhouse like the US. Unless you're actually just an economic migrant. Who is of course not eligible for political asylum. This would be a very fast and easily-applied rule for getting rid of thousands of "asylum seekers." It would also, of course, discourage millions of similar fake asylum seekers. In the current rule, we are forced to pretend we really believe these are legitimate asylum seekers, and give them court dates and release them into the country awaiting their hearings which will be 4, 6, 8 years from now. And they'll just tell the stories they were coached by their corrupt lawyers to tell, and they'll probably be given asylum. (When the country they're from has no animus against their people or tribe, they just claim that criminal gangs are harassing their family -- something that's impossible to disprove.) So a rule that allows us to just reject thousands and thousands of fake asylum claims immediately would be very, very helpful.
The Biden administration on Tuesday indicated to congressional lawmakers that it would be willing to support a new border authority to expel migrants without asylum screenings, as well as a dramatic expansion of immigration detention and deportations, to convince Republicans to back aid to Ukraine, four people familiar with the matter told CBS News. The White House informed Senate Democrats that it could back those sweeping and hardline immigration policy changes as part of the negotiations over President Biden's emergency funding request, a roughly $100 billion package that includes military aid to Israel, Taiwan and Ukraine, as well as money to bolster border enforcement and hire additional immigration officials.
Will Biden actually agree to the rule change? Or just say he'll "consider" it in the future if we agree to the money for Ukraine now? We'll have to see. No money without an agreement on this provision, now.
Christopher F. RufoNow they're on it, though: They want to tell you what "scholars say!"
@realchrisrufo The conservative press, the Harvard student newspaper, and the Harvard board of trustees all published articles and statements about Claudine Gay's plagiarism scandal before the NYT, WaPo, and WSJ. Why?
Dr. Carol M. SwainAnd that was before Harvard cleared her completely. Gay, of course, claimed that Harvard could not forbid students from calling for intifada because it followed a policy of very strong protection of free speech, even speech it disagreed with. Two days after telling that lie to Congress -- perjuring herself -- Harvard cancelled a planned speech that a Congressman was to give at Harvard. In the interim, he mocked Gay's farcical commitment to free speech. Harvard then canceled the event.
@carolmswain I rarely get angry, but I am angry right now about the racial double standards that are TEMPORARILY giving #ClaudineGay an opportunity to resign. White progressives created her and white progressives are protecting her. The rest of us have had to work our rear ends off to achieve success. Some get it handed to them. #Adversityofdiversity #DEI # affirmativeaction #HarvardisAntisemitic #PresidentGay
On the afternoon of Friday, December 8, Harvard's John Adams Society, a conservative-leaning student group, was to host a discussion on the future of U.S.--China relations and their ramifications for American industrial policy, featuring Reps. Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts and Ro Khanna of California. The planned event was cosponsored by American Affairs, the heterodox policy journal edited by Julius Krein (and where--full disclosure--I've published a single piece). A month earlier, on November 6, David Vega, a current student affiliated with the John Adams Society, booked a room through the proper channels and received an email from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences confirming the room and the event. "YOUR ROOM HAS BEEN CONFIRMED," read the confirmation email, which I've reviewed. The administration even offered audiovisual assistance and day-of contact information; everything seemed to be going swimmingly. As the days went by, various Harvard authorities helped the organizers and congressional staff through the byzantine campus process. When Auchincloss's chief of staff reached out to the Harvard events team to discuss security, Christine Haverty, director of events management, replied, "Thank you! For this, you would work with the team planning the event and Harvard University Police," adding: "They are wonderful!" ... The planning process continued. There were no ominous signs. As recently as December 5, Harvard confirmed the event as scheduled and set to go forward. Then, that same day, Gay gave her Washington testimony--you know, the one where she insisted the sacred principle of free speech protects even extreme anti-Jewish animus, depending on the context. Two days later, on December 7, the student organizer received an email informing him that the event was canceled.... What happened between December 5 and December 7? Gay's congressional testimony took place on December 5. Auchincloss published a statement on December 6 mocking her for her supposed commitment to free speech. "Harvard ranks last out of 248 universities for support of free speech," Auchincloss said. "But when it comes to denouncing anti-Semitism, suddenly the university has anxieties about the First Amendment. It rings hollow." On December 7, the event was canceled. A Harvard spokesman claimed that the university has "no record of an event registration request," notwithstanding the registration confirmation reviewed by The American Conservative and dozens of back-and-forth emails between organizers and Harvard staff, all predicated upon the fact that the event is registered and moving forward.Harvard has a policy of untrammeled free speech much like the New York Times only permits right-wing opinion. She's baaaack! Down in the polls, Joe Biden calls on the one politician in America who can really bring the case against Donald Trump and his constant election denialism -- HILLARY CLINTON!!! In case you haven't watched in the past ten days, here are twenty-four straight minutes of the Democrats denying election results, with Hillary Clinton accounting for about ten of them. The Enemy of the People media never asks her about this. Not once. Except, I mean, to allow her to pontificate about how the election was stolen from her. They never confront her with her, and ask her to reconcile how the Democrats can maintain that it's "election denialism" that threatens democracy for Trump to say that the 2020 election was "fortified," which even The Atlantic proudly admits it was, but that Hillary Clinton can continue pushing the fake claim that her campaign entirely fabricated that "Russia stole the election." Not once. Not a single time. It's so brazenly corrupt. It's breathtaking.
Now that the Boy Scouts -- I'm sorry, I mean the Scouts; it's no longer for boys -- is fully woke, it's also no longer fit for purpose. But a new organization is stepping up. Trail Life USA seeks to provide boys with mentorship and what I think is crucial in this derangedly virtual age, vital contact with the real.
Trail Life USA isn't just a Christian alternative to the Boy Scouts; it's an answer to the deep crisis affecting boys in America. "We're growing boys into godly men," Mark Hancock, the scouting organization's CEO, tells "The Daily Signal Podcast." "We've discovered a proven process for turning boys into godly men, and it involves four things." Hancock, today's guest on the podcast, diagnoses four major problems American boys face: They are unguided, ungrounded, unappreciated, and uninspired. "One in four boys now doesn't have a father in his household," Hancock says. "They go to school, 76% of teachers are female. Eighty-something percent of Sunday school teachers are female. So, these girls have wonderful models of leadership. Boys don't have that, so we are guiding boys. We think that's important." Trail Life USA requires leaders to be confessing Christians, but it welcomes boys of any or no faith tradition. Hancock also laments that boys are ungrounded, noting that "58% of Americans no longer believe that God is a source of moral truth." His organization aims to "ground them in biblical truths," through its six essentials of a Christian worldview. "We also know that boys are unappreciated," the CEO adds. He says the culture's "gender blurring" sends the message that "it's like a boy is some sort of a defective girl."I might sign up. Not as a troop leader, but as a scout. I know I'm a little old for this but I don't mind confessing, I need some mentoring. I need to get a haircut and get my head straightened out.
Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 06:35 PM | Comments (196) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Taylor Lorenz: Take It From Me, a Real Journalist (TM) -- The New York Times Has a Strict Policy Of Only Publishing Right Wing Opinions
Why does Taylor Lorenz live almost entirely online, and only occassionaly venture outside, still wearing a mask even in 2023, like a Bubble Boy? Well, apparently she thinks it's just not worth living life outside the online bubble:
I-- wait, what?
Hysteric, hypochondriac, doxxer, madwoman and suspected old Taylor Lorenz is full of batty insane hot takes of such exotic fragility as can only survive and thrive inside the fantastical hothouses of toxic leftwing Always Online Culture. But this may be her craziest one yet: The New York Time will only permit right-wing opinions.What happened: Taylor Lorenz, the Washington Post reporter best known for attending a teenager's birthday party and being cited in Chinese propaganda broadcasts, survived a "dangerous" encounter at John F. Kennedy International Airport over the weekend.Note, however, that when she attends parties with the celebrities (or, at least, "celebrities" of the lowest "Basic Blogger" rungs), she is more than willing to discard the mask without the need of holding her breath in terror. Nicholas Clairmont wrote a review of her book last month at Tablet, and really, Tablet's level of writing and editing is absolutely top notch. I think I should praise the editing because when every single piece has strong writing, that's editors insisting on writers honing their pieces to their best form. A few observations from this piece:
* The 38-year-old [CITATION NEEDED] teen journalist complained that TSA agents were "forcing all passengers to remove their masks before they even step up to the security desk" to have their boarding passes checked. "I can't believe they're doing stuff like this in 2023 [spiral eyes emoji]," Lorenz wrote on Twitter, the immigrant-owned social networking website. * Lorenz described the situation--unmasked passengers at an airport in 2023--as "so dangerous" and "so insane." She accused a TSA agent of behaving with "abject cruelty" for telling "a woman" that she shouldn't be flying if she was "so scared" about removing her mask for several seconds at a security checkpoint. * Nevertheless, she managed to survive. "I tried to just hold my breath but I had to breathe a couple times [spiral eyes emoji]," Lorenz confessed. Why it matters: For many liberals, the combination of Donald Trump's election and the COVID-19 pandemic had a catastrophically damaging impact on their ability to function in society. * Lorenz and others continue to insist in 2023 that outdoor dining is a life-threatening activity.
Why does Taylor Lorenz live almost entirely online, and only occassionaly venture outside, still wearing a mask even in 2023, like a Bubble Boy? Well, apparently she thinks it's just not worth living life outside the online bubble:
Lorenz's writing makes it clear that, even as she approaches the subject in the style of a pure reporter, she thinks it is sad when her subjects retreat from online life.That say a lot. So does this:
He notes that Lorenz is a never-ending Drama Cyclone who, when she has no actual news to report -- which is almost always -- will manufacture news by creating drama around herself, usually in the form of a cancellation attempt, false accusation, lie, or an incandescantly bad take. Like the one she just dropped today. It's so obvious false it seems contrived just to get the name "Taylor Lorenz" into the news. It seems she's a believer in the idea that the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. Clairmont:
By the end of the book, Lorenz says that "this book is a personal history in many ways" and, much more strangely, that Tumblr "saved my life."
I remember that. She lobbed a false accusation, trying to get the guy cancelled for saying "retard." He'd never said it. She changed her story and said it was the fault of the site for not supplying a transcript, and that the real problem was that people were having "unfettered conversations" which minders and censors like her were unable to adequately censor in real time. I'm sure everyone remembers her crying about the being "cyberbullied" and "doxxed" and then, within, I believe, the very same week, rushing out to not only publish LibsofTiKTok's real name, but a snapshot of a business document upon which could be seen her working address as well. Plus, of course, she pounded on the door of LibsofTikTok's family members. But oh! The cyberbullying that women like Taylor Lorenz are subjected to by online h8rz!
Lorenz, a close student of strategies for viral fame and success at gaining online attention, might categorize an honest assessment of her online and journalistic persona as a "bad-faith" (or cynical) strategy. She is quite adept at situating herself at the center of news cycles in ways that virtually no other journalist can do. ... This was of a piece with an earlier episode in the Lorenzian outrage cycle that came from her accusation that someone used the word "retard" on the then-popular app Clubhouse, later amended because the not particularly dire accusation also turned out to be false. Her larger concern, according to The New York Times, was that, as an audio-only app that did not leave easily AI-censorable text behind, people on Clubhouse were having "unfettered conversations."
Indeed, Taylor Lorenz's importance in the Government Censorship Complex is often overlooked, because she seems like such a ridiculous, absurd, impossible-to-take seriously idiot madwoman. And yet she is always leading every Cancel Pig bandwagon, stirring every censorship campaign, leading every smear effort. And of course: She did have that one-of-a-kind special Taylor-Only Censor Button at Twitter.
It was also of a piece with her participation in The New York Times staff's "This puts Black @nytimes staff in danger" Twitter campaign to manipulate workplace safety law to censor an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton. Tired of this walking pseudo-event yet? Welcome to Taylorworld, where there's always something outrageous and dramatic going on. But there's also nothing going on since she "wrote this book almost entirely from bed" and is a famously extremist Branch Covidian who, even now, believes that the story of the pandemic is that we did not commit with enough vigor or for enough time to strategies like masking, stay-at-home orders, and social pressure not to commune in person rather than on Zoom and social media. Her remedy for how society can stop failing to conform to such policy preferences is through a cleverly rebranded form of censorship called "anti-disinformation," which is a partnership between government intelligence agencies and private internet technology firms to determine who can say what.
Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 05:36 PM | Comments (216) | Trackbacks (Suck)
PornHub Executive: We Deliberately Seed Our Straight Porn Section With Gay and Trans Porn to See if We Can "Convert" Straight Men (and Expose Children To Alternative Sexual Possibilities)
On that last point, note that PornHub objected self-righteously when Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin imposed age verification standards for porn sites;
Virginians will no longer have access to one of the most popular websites in the world. A message was posted to the pornography website Pornhub Thursday, alerting users to the ban. A video of adult film star Cherie Deville reading the message was posted, which says in part, "Until a real solution is offered, we've made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in your region."In the below videos, PornHub executives not only say that it's great that children as young as 12 see their pornography, but congratulate themselves for "celebrating" gay sex and transgenderism and exposing children to "TransAngels" to alert them to the possibility of transitioning. They also praise themselves for the great social good they're doing in attempting to "convert" (their word) straight men into gay men (or at least bisexual men) by slipping in gay or trans porn into what they call, derogatorilly, "vanilla, mainstream porn."
The move is a response to a new law going into effect in the Commonwealth Saturday. It requires pornography websites to verify the age of their users before allowing them to browse their sites. The lawmaker who sponsored the bill calls it a way to mitigate the "epidemic" of children exposed to pornography online. But Pornhub says the law does the opposite. In the message posted to its site, the company argues it puts children and user's privacy more at risk, claiming the new restrictions just drive people to other sites with "far fewer safety measures in place." The law requires porn sites to access government-issued identification electronically, something Pornhub says leaves users' personal data vulnerable to hackers.
Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 04:30 PM | Comments (305) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Hunter Biden Files For Dismissal of Federal Gun Charges; Speaker Johnson Says Biden's Stonewalling Compells a Formal Vote to Begin an Impeachment Investigation
In very related news, Speaker Johnson says that the House must vote to impeach Biden, because Biden continues stonewalling Congress' legitimate demand for witnesses and documents. You know, the guy who's bowing to political pressure to press charges against Hunter.
Thanks to rick223, Hunter Biden continues with his "Dark Hunter" legal strategy of suing his enemies and aggressively meritless filings to dismiss.
We discussed this back then: That Hunter Biden would argue, possibly successfully that the fact that he had even discussed this immunity deal would be sufficient to actually deliver him that immunity. He'd claim that his agreement to the deal prejudiced him (somehow) so he should have the benefit of the deal. In fact -- who knows -- maybe this was always the plan. The other part, that the Special Counsel was "unlawfully appointed," is interesting. Conservatives have been arguing that for months. The DOJ rules say that a Special Counsel must be appointed from outside the DOJ, and Weiss was not from outside the DOJ. He was a US Attorney when appointed. But that doesn't seem to be what Lowell/Hunter is arguing. They seem to be arguing that... Congress hasn't specifically appropriated money to fund this particular Very Special Prosecutor, so it's not a real Very Special Prosecutor? I dunno, I never heard that sort of a claim before.
Attorneys representing Hunter Biden have asked a federal judge to dismiss three felony gun charges he faces in Delaware as part of their effort to curb the increasingly fraught legal landscape faced by President Joe Biden's son. In a flurry of court papers filed Monday, Abbe Lowell, an attorney for Hunter Biden, offered a series of arguments for dismissing the gun case, claiming that the special counsel was "unlawfully appointed" and therefore lacks the authority to bring charges; that the immunity stipulation in a section of the parties' ill-fated plea deal remains in effect; and that the gun crimes in question may not be constitutional. "These charges are unprecedented, unconstitutional and violate the agreement the U.S. Attorney made with Mr. Biden and DOJ's own regulations," Lowell said in a statement. "This is not how an independent investigation is supposed to work, and these charges should be dismissed."
...He could have filed the charges before he was appointed Very Special Counsel -- in which case there'd be no technical objection to his capacity to bring the charges. But he waited until there was a legal objection to his authority to bring the charges, to bring the charges.
Weiss' office filed the gun-related charges in September, shortly after Attorney General Merrick Garland elevated him to special counsel.
That's not the question -- the crime is LYING ON A GUN FORM. If he told the truth, that he was an addict, he could have brought suit and argued that his addiction should not bar him from gun ownership. Instead, he lied on official gun purchase form. He committed perjury. It's amazing how much the NewsGuard-approved media gets wrong in every singe article over matters so simple.
The conduct described in charging documents dates to October of 2018, when Hunter Biden procured a gun despite later acknowledging in his memoir, "Beautiful Things," that he was addicted to drugs around that time. ... And while the statute cited by prosecutors is clear -- it is a crime to lie on a gun application form or to possess a firearm as a drug user -- legal experts have said prosecutors could face headwinds. A federal appeals court in New Orleans recently ruled that drug use alone should not automatically prevent someone from obtaining a gun. That ruling is not binding, since the Fifth Circuit does not cover Delaware.
"While Congress could criminalize gun possession from someone who was actively intoxicated, or perhaps someone who at least actively had a controlled substance in their body, a prohibition on gun ownership by anyone who had at some time used a controlled substance is constitutionally overbroad," Lowell wrote.That is a challenge to the law, maybe -- but he still committed perjury. I suppose Lowell is arguing that if he can manage to get that law struck down as unconstitutional, then a perjurious answer about it is immaterial. You'll remember "immateriality" from Clinton's impeachment, of course. It's the idea that "yes, he told a lie, but there is no legal harm in the lie, because nothing changes, legally, depending on whether the answer was true or false." Lowell is trying to get the law changed so that drug addicts can own a gun, so that it doesn't matter if Hunter lied on his form and claimed he wasn't addicted to drugs. But that won't work, because his argument isn't even that drug addiction is entirely irrelevant to owning a gun, it's just that owning a gun shouldn't be an automatic per-se bar to owning one -- the state should consider other factors or whatever. Even in Lowell's own argument, the state is still entitled to a truthful answer about whether the gun applicant is addicted to drugs, so Hunter's lie is still material and hence perjurious. Lowell is also arguing that the sweetheart deal offered to Hunter Biden in a Double Secret Codicil hidden in a side-document so the judge would not see it was necessary and proper to protect Hunter against any future prosecutions by a Rogue Trump Prosecutor, and that the DOJ -- under the control of Hunter Biden's own fucking father -- is guilty of cowardice in bringing "severe" charges against Hunter under political pressure.
Again, Lowell is claiming that a judge must grant Hunter Biden immunity that a judge never affirmed (immunity deals must be okayed by a judge, to make sure the deal is just, which it plainly was not) because only "political pressure" ON HUNTER BIDEN'S FUCKING CORRUPT FATHER caused the deal to be withdrawn and charges to be filed. I mean: Seriously? Are you kidding? It takes a crackhead.
Clark in his declaration also highlighted the deal's importance in shielding Hunter Biden from prosecution from a "possible future Trump-led DOJ" -- highlighting the possible fear that if Trump were to win back the presidency in 2024, he could seek have Hunter Biden further investigated for the same crimes. As such, Clark said he emphasized that a "critical and essential" aspect of the deal with prosecutors was the "broad immunity provision" that in their view would bring "closure and finality" to the yearslong investigation. "They did not disagree," Clark said of the prosecutors regarding that point. Lowell said Weiss "buckled under political pressure to bring more severe charges," accusing the special counsel of waging a "selective and vindictive prosecution" by pressing gun charges against the president's son. "This is perhaps the clearest of cases of prosecutors making prosecutorial decisions for political reasons, selectively and vindictively prosecuting Mr. Biden based on his familial and political affiliation with his father, the President of the United States," Lowell wrote. "Indeed," Lowell added in a footnote, "if this case is not the one to dismiss for selective and vindictive prosecution and breach of separation of powers, it is unclear what is left of those doctrines."
In very related news, Speaker Johnson says that the House must vote to impeach Biden, because Biden continues stonewalling Congress' legitimate demand for witnesses and documents. You know, the guy who's bowing to political pressure to press charges against Hunter.
House Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday defended a vote scheduled this week to formalize the impeachment inquiry into President Biden, arguing that unlike what Democrats did with the "sham impeachment" of former President Trump, Republicans are committed to the "rule of law." Fox News' Chad Pergram pressed Johnson on an expectation from the GOP base to bring an impeachment vote sometime in the spring ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Johnson explained that House Republicans have "come to this impasse" in their investigations into President Biden's alleged involvement in his son, Hunter Biden's business dealings, and are "hitting a stone wall because the White House is impeding that investigation" and not allowing witnesses to come forward and thousands of pages of documents. <>The vote on a resolution to formalize the House impeachment inquiry, which is currently set for Wednesday, is not the same as a vote to impeach. "We have no choice to fulfill our constitutional responsibility. We have to take the next step. We're not making a political decision. It's not. It's a legal decision," Johnson said at the House Republican Conference press conference on Tuesday. "So people have feelings about it one way or the other. We can't prejudge the outcome. The Constitution does not permit us to do so. We have to follow the truth where it takes us and that is exactly what we're going to do."
Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 03:15 PM | Comments (389) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Antisemetic Mob Shows Up For Biden Fundraiser, Defacing Homes and a Synagogue
The mainstream media was largely silent on the mob and its death threats. FoxLA 11 reported it as part of its story on Presidentish Joe Biden's fundraising sweep through Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Daily News gave it a brief mention way down in the 16th paragraph of a similar report on Biden's trip. To be fair, a similar mob of between 1,200 and 1,500 people showed up at Biden's Holmby Hills fundraiser with chants of "Free Gaza" and "Ceasefire now." They even accused Biden and his donors of supporting Israeli "genocide" against Gaza Arabs. There were about 1.5 million Muslim Arabs in the Gaza Strip when Israel unilaterally left the region in 2005. There are more than 2 million there today, and Gaza women have one of the highest fertility rates in the world. Some genocide, eh? "Literally, I believe, the future of American democracy is at stake," Biden said during his fundraising speech in reference to Donald Trump. "We will be one of those generations that can say, 'We saved democracy."' That he said all that while a Nazi-like mob chanted outside is an irony too rich for fiction -- it's an absurdity that could only happen in reality.
StopAntisemitism
@StopAntisemites L.A. -- as Jews were lighting candles last night for Shabbat and the second night of Hanukkah, mobs of antisemites took to the streets to chant antisemitic slogans and graffiti buildings, including Synagogues. This particular location is the epicenter of Persian Jewish life on the Wilshire corridor. Parents and grandparents are hearing the same Jewish death chants they heard during the Iranian Islamic Revolution some 44 years ago forcing them to flee their homes of 2000+ years.
Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 02:02 PM | Comments (391) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Anthony Fauci: I Don't Need Religion Any Longer. I Answer to A Higher Authority.
(Himself, He Means.)
(Himself, He Means.)
Out: I am Science.
In: I am God. An interviewer -- a supplicant, really; a pilgrim; a seeker of illumination and grace -- asked if Fauci still bothered going to church. He said he didn't.Kay asked, "Do you still go there? ... You don't practice any more, do you?" Fauci repeatedly responded in the negative, indicating there were a "number of complicated reasons" for his lapse in religiosity. Despite his complicated relationship with the truth, support for abortion, and apparent willingness to see monstrous experiments funded -- including the dangerous tests executed at what would become the epicenter of a catastrophic pandemic -- Fauci said, "First of all, I think my own personal ethics on life are, I think, enough to keep me going on the right path." Fauci has previously made little effort to conceal his fulsome self-esteem, claiming that those who criticize him are "really criticizing science, because I represent science." Fauci's office is reportedly littered with representations of his preferred science. The New York Times noted last year that "the walls in Dr. Anthny S. Fauci's home office are adorned with portraits of him, drawn and painted by some of his many fans."Fauci's "ethics" directed him to ringlead a massive cover-up of his personal involvement in the creation of covid-19 and the smearing of honest scientists who pointed out the true scientific facts.
Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 01:00 PM | Comments (437) | Trackbacks (Suck)
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