THE MORNING RANT: Senator John Cornyn is learning that “Trust me, I’m lying” doesn’t work like it used to

“Trust me, I’m lying” is a formerly effective campaign strategy that is no longer very effective. Unfortunately for Senator John Cornyn (RINO – TX), it’s all he has left to promise in his desperate attempt to win a 5th term of betraying Texas Republicans.

The way “Trust me, I’m lying” is supposed to work is that a politician lies to the voters back home about positions the voters care about (border security, 2nd Amendment, ballot integrity, etc.) Meanwhile, the politician’s true constituency – the Washington establishment - knows that their candidate is being necessarily dishonest with voters to get re-elected.

Unfortunately for Senator Cornyn, he has a long record of being open-border, anti-MAGA, anti-Trump, anti-2nd Amendment, anti-ballot integrity, and generally working to ensure that the Senate never addresses actual problems that voters expect to be addressed. His recent attempts at “Trust me, I’m lying”are having the opposite of the intended effect. Conservative voters know he’s lying, while the Democrat & RINO crossover voters he could formerly count on are drifting to Talarico as Cornyn offends them by posturing as an actual conservative.

Cornyn has been stating during this campaign that he opposes an open border and amnesty, telling the El Paso Times a few weeks ago that, “The first thing we need to do is secure the border. There is no way that the American people, and certainly my constituents in Texas, would allow us to take another stab at reforming our immigration laws until we’ve got the border secure.” Everyone knows he’s lying by now - he’s been elected four times to the US Senate by lying to Texans about border security. But his campaign made a mistake. While they have done a good job scrubbing their campaign site of English-language speeches where he advocated for open borders and amnesty, they didn’t scrub the Spanish-language videos from his You Tube page.

The indefatigable Scott Presler just found Spanish-language video from 2020 of John Cornyn promising amnesty to illegal aliens.

SCOOP

In an unearthed video, Senator Cornyn’s team forgot to delete a video from YouTube

where Cornyn advocates for amnesty for illegal aliens.

It would be a shame if every Republican in Texas sees this before the May 26th runoff.

No amnesty! pic.twitter.com/69MciRMnfs

— ThePersistence (@ScottPresler) April 23, 2026

As documented by Texas Scorecard, “The video, which was previously available on his official YouTube channel, was quickly removed after circulation on social media.” Unfortunately for Team Cornyn, the video is still flying around the internet thanks to Mr. Presler.

Perhaps the biggest issue involving the Senate right now is the “SAVE Act,” which would use the force of power of federal law to eradicate much of the nationwide ballot fraud. Real conservative Ken Paxton is challenging Cornyn in the Republican senate primary, and Paxton is promising to eliminate the “zombie filibuster” so as to pass the SAVE Act. Cornyn, of course, has pretended that he supports the SAVE Act while hiding behind the zombie filibuster’s 60-vote threshold to make sure it doesn’t actually happen. As Presler and so many others have pointed out, the real filibuster is still an option, requiring only 50-votes.

In desperation, Cornyn tried the “Trust me, I’m lying” tactic regarding the filibuster, too. His campaign put out a tweet stating that, ”I support using the talking filibuster & making any changes necessary to Senate rules to get this passed.”

Posted by: Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM | Comments (289) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Mid-Morning Art Thread

The Horse Fair
Rosa Bonheur

Too wide for a PC or phone screen, but it is a nice painting, so don't bitch too much!

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (337) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Report — 4/ 27/26

Good morning kids, We are overloaded with links this morning as we kick off the last week of April and the overwhelming majority of course are about the failed third assassination attempt on President Trump over the weekend at the White House Correspondents Dinner. There are links peppered across almost every section of the Morning Report. Despite the Leftist/terrorist, (please pardon that redundancy, because let's face it that's what he is) releasing his manifesto just prior to his attack, perhaps the most ridiculous commentary came from the horrid purple lipped dog hole of Barack Obama:

Former President Barack Obama insisted Sunday the “details” of the motives of an armed man who allegedly tried to storm the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner were unknown, hours after a media outlet published the suspect’s manifesto.

“Although we don’t yet have the details about the motives behind last night’s shooting at the White House Correspondents [sic] Dinner, it’s incumbent upon all us to reject the idea that violence has any place in our democracy,” Obama wrote. “It’s also a sobering reminder of the courage and sacrifice that U.S. Secret Service Agents show every day. I’m grateful to them – and thankful that the agent who was shot is going to be okay.”

I refuse to quote this evil Leftist degenerate but hE/it's extensively quoted in virtually every link where you can read for yourself the litany of slanders and blood libels hurled at our President.

But the motive is a mystery, eh Obama?! Pfft - Allahu Akbar by any other name would not reek as disgustingly.The Democrat/Left demands absolute power absolutely, and will not cease until they get it. By any means necessary.

There was nothing radical about Cole Tomas Allen: the attempted White House Correspondents’ Dinner assassin. Allen’s manifesto reads a lot like that of the previous three-named assassin Ryan Wesley Routh who was stalking President Trump at a golf game. . . There’s a vagueness to the litany that suggests Allen had a weak grip on where these supposed things were even happening and what the connection to it was beyond justifying his attack.

Rather than Marxism, Routh and Allen offered tepid shopworn liberalism as their justification for murder, “U.S presidents must at bare minimum embody the moral fabric that is America and be kind, caring and selfless and always stand for humanity” and “the United States of America are ruled by the law, not by any one or several people. In so far as representatives and judges do not follow the law, no one is required to yield them anything so unlawfully ordered.”

. . . Allen and Routh's views were generally those of mainstream liberal Democrats. They were no more extreme than your average MSNBC viewer. Probably even a smidgen more moderate. And they were probably no more radical than the average committed Democrat.

This is not some grassroots phenomenon but the messaging from the top down of the party and its media apparatus. That&'s why Allen’s views are entirely reflective of their rhetoric. He wasn't a Marxist, a Communist or a Socialist… his views were those of the mainstream of his party. (The amount of distance between the Democrats and the Marxists of course is rapidly shrinking.)

But Allen didn't try to kill Trump and members of his administration officials in the name of socialized medicine, a command economy, the working class or any affirmative leftist cause.
He did it because he had been brainwashed into believing he was stopping Hitler 2.0. . .

. . . But the record number of assassinations shows that they have created a party of assassins. Those who have created a party of assassins bear the ultimate responsibility for the violence.

A Party of Assassins cannot offer America anything except murder, treason and death.

So then, what is to be done about a party of assassins? The bitter irony here is that the deranged motivations to kill President Trump and to physically wipe out all of us who either support him or at a bare minimum simply disagree, openly or secretly, oppose Democrats via normal political discourse and processes and debate (when/if permitted), are or would be the sane choice we may yet have to make to stop the very real existential threat to our lives, liberty and nation.

I hate the Left not only for what they are, believe and what they have done to this nation virtually unchecked for at least the past 70 years and indeed our entire history, but for what they may one day force us to visit upon their collective head, not out of revenge but out of simple self-preservation.

Have a great day!

And lastly, a quick shout-out and a huge thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY LINKS
• Victor Davis Hanson: Trump’s assassination attempts underscore how rhetoric that casts political opponents as existential threats can move from language to violence.
  From One Assassination Attempt to the Next: Mainstreaming Violence Against a President
  
• Daniel Greenfield: The latest Trump assassin wasn’t a radical. He was a Democrat.
  Party of Assassins

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 07:05 AM | Comments (397) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 27 April 2026

Top Story

• It's been a while since we've had a big tech news story. No disasters, no miracles. Things haven't suddenly gotten better - or at least, not much, and they haven't gotten drastically worse.
  
  So here's an object lesson in not trusting lifelong drug addicts with a pattern of pathological lying, by which I mean AI. (Twitter)
  
  The company PocketOS was using the AI tool Cursor to do some routine maintenance in their staging environment. Cursor found a problem and decided to fix it. To fix it it decided to... Delete the database and all backups.
  
  Okay, not the end of the world; it's the staging environment, not the production environment.
  
  Right?
  
  Oh.
  
  You might ask why they gave Cursor access to the production environment when it was only supposed to be working on staging, and the answer is, they didn't. It hunted around the files it did have access to until it found an API key, and it used that.
  
  On top of that, the hosting service they were using only had snapshots, not independent backups. Delete the database volume (virtual disk) and all the snapshots disappear as well.
  
  The hosting service did manage to recover the volume, though it took some time and was not something a user could do themselves. Remember folks, it's not backed up until you have three copies, in two different formats, on two continents.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:30 AM | Comments (74) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sunday Overnight Open Thread - April 26, 2026 [Doof]

Howdy Hordelings! So glad you could be here for the Sunday night ONT. Open thread, as always. Fashion and music, as always. What's on YOUR mind tonight?

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (457) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gun Thread: End O' April Edition!

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 did it get to be the End O' April Edition? Know what comes next? That's right! The First May Edition!

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 (252) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Food Thread: Wash That Knife! Carve That Leg! Peel That Carrot!

Ah...lamb! Specifically, a boned-out leg of lamb, which I think is the best way to prepare lamb! Why? because the leg is thick in places, thin in places, has wildly different amounts of fat, and cooks very unevenly. But boning it yields a large piece of meat that can be trimmed to one's own preferences, and then tied up so that it cooks perfectly evenly.

That's why!

Now, a slow-cooking leg of lamb on a rotisserie is going to cook very nicely, no matter if it is bone-in or boneless. This isn't an existential crisis. And besides, I sort of like well-done lamb, especially if it is nice and fatty and the fat has crisped and even charred a little.

But for convenience, the boneless is hard to beat, which is why I am gravitating toward one for a birthday dinner I am hosting in a few weeks. Well, that and a roast chicken on a bed of leeks, carrots, and potatoes, because I think I will have a full table, and the guest list has at least three people who would in another age be considered trenchermen!

And because there isn't enough meat on the menu, I think I will make my cauliflower gratin, but this time with lardons, which is a snooty French word for bacon chunks!

And some green stuff...I guess. For a well-balanced meal.

Posted by: CBD at 04:00 PM | Comments (242) | Trackbacks (Suck)

First World Problems...

There is a very interesting but immensely frustrating correlation between the number of flashlights in the house and the probability of a power outage. Obviously the local utility tracks my flashlight purchases, and only turns off the power when the number of functioning lights in the house drops below the number necessary to navigate a several-hours-long blackout.

I am tempted to purchase flashlights by the case, and then simply return them, but I suspect that the surveillance capabilities of PSE&G is more sophisticated than simply counting flashlights in and assuming a failure rate that increases with time.

Do they have a spy in the house? Is it one of the brats? Is that why they come visit? My original assumption was for the free food and drink, but now I might have to reevaluate!

Posted by: CBD at 02:00 PM | Comments (180) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Shipbuilding As A Priority For Our Navy? What A Concept!

The recent firing of the Secretary of The Navy was a reasonable action if one assumes that the members of the administration are subordinate to the President and are tasked with implementing his policies. That the former secretary was resistant to some of those policies is ample reason to fire him, and in fact should have been expected.

“He’s a very good man," Trump said Thursday in the Oval Office, referring to Phelan. "I really liked him, but he had some conflict, not necessarily with Pete. He’s a hard charger, and he had some conflicts with some other people, mostly as to building and buying new ships. I’m very aggressive in the new shipbuilding.”

As the saying goes, "Quantity is a quality all its own." And as the Chinese build their navy to compete directly with ours in the Pacific, it is imperative that we accelerate our ship building to more than match theirs.

The issue of course is that ship building in the United States has declined to almost nothing, and the design and procurement process for military vessels has become so unbelievably convoluted and slow, that we essentially have no military shipbuilding. When it takes 10 years to design, approve, and build a new navy vessel like the pathetic Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), it is clear that the system needs revamping, or wholesale destruction and rebuilding from scratch!

Any Navy secretary must understand that and work to change the status quo. Instead, Phelan slow-walked it!

So now we have Hung Cao, whose resume is impressive, and whose dedication to the United States Navy is clear.

Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao Lists Shipbuilding as a Top Priority

Cao said his first and foremost priority is to care for the sailors and Marines of the force.

“We will take care of your needs and make sure you can do the mission,” said Cao, who previously served as an explosive ordnance disposal officer in the Navy and participated in special operations assignments in combat zones.

Cao listed his second priority as shipbuilding.

“We need the platforms we need in order to defend this country,” he said.

President Donald Trump said the previous Navy secretary, John Phelan, was “an excellent guy” but that he had conflicted with other members of the Trump administration on shipbuilding efforts.

Whether Secretary Cao succeeds in revamping a broken system remains to be seen, but his first pronouncements are gratifying, and seem to follow the tone that the Secretary of War is setting for our armed forces.

Is he politically astute? Can he navigate the rats nests in Congress and the Pentagon that are filled with craven opportunists whose every waking hour is consumed by the single-minded goal of personal aggrandizement, or financial gain, or both?

Inquiring minds want to know, but keeping corporatism out of the military seems like a good start!

Posted by: CBD at 12:00 PM | Comments (249) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Book Thread [Sabrina Chase]

Welcome to the Book Thread, Guest Poster edition! I will be your host as we explore all sorts of book-related topics. All usual Book Thread rules are incorporated by reference (pets, beverage, clothing covering the lower limbs, etc.) with the special Sabrina Chase exemption for those stylish persons preferring kilts. Now let us proceed to today's topic, which is ...

Jade Book

Book Mechanics: how a book is made

Taking a break from the book industry, let's take a look at how a book is constructed. Not the contents, the form those contents take. When we say book what do we mean? The history of bookmaking begins with words that need recording in 1) a permanent form that is 2) portable. Oog's treatise on the best locations to spear a mammoth (and survive), being painted on the walls of a cave, fail the second test. Aishtupur-al's My search for a honest copper merchant in Akkad inscribed in cuneiform on a series of clay tablets was a little better, as long as you didn't get it wet (so not so permanent).

Then we get to papyrus. The oldest writing found is more than 4.5 millennia old and was a work invoice for the stone used in the Great Pyramid. (Really!) Ah, but there were also books! Only they were scrolls, long rolled-up lengths of papyrus, and if you wanted to go back to an earlier section to confirm your copy of the Book of the Dead was reincarnating the right person you had to unroll the whole thing. And papyrus is brittle, so scrolls were the only practical form it could be used in. Furthermore the papyrus plant is hard to grow in bulk so it was expensive to have lots of scrolls in your library, and we are all about Vast Amounts of Books here in the Book Thread!

China got clever. First they invented characters, which are easily read in vertical and horizontal alignments, and that, with the huge amount of bamboo available, led to the bamboo slip books known as jiandu. The picture at the top of the post is a fancy jade version of a jiandu. Bamboo books are tough, flexible, and cheap. They also need to be rolled up, and those rolls get heavy. The Chinese also invented bureaucracy ... which requires lots of record-keeping, and finally the bamboo scroll book was too much of a headache and they invented paper.

The books made with paper were much lighter. The paper was still in a long piece, but it could be folded unlike papyrus. The first books were basically accordion-pleated with a thicker piece of paper on either end. If you squint, looks pretty booklike. And paper is much cheaper, so finally we can have government paperwork AND our immense library! At one point they figured out how to sew one edge of the accordion-pleat so the book didn't collapse on you just when you got to the good part, but the covers were still just different paper and, horror of horrors, they did not cut the folds of the page! One whole side was unused!

Because they were all floppy, an ancient Chinese library was either a series of boxes containing the folded books, or books laid on their sides and piled up on [TRIGGER WARNING FOR ACE] shelves. Very hard to search for the book you wanted. The paper was so thin they could not stand on edge, and there were no spines to write helpful hints about the contents, like Yet Another Collection of Poems About Bamboo. This format persisted for thousands of years. I even have a Japanese Meiji-era junior-high history book, still in the floppy original form (and with the doubled, uncut pages).

The Romans decided this was an engineering problem and fixed it by inventing the codex around the first century AD, binding pages between boards. And that is pretty much how we got where we are now, with hardback books that can stand on their own vertically and with spines for title and author information. Much easier to scan the shelves!

The pages themselves gradually improved as well. European printing would take a large sheet of paper, printing both sides, and then carefully fold it to get the size book needed. Print layout for this was a headache, and at the end the purchaser often had to use a knife to cut open some of the folds that didn't get trimmed properly.

And this all ties into the great paperback vs. hardback discussion. Once books were plentiful, readers wanted ... more books. But the costs add up, especially the binding part. So books were often sold without covers. If the owner were wealthy enough they would just pay a binder to make a custom binding that matched the rest of the library (this is what Samuel Pepys did for his famous library). If you were a poor student, well, it's coverless books for you! Much later on publishers discovered they could do this out in the open with thick paper covers with lurid illustrations and ... we're back to the Chinese floppy book system. Only Western books had stiffer paper so we can still put them on shelves properly.

But never fear! If you have a paperback you love and want to make it fancy like Pepys did, it is not hard to do. I took a class on how to make a hardback from a paperback, so the Old Ways would not be forgotten. I encourage the Horde to try it out. (Might make a good Hobby thread!)

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:00 AM | Comments (343) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 26 April 2026

Top Story

• Samsung's mobile division could lose money in 2026 - for the first time ever. (SammyGuru)
  
  You don't need to feel bad for them though. Samsung's memory division - all by itself - is now the third most profitable company in the world, behind only Apple and Saudi Aramco.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:30 AM | Comments (235) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Night Club ONT - April 25, 2026 [D Squared]

Welcome to Club ONT - a collaboration of The Disco and The Dino. Come in in, grab a drink or 3. Have fun if you can, Wang Chung if you must!

The White House Correspondent's Dinner was interrupted earlier this evening. Fog of war rules are in effect. It appears an uninvited guest may have tried to force their way through a security checkpoint in the lobby before being stopped with force. POTUS, FLOTUS, VPOTUS and other administration members were evacuated from the ballroom. Other attendees remained but took cover under tables and immediately took to social media (except Wolf Blitzer who was going to the men's room). The dinner will be rescheduled. POTUS will make a statement from the White House shortly. Developing...

Anyway...

[Top photo: HIMITSU Speakeasy Bar in Berlin]

Posted by: Open Blogger at 11:08 PM | Comments (392) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Another Democrat Inspired Assassin Attempts to Kill Trump; Trump And All Innocents Appear Safe and Unharmed, and the Left-Wing Assassin Apprehended

ANOTHER LEFT WING ASSASSIN ATTEMPTS TO KILL TRUMP

Paul Sperry
@paulsperry_

BREAKING: As five (5) shots rang out at the rear of the ballroom of the White House Correspondents' Assoc. Dinner, First Lady Melania Trump quickly ducked under the dais before President Trump could be pulled down by Secret Service, and Speaker Mike Johnson's wife Kelly hid under her table as Johnson's security detail whisked him out of the ballroom before circling back later for Mrs. Johnson ... developing ...

If I understand this, the left-wing Democrat assassin attempted to get into the White House Correspondents Association dinner, and was stopped at the magnetometers, which detected his gun. I guess he pulled out the gun and was shot by Secret Service agents.

Erika Kirk was present.

I will pop the ONT back up above this after a while.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 10:01 PM | Comments (487) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Alan Trustman Affair [Lex]

Most people don’t know the name Alan Trustman. But they do know The Thomas Crown Affair starring Steve McQueen. Alan Trustman wrote that movie, and his story as a screenwriter is at once inspiring and infuriating.

I was friendly with him, and that itself is an inspiring and infuriating story. I had lost touch with him the past few years, but recently my father gave me Alan’s obituary, which he saw in The Boston Globe. Alan died on March 5th at the age of 95.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:30 PM | Comments (414) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hobby Thread - April 25, 2026 [TRex]

Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the Horde in this little corner of the interweb. This is the mighty, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread. It is that time of the year, a spin of the Wheel of Hobbies (TM) came up with honey bees as a theme for this Hobby Thread.

[Top photo: Western Honey Bee, Andreas Trepte]

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:30 PM | Comments (211) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ace of Spades Pet Thread, April 25

* * *

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

Would you like a treat?

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

Posted by: K.T. at 03:11 PM | Comments (58) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gardening, Home and Nature Thread Apr 25

Didn't know what to do with this amaryllis a couple years ago, stuck it in the flower bed and it's done marvelously well!

tom servo

Not everyone can get their gift Amaryllis to re-bloom in the garden. More people might have some luck with tom's second plant below:

Posted by: K.T. at 01:26 PM | Comments (57) | Trackbacks (Suck)

A visit with an all-conspiracy influencer site

Old Boomers believe anything "the elites" tell them
because of the "Rockefeller education system"

Younger folks learn the truth from
20 second videos with commentary by "influencers"

There has been some recent concern about deaths and disappearances of scientists and others involved in the study of nuclear issues, UFOs and related matters. Yesterday's Daily Wire piece linked above the fold in JJ's Morning Report took the sensible position that some of these cases deserved more attention than others. There was one recent death, that of David Wilcock, that did not make their list of dead or missing scientists, but a People Magazine article about his death was linked. David Wilcock, Paranormal YouTuber and Writer, Dies by Suicide at 53.

This piece was not included in my conspiracy theorist influencer's information sources for his followers. Neither was a longer piece in the New York Post. Those pieces would expose his followers to the "Rockefeller education system", no doubt. Instead, he posted extremely short clips of Wilcock talking about life and his philosophy.

Boulder County Colorado posted a very careful update on the investigation of Wilcock's death which included a nice quasi-obituary. Due to "public interest". Police arrived before he shot himself, but took cover because he fired a random shot after their arrival.

Posted by: K.T. at 11:20 AM | Comments (192) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Classical Saturday Morning Coffee Break & Prayer Revival

[Even this mixed up species gets it. Any complaints? Send them to Ace.]

Sharon (willow's apprentice) thought you would enjoy. I know I did!

*****

Before we enter the Prayer Revival just a few housekeeping matters to go over (Rulz for those of you in Markesan)

1) This is an open thread. Feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate.
2) Be kind. Be nice. Keep your permanent record spotless.
3) No running with sharp objects.
4) Have a great weekend!!

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 08:00 AM | Comments (385) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 25 April 2026

Top Story

• Microsoft is running a competition with $2 million in prizes to promote its Edge browser. There's a $1 million grand prize, three Mercedes Benz cars, and a whole swarm of tech gadgets and other goodies. But that's not the story. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The story is that this has been running for a month and nobody noticed.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:30 AM | Comments (103) | Trackbacks (Suck)