Sunday Morning Book Thread - 4-6-2025 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading. Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...

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

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:00 AM | Comments (306) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 6 April 2025

Top Story

• What's truly inside that bright red flame retardant used on bright red flames from the fires caused by California's definitely not bright but certainly Red government? No-one would say so we drank some to find out. (LAist)
  
  If you scroll way down in the article you'll find a table with the tiny legend:

  Measurements in micrograms per liter.

  Most of the metals mentioned are benign in the quantities found. Zinc and manganese you will find in dietary supplements because you need them to live.
  
  But what does 591 micrograms per liter mean for arsenic, a well-known poison?
  
  Well, the LD50 for arsenic in humans is somewhere between 1 and 3 mg per kg of bodyweight for adults. (It's better known for rats because nobody complains if you try it out on them.)
  
  Which means that if you drink twice your bodyweight in flame retardant, you'll likely die. So don't do that.
  
  To be fair, LAist interviewed scientists who told them exactly that, and they put it in the article:

  That said, multiple health experts told LAist that the risk to members of the public exposed to the retardant when doing activities like hiking, is likely low, given the concentration of contaminants present in our samples.

  "It should not be a reason for panic, but maybe it's a reason for caution," said Dr. Ana Navas-Acien, professor and chair of Environmental Health Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, who reviewed the results.

  Also, the stuff hangs around afterwards, and residents and cleanup workers should be careful with it. You can suffer ill effects from doses far short of lethal.
  
  Fortunately, the stuff is, as we noted, bright red.
  
  

• Reminder: Daylight savings has ended here in Oz, so from tomorrow I'll be posting at 4:30 AM, since otherwise I have 15 minutes tops from the end of my work day to the post needing to go up.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (200) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Night "Club ONT" April 5, 2025 [The 3 D's]

Welcome to Club ONT! A collaboration of your Sunday through Wednesday ONT Crew - The Disco, The Doggo, and The Dino. You have cracked the code - the Club is open. Don't just stand there, come on in!

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (387) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Evening Movie Thread - 4/5/2025

Roger Corman

There's a moment in the documentary Corman's World, during a section dealing with Roger Corman's lack of embrace by the film industry in Los Angeles that caught my attention. About a moment after Nicholson is mugging to the camera about how Corman had refused him more than scale for writing The Trip, which had led to Nicholson essentially cutting Corman out of any residuals from Easy Rider, Nicholson says "If Roger feels unappreciated, I'll go over to his house tomorrow night."

It's a wonderful microcosm of Corman as he worked for decades: a terror to work with but building marvelous relationships at the same time.

Corman is, of course, known primarily as a film producer, not a film director. I am more concerned with him as a director for the purposes of this essay, though. That isn't to say that I haven't dabbled in his producing career. I've worked through the complete filmographies of both Joe Dante and Martin Scorsese, so I'm well aware of some of the more famous examples of his producing work (Hollywood Boulevard, Piranha, and Boxcar Bertha in particular).

However, I was really interested in who Corman was as a director himself. Instead of a shepherd for other people's work as producer, what kind of filmmaker was he when he was in as total control as one usually can be on a film set? I also had only little exposure to exploitation and B-movies in general, and I wanted an introduction (I had considered doing Budd Boetticher first because of his connection to Randolph Scott). So, in my eternal quest to discover cinema, I dove headfirst into the world of Roger Corman, the King of Cult, the King of the B's.

Posted by: TheJamesMadison at 07:45 PM | Comments (159) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hobby Thread - April 5, 2025 [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. The Ace of Spades Wheel of Hobbies(TM) received overdue service recently. We gave it a spin this week and wow, it was ready to go. It had a grand time spinning and spinning and spinning... Eventually it landed on drawing and sketching.

[Photorawing of the 1980 Zakspeed Ford Capri]

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:30 PM | Comments (123) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ace of Spades Pet Thread, April 5

Courtesy sabatourdali

* * *

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 03:27 PM | Comments (86) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gardening, Home and Nature Thread, April 5

Hi Katy

I'm sorry you weren't feeling well this past week. If I could, I'd send you a bouquet of tulips. For now this photo will have to suffice. Spring is arriving in Virginia!

The Pilot

Thanks. They look wonderful in that setting!

Posted by: K.T. at 01:21 PM | Comments (55) | Trackbacks (Suck)

French Elites are extra confused by President Trump

French elites are not the only people concerned and/or confused by President Trump's announced tariff plan this week. I heard a guy on the radio refer to him as an "agent of chaos", and tell a story about another businessman who enjoyed that role and thought that it was productive.

But French elites are extra confused. There is a long history to their confusion.

Sarah Hoyt linked a piece by Erik at No Pasaran that explains a lot about the recent inability of French politicians to "get" Trump, no matter how clearly they learn to speak in their university diction classes:

Why Does Donald Trump Bother the Élites in France and Europe So Much?

"Besides appearing on a French radio station, Sébastien Laye ruffled feathers at LinkedIn as he tried to solve a central riddle (merci pour l'InstaLien, Sarah):"

Posted by: K.T. at 11:02 AM | Comments (337) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Classical Saturday Coffee Break & Prayer Revival

Good morning boys and girls and everything in between. According to the calendar it is April 5. One would not know that looking at the lakes here in the frozen tundra.

Before we enter the Prayer Revival, just a few house keeping matters to go over. (Rulz for those of you in Slinger)

1. This is an open thread unless you are that person, then it is not. But for the remainder of you it is an open thread and feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate.
2. Be kind, be nice. Most trolls are mentally ill. And no jumping on the furniture.
3. Running with sharp objects is not permitted. You are not even allowed to think about it.
4. Have a nice weekend.

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian (ONT Cob Emeritus) at 08:30 AM | Comments (271) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 5 April 2025

Top Story

• In a pre-emptive response to the latest reciprocal tariffs, China has banned the sale of terbium, erbium, thulium, and thallium to the United States, so-called "rare earth" elements critical to the production of advanced technology such as Nixie tubes and bubble memory. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  There are a few things to note here:
  
  First, of course, it makes little sense to make a totalitarian fascist dystopia your sole supplier of anything.
  
  Second, rare earth elements are not rare. What they are is messy and annoying to extract and refine, a fact that China used to take over the market. Australia, Brazil, Canada, and, yes, the United States all have significant mineral reserves available. And studies suggest that a square mile of seafloor mud is enough to provide the entire world with these metals for a year.
  
  Third, China of course does this kind of thing all the time, and has restricted or outright banned sales of rare earth elements to other countries before.
  
  Fourth, and perhaps most interesting, China now only produces 10% of its own rare earth resources. The same problem with them being messy and annoying to extract led it to move production to illegal mining camps operating in Burma, bypassing what passes for the government and working with local militias.
  
  
  

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (151) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Tonight's ONT Was Thinking Of The Immortal Words Of Socrates, Who Said, "... I Drank What?"

Howdy folks! Welcome to meme Friday!

Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:00 PM | Comments (485) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Frolicsome Friday Cafe

Tenerlife, Canary Islands
Which belong to Spain, I just found out
by @accphotographer

Rescuing a stray dog right off the street.

More weekend plans.

Fraudster penguins stage a flash mob to occupy authorities while they steal the US Mint.

Poor cat. But notice he immediately Proves the Joke Is Real by playing it off like nothing happened.

Dogs are going to help, whether it's actually helpful or not.

Dogs love pools of all sizes.

Just watching this gave me the heebie-jeebies.

German shepherds slightly breaking the law of gravity.

LOL: The first time a baby bird feeds itself, it expects the worm to just place it into its mouth, the way its parents placed it.

Poor baby giraffe tries to stand up with his comically awkward legs.

Let's go, gang!

Dancing with your horse.

Cherry blossom blizzard.

A lot of cursing here so maybe just keep the audio off: fisherman and whale discover they're hunting the same fish.

Snek says i'm a big bad-assss you don't want none of thissss...

I do this. Maybe you do too. But the cap comes off 10% of the time and then you have mustard or ketchup all over your kitchen, including on the ceiling. Better to just let it go.

Posted by: Ace at 07:38 PM | Comments (192) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Week In Woke

Left-leaning but principled free speech advocate Matt Taibbi is suing a leftwing Regime Democrat congresswoman for libeling him as a "serial sex harasser." While she first tossed out this libel in Congress, where her defamations are protected, she then repeated it on social media, where it's not.

Well, I mean, it's not supposed to be, but dang if leftwing judges don't keep "discovering" that Akshually when a Democrat congressman libels you outside of Congress, there are Penumbras and Emanations that immunize him against suit.

Taibbi is suing for $10 million.

New Hampshire teacher argues against a proposed parental bill of rights, telling parents that if they want to take control over their child's education back from viciously-stupid leftwing state teachers unions, they should just send their kids to private school.

That teacher is president of the NH affiliate of Randi Shutdown Weingarten's American Federation of Teachers Union.

We are, in fact, going to make school choice the rule almost everywhere, except in your blue state shitholes, and you will all lose your jobs as "teachers." You will finally see what your teaching degrees are worth in the private sector. You always claim you could be making $200,000 per year if not for your selfless devotion to teaching children how to have anal sex with drag queens; you will soon have that interesting theory put to the real-world acid test.

And the rest of us will laugh and laugh and laugh...

Elizabeth MacDonald
@LizMacDonaldFOX

Biden and Obama's abuse of taxpayers is truly shocking. Now Biden has a Solyndra problem. Just like Obama, Biden blew billions of your taxpayer $$ on energy companies now going bankrupt. Several energy companies that got big loans from the Biden administration's $400 billion green energy slush pot loan program are reportedly facing difficulties and potential bankruptcy. Li-Cycle Holdings, a battery recycling company, got a $375 million loan commitment but has warned investors about its potential bankruptcy. It got that loan within days of Biden losing to Trump, as part of the $20 billion in loans that were rushed out the door before Trump took office.

CEO Ajay Kochhar reportedly worried his company couldn't afford to repay, but Biden officials pressured him to take the money according to reports. Biden's green energy loan czar Jigar Shah according to the Wall Street Journal told its top officials to "get your ass to Pittsburgh" in order to get the loan. Sunnova Energy got a $3 billion loan guarantee, and is also on the verge of bankruptcy. Plug Power, another recipient of a $1.6 billion loan guarantee, has announced layoffs. The Energy Dept's Inspector General already warned about massive potential fraud in this energy loan program.

Thoughts about the chubby, emotionally-incontinent Fat White Karen who tried to grab the MAGA hat off a young Hispanic kid's head and wound up flopping on her chubby face.

Testanero had spotted her personal demon. Not a man. Not even a policy. A hat. Not just any hat. The hat. The MAGA cap -- poly-blend, unironically worn, clashing perfectly with her curated contempt.

Alberta -- a Murray Hill progressive, Fashion Institute of Technology pedigree, luxury-brand whisperer -- had spent a career aligning handbags with identity. But here, aboard the late-night 6 train, she found a brand she could not abide: a brown-skinned young man wearing that red lid. He smiled. She snarled.

Testanero convened a focus group of one. "If you f--king voted for Trump, you're a racist!" she hissed, jabbing the air like a malfunctioning metronome.

The man looked up, startled, bemused -- always a dangerous move when a brimstone preacher's mid-sermon. "How can I be racist?" he asked. "I'm highly educated."

"Oh, are you?" she snapped, narrowing her eyes through layers of couture indignation. "Then why are you wearing that hat? Only uneducated people wear that." Again with the demographics -- a true marketing maven.

And there it was. The salon style of the curated class: where intelligence is not earned, it's worn. Like linen in July -- light, loud, and always label-forward.

But the crowd had turned. Straphangers bristled. One muttered, "That's why he won -- people like you." Alberta, undeterred, followed her prey off the train at 28th Street, hurling invective like confetti at a canceled pride parade. And then, in perfect dramatic symmetry, she lunged -- grasping for the hat like it was the last vote in Pennsylvania -- and went down hard.

Face-plant extraordinaire. Not a moment you want to remember, but....

The internet rejoiced. Five million views and counting. A user on X wrote the epitaph:

"A white liberal calls a brown Republican racist... then eats concrete. 2025, folks."

This wasn't politics -- it was performance art gone tragically slapstick. Alberta, whose LinkedIn brags of "maintaining the highest standards," modest to a fault, never even hinted thst she was talking about the broad jump. Thus proving there is no poseur that cannot be felled by a full-speed, late-night hat snatch.

Better days: Alberta Testanero, 55, an "agitated" creative director

Testanero's no stranger to edgy. A former colleague told The Post she'd gone "off the deep end" politically -- once a friend, now an "extremely liberal, very agitated" foe who'd spar with Republicans and brand them "racist" at the drop of a dime. "Nothing's changed," the coworker sighed, "except now she's extreme -- doing things like this."

As they say, she seems nice.

Kaizen D. Asiedu
@thatsKAIZEN

Something is seriously sick with many liberals right now.

I was walking my dog in LA and my neighbor, a college professor, was disgruntled over Trump's changes to funding of scientific research.

I was curious as to why and asked.

She assumed I aligned with her worldview.

Within 30 seconds of conversation she called him a fascist and hoped he'd "choke on a hamburger".

I said "let's not wish death on anyone" and she responded "well, maybe he'll be rendered incontinent".

The number of liberals getting violent is small, but the number who casually condone violence and wish death upon others is large.

If you wish pain on a person because of a policy, you are in the wrong.

This should be obvious, but evidently it is not.

I first started noticing comments like this when Trump was nearly assassinated.

It's the second time in a week I've witnessed deranged behavior like this.

The first was when a neighbor stormed onto my property because he didn't like what he heard in a video I was recording.

It didn't used to be like this. I've lived in liberal areas my whole life. I identified as liberal until a year ago.

Something truly twisted has taken hold.

This is mental illness, and it's rampant.

Lena Dunham beached herself to talk about Trans Visibility.

"Trans Visibility" is the political delusion that if you just force transgenderism into people's faces 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks per year for every year from now until the end of time, people will be forced by exhaustion and social coercion into accepting it as normal and preferred.

This strategy is actually backfiring, as more people oppose transgenderism now than when it was less visible and omnipresent, but the cultists will not stop.

HBO's Girls creator, American Horror Story star, and longtime Breitbart fan girl, Lena Dunham railed against "horrific government abuses" at a trans visibility rally on Monday. "Trans liberation is our liberation," the actress proclaimed.

"We must help protect the civil rights of our trans friends and family," Dunham declared at the first "Transgender Day of Visibility" in Washington, D.C. during President Donald Trump's second term in office.

Dunham went on to talk about the importance of standing strong "in the face of such hatred and misunderstanding," amid what she believes to be "dangers and traumas trans people face today, and the hard truths about how trans people are valued by the current leadership of this country."

"When my sibling came out as trans, I learned that I had never actually had a sister at all, but a wise, funny, resilient, powerful, remarkable brother," the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood star continued.

She was in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood for five minutes, mostly as a background presence. She played a dirty smell barefoot hippie who was a member of Charles Manson's ultraviolent leftwing race-cult.

How did Tarrantino get the idea to cast her? What a genius.

"The experience of going through my brother's transition has been a profound gift to our family," Dunham declared. "We have laughed, we have cried, we have learned, and re-learned."

The Scandal actress added, "I have seen my parents grow into a new understanding of their child, and I re-met my sibling as the truest version of himself -- the person that he already was as a child before society sent him so many signals about what conformity meant, and he had to shut away these beautiful and essential aspects of who he is."

Dunham also railed against "the horrific abuses that the government is attempting to commit and the rights they're attempting to take away and already in the process of doing."

"Trans liberation is our liberation. And without it, none of us are free," Dunham asserted.

Then she ate a Volkswagon Jetta.

Posted by: Ace at 06:30 PM | Comments (237) | Trackbacks (Suck)

One "Teen" Stabs Another Teen In the Heart With a Knife With No Provocation, Killing the Victim Within Minutes;
Media Hides Murder Because the Killer is Black and Victim is White

The killer is a gentle giant who hoped to be a rapper and just got accepted to CUNY.

The victim was probably a white supremacist who deserves to have been stabbed in the heart.

Benjamin Crump is en route to the jail where the gentle giant is being held and will be suing the family of the victim for causing the killer emotional harm by dying.

Sarah Fields
@SarahisCensored

17-year-old 4.0 student stabbed in the heart at a high school track event in Frisco, Texas, dies in his identical twin brother's arms.

Austin Metcalf was attacked after telling a teen from a different school that he was sitting in the wrong spot.

Karmelo Anthony has been been arrested and charged with first-degree murder.

Just days ago, Metcalf shared a post on X where he said, "Faith that God got me and my work will pay off."

Metcalf reportedly didn't know the teen who stabbed him.

"They were twins, identical twins, and his brother was holding on to him, trying to make it stop bleeding, and he died in his brother's arms," Jeff Metcalf, the father, said.

"I rushed up there and I saw him on the gurney and I could tell... they said he wasn't breathing. I could see all the blood, and I saw where the wound was, and I was very concerned, so I had to find his brother, and we rushed to the hospital."

Austin Metcalf had a 4.0 GPA and was the MVP of his football team.

He was getting ready to go to college. What a SENSELESS death.

Posted by: Ace at 05:25 PM | Comments (228) | Trackbacks (Suck)

FCC Commissioner Brandon Carr: If Our Investigation Concludes That Disney Is Using Racial and Sex Discrimination In Its Hiring (Which It Definitely Is), We'll Yank ABC's Broadcast License

That's a serious threat.

FCC Chair Brendan Carr has opened a formal investigation into Disney over allegations that its DEI-driven hiring practices at ABC may violate federal equal employment regulations. If proven, the infractions could put ABC's broadcast license at risk, Carr said Monday during a Fox News interview. The move comes amid the 47th President Donald Trump's broader crackdown on DEI programs across government and private institutions.

Key Details:

Carr said hiring decisions allegedly made based on race and gender "go to the character qualifications" required for FCC licensing.

The investigation is focused on whether ABC's parent company, Disney, used racial and gender quotas or "race-defined affinity groups" in employment decisions.

This probe follows a similar FCC investigation into Comcast, the parent company of NBCUniversal, launched last month.

Diving Deeper:

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr on Monday signaled that ABC's broadcast license could be in jeopardy if an ongoing investigation confirms that the network, through its parent company Disney, violated federal law by using race and gender-based hiring practices.

Appearing on Fox News's The Story, Carr stated, "If the evidence does in fact play out and shows that they were engaged in race- and gender-based discrimination, that's a very serious issue at the FCC, that could fundamentally go to their character qualifications to even hold a license."

The investigation, which Carr initiated Friday, zeroes in on Disney's internal DEI framework and whether it conflicts with FCC's equal employment opportunity (EEO) regulations. Under these rules, broadcasters are prohibited from making employment decisions based on protected characteristics such as race and gender. "The evidence we have so far indicates potentially that Disney and ABC were making employment decisions based on race and gender," Carr said, referencing alleged quotas and "race-defined affinity groups."

...

Carr also hinted that Disney may have rebranded some DEI programs without altering the underlying policies. In his letter to the company, he noted that the FCC's enforcement division would follow up on whether such changes were superficial attempts to evade regulatory scrutiny.

The probe into Disney mirrors a similar investigation the FCC launched into Comcast just weeks ago, raising questions about how widespread such practices may be within legacy media corporations. Carr emphasized in letters to both companies that the FCC's role is to ensure broadcast license holders are not promoting "invidious forms of discrimination."

Speaking of doling out high-paying gigs to people based not on talent but on skin color:

This is a good place to sneak in an update on Snow Woke.

The son of the film's producer defended his father's reluctant efforts to stop Rachel Zegler from tanking the film with her constant divisive political sloganeering by saying, "Narcissism is not something to be coddled or encouraged."

Well, coincidentally, a fellow actress who appeared with her in the similarly-disastrous West Side Story posted that same quote.

On Tuesday, Ariana DeBose, 34, posted a now-deleted Instagram post slamming her "West Side Story" co-star Rachel Zegler, 23 over the latter's "Snow White" controversy.

The original post that the "Hamilton" actress displayed on her Instagram was a quote saying, "Narcissism is not something to be coddled or encouraged."

After that initial post, DeBose said in a follow-up, "I post quotes all the time and thought this one was meaningful. Will fully cop to the fact I did not do any research on where this quote came from, nor did I know of the connection until it was pointed out to me."

LOL shyeah sure, you didn't know the quote was about your West Side Story co-star when you posted it.

The actress won an Oscar for her supporting role as Anita in Steven Spielberg's 2021 adaptation of "West Side Story." Zegler starred as Maria in that film.

"I have no intention of inserting myself into a news cycle," DeBose added in her follow-up post. "This is not the first time I've posted about dealing with narcissism and it probably won't be the last, but next time I'll be sure to clarify its origins first."

Uh-huh.

Check out who's a big fan of Rachel Zegler: Hollywood's current favorite low-talent leftwing agitator Pedro Pascal.

...

On Sunday, Pedro Pascal, 49, posted a photo of Zegler on his Instagram Stories, tagging her and adding the caption, "icon." Meanwhile, John Lennon's son, Sean, slammed Zegler as a "brat."

I can't wait until Fantastic Four bombs so that Hollywood stops casting this flabby dadbod acne-scarred dead-eyed Charisma Vacuum in every damn movie.

Posted by: Ace at 04:30 PM | Comments (274) | Trackbacks (Suck)

How Do "Civil Servants" and "Non-Profit" Personnel Become So Insanely Rich? Simple, They're Just Stealing Public Money and Calling Themselves Heroes for It

This goes on in every single NGO. Leftist government functionaries send billions of dollars to their leftist pals who run these embezzlement factories, knowing that when they exit government they will get put on the board of an NGO and get paid off themselves.

Minnesota food bank CEO steps down as legislators question her $721K salary

Second Harvest Heartland defended its executive compensation and financial stewardship, but some legislators are concerned by the "out of control" salaries at nonprofits requesting public dollars.

Minnesota's hunger crisis is growing--and apparently so is the appetite for big executive pay at one of the state's top food nonprofits.

"Nonprofit" just means that none of the money will go to shareholders. It will all be poured into the bank accounts of the principals running the "nonprofit."

Allison O'Toole, CEO of Second Harvest Heartland, earned $721,000 in total compensation in 2022--even as the nonprofit has lobbied for taxpayer funding and warned of rising hunger across Minnesota, where 26% of households with children are food insecure, according to its own research.

Now, as O'Toole steps down after six years at the helm, lawmakers are raising questions.

Now? Oh right, this is Communist-Held Minnesota, which, let's face it, we should just make officially part of Canada already.

Rep. Pam Altendorf, R-Red Wing, told Alpha News that O'Toole's salary issue first surfaced during a recent "food day" at the Capitol, when food shelf representatives, including O'Toole, testified before the House Children and Families Committee.

"Rep. Bjorn Olson pulled the 990 [tax form] and shared Allison O'Toole's salary with our committee members right before she testified," Altendorf said. "That's when the questions started."

Rep. Marion Rarick, R-Maple Lake, later raised the issue during a March 17 House committee hearing where a DFL lawmaker questioned why a GOP bill was reducing funding for Second Harvest Heartland in a proposed agriculture budget.

"It looks like the base funding for Second Harvest Heartland is $3.4 million and you reduce it by $900,000 in both the first biennium and the tails," said Rep. Zack Stephenson, DFL-Coon Rapids.

But Rarick said she thinks the organization "can handle it."

"They do have a $260 million, that's their gross revenue," she said during the hearing. "What's even more interesting, I think, is that their CEO, their top person, makes $721,000. Yeah, $721,000 is the top person ... and they have 10 people that make more than the governor, which is more than $150,000. So that's well over $2.6 million in their highest-paid people."

About a week after the salary figures were brought up at the committee hearing, Second Harvest announced O'Toole's resignation.

...

Altendorf also pointed to what she sees as a deeper issue. She says the nonprofit hired a "voter engagement coordinator" in 2024 to conduct get-out-the-vote efforts--something she calls "a huge conflict of interest" for an organization receiving taxpayer dollars.

"The public is waking up to the money funneling system happening within the Minnesota state government," Altendorf said. "And I'm hearing loud and clear--taxpayers have had enough."

Posted by: Ace at 03:40 PM | Comments (347) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Trump Nears the Record for Reductions in the Federal Workforce as Jobs Growth Comes In, Get This, Above "Expectations"

Cut the fat.

The Trump administration's efforts to dramatically reduce the size of the federal workforce appear on pace to surpass the record workforce reductions under the Clinton administration. The rapid-fire restructuring of major federal agencies, mass terminations, buyouts, and resignations, however, could see him achieve in mere months more than Clinton did in eight years.

During the 1990s, President Bill Clinton reduced the size of the federal civilian workforce from roughly 2.2 million to 1.8 million, largely through federal buyouts. Upper estimates put the figure at 426,200 federal jobs eliminated. That reduction stands as the largest cut to the federal headcount since World War II.

Civilian workforce figures exclude military personnel and United States Postal Service (USPS) and most totals refer to executive branch employees, who make up the lion's share of the federal payroll. Those employees are also the administration's top priority for cuts as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under Elon Musk works to axe trillions in spending from the budget.

Early in this second Trump administration, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) coordinated a large-scale federal buyout, offering employees the option of resigning to secure pay through Sept. 30.

The administration said that about 75,000 employees took the offer, accounting for roughly 3% of the 2.3 million federal civilian employees. Trump had hoped for as many as 5%-10% to take the deal and several major agencies have begun to offer a second round of buyouts, hoping that the ongoing terminations will make employees less hesitant to accept.

...

Trump will still need to reduce the headcount by roughly 200,000 to break the Clinton record. Assessing the exact figure of firings under Trump thus far is difficult, in no small part due to the intervention of judges who have delayed or ordered the reversal of some.

The cuts to the federal workforce did not, as leftists claim, harm the economy. In fact, they seem to have increased economic activity in the private sector, which is the sector where we want job growth.

March's Jobs Report crushed expectations, which was good news in and of itself BUT when you look at the report by the numbers, it's even better. Remember during the Biden years how they'd make a big deal about how many jobs they added and then we'd find out a couple of weeks later it was wrong or that the numbers added were government jobs?

Yeah.

That is not the case now under Trump.

Take a look:

Rapid Response 47
@RapidResponse47

JOBS REPORT by the numbers:

- 228,000 jobs added, beating expectations by 88,000.
- 459,000 increase in full time workers.
- 209,000 increase in private employment.
- 13,000 increase in construction jobs.
- 22,900 increase in transportation & warehousing jobs.
- 23,700 increase in retail trade jobs.
- 232,000 increase in the labor force.
- 4,000 decline in federal government jobs.

The public supports Trump's deportations:

CBS Poll: Nearly 6 in 10 Americans Support Trump's Mass Deportations

A majority of Americans support President Donald Trump's mass deportation program, a new poll from CBS News finds.

About 58 percent of American adults told CBS pollsters that they approve of Trump's program to "find and deport immigrants who are in the United States illegally," while 42 percent said they disapprove.

Most significantly, 56 percent of swing voters support Trump's deportation program, as well as 93 percent of Republicans. Likewise, majorities of white non-college-educated Americans, 69 percent, and white college-educated Americans, 56 percent, support the deportations.

Hispanic Americans are a bit more split on the issue, with 47 percent approving of Trump's deportations and 53 percent opposing.

Trump's immigration policies, poll after poll has found, remain largely popular with Americans.

The left is pushing what is essentially a push-poll that asks: Do you support Trump illegally and mistakenly sending law-abiding American citizens to El Salvadoran torture prisons?

This juiced question basically boils down to "Do you agree that bad deportations are bad?" and forces the answer that the left wants to claim indicates that Americans oppose the deportations.

For the next story, keep in mind that the media routinely scolds Americans that they're not allowed to have opinions on major political questions of the day because they're not "experts." Also note that media personnel usually have degrees in liberal arts and crafts subjects, or in "journalism," which is not a degree that confers any expertise in any subject matter "journalists" routinely offer their opinions about, suggesting that those opinions are expert and authoritative.

Meanwhile, Jake Tapper will scold you for saying that Kamala Harris sounds drunk or Biden is exhibiting the signs of senility, insisting that you cannot judge what drunk people sound like without a degree in neurology and organic chemistry, and you cannot spot someone slurring their words and losing their train of thought due to age-related dementia without advanced degrees in neurology and elder care.

So, NBC wanted an Authoritative Expert to trash Trump's reciprocal tariffs, and they found a... nurse to render her expert opinion on tariff policy,.

Don't worry, though -- her great grandfather was a congressman who passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, and as you know, "expertise" is passed on by genetics whenever the media decides it is.

NBC News
@NBCNews

Her great-grandfather was behind the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act -- which many economic historians believe worsened the Great Depression. She thinks Trump's tariffs are "terrible."

Speaking of spotting intoxicated people, Kamala Harris has "finally" spoke out against Trump, and the media is giddy. This, they deem, is a "stunning" event, almost as stunning as the Fiercely Heterosexual (TM) Cory Booker standing on his feet and blabbing for twenty-four hours.

And Kamala sounds like she knocked back a few schnapps before speaking.

In my Non-Jake-Tapper-Certified Expert Opinion on detecting slurring.

Posted by: Ace at 02:45 PM | Comments (332) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Trump Fires NSA Director, His Deputy, and Six Other NSA Staffers; Speculation Is That Laura Loomer Showed Trump Evidence That They Were Disloyal Biden Holdovers Undermining His Executive Authority

Finally we're getting the "You're Fired's" we were promised in 2016.

The director of the National Security Agency, Air Force Gen. Timothy Haugh, reportedly was fired Thursday from his post as the head of the agency.

Haugh's removal as director of the NSA, the nation's primary cyber espionage and electronic eavesdropping agency, comes on the same day at least three White House National Security Council staffers reportedly also were shown the door.

The ousted NSA director's civilian deputy, Wendy Noble, was also let go Thursday, according to the Washington Post, citing current and former US officials.

Noble was reassigned to a role within the Pentagon's Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, according to the outlet.

The reason behind the NSA shakeup is unknown, the US officials told the outlet.

Haugh, who also serves as the Pentagon's Cyber Command chief, had led the NSA since February 2024.

...

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, slammed Haugh's dismissal.

The fact that Mark Warner and, as you'll see below, Martha Raddatz are protesting these firings is all the proof I need they are eminently justified and critical.

"General Haugh has served our country in uniform, with honor and distinction, for more than 30 years. At a time when the United States is facing unprecedented cyber threats, as the Salt Typhoon cyberattack from China has so clearly underscored, how does firing him make Americans any safer?" Warner wrote on X.

The senator also took aim at President Trump -- referencing reports that the firings of National Security Council staffers came shortly after he took a meeting with right-wing influencer Laura Loomer.

"It is astonishing that President Trump would fire the nonpartisan, experienced leader of the NSA while still failing to hold any member of his team accountable for leaking classified information on a commercial messaging app -- even as he apparently takes staffing direction on national security from a discredited conspiracy theorist in the Oval Office," Warner wrote in a separate post.

Loomer is a loon but crazy people do sometimes use their obsessiveness to dig up facts. Once again, the left is sputtering about who brought the information to Trump as a way to attack the information. Musk isn't firing people at DOGE; he brings the info to Trump, and Trump fires them.

But they fixate on Musk "not being elected."

Seems like the same jive here with Loomer. If Loomer brought Trump this information, it was still the duly elected-and-sworn president who read it and found it credible and took appropriate action.

As promised, crag-faced Baba Yaga and weepy Deep State nostalgist Martha Raddatz broke out her quaking Cry-Voice over the firings, which pretty much cinches it that they all leak to her.

Posted by: Ace at 01:28 PM | Comments (490) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Unbelievably, Joe Biden Spent Millions on an EPA Museum to Propandize to People How Much the EPA Has Done for Them

Thankfully, it did little propagandizing because who on earth would go to the "EPA Museum."

These people demented space aliens. They have no conception of how actual humans think.

Real humans do not go to Museums of Bureaucracy.

I used to laugh at conspiracy theories about "the Reptilians."

Now I want to know more.

EPA Museum -- Yes, One Actually Existed -- Shuttered After Zeldin Calls Out Massive Funding, Lack of Visitors

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under Administrator Lee Zeldin, has decided to close the National Environmental Museum and Education Center, a project launched during the Biden administration, Fox News reports.

Despite its mission to "highlight environmental achievements," the museum struggled to attract visitors leaving taxpayers with a hefty bill for a largely empty space. Even with free admission, relatively no one could find any desire to walk through the doors. Although the lack of visitors is likely not surprising anyone, the money being poured into the museum just might.

The museum, located at the EPA headquarters near the White House, opened in May 2024 with the goal of celebrating America's environmental progress. Former EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan envisioned it as a space to honor bipartisan efforts to protect public health and the environment. However, the museum saw fewer than 2,000 visitors in its first nine months, which some may call pathetic.

Taxpayers had invested $4 million to bring the museum up to Smithsonian standards, with an additional $600,000 per year required for upkeep. That worked out to about $315 per visitor--a price tag that Zeldin and his team argue cannot be justified.

According to Zeldin's EPA, the museum leaned heavily on themes like "environmental justice" and climate change, which critics argued felt more like partisan messaging than an inclusive celebration of environmental progress.

"Environomental justice" is just another gayop propaganda word for "using environmental funding and arguments to move money to Democrats' minority grifter NGOs."

Maintenance expenses included everything from artifact storage and landscaping to security and audiovisual upkeep.

Artifacts?

Like halogen-filled display cases showing EPA regulations?

Pro-Tip: If nothing in your museum is worth Nick Cage's time to steal it, it's not a real museum.

According to Fox News, "a breakdown of estimated annual costs to operate the museum, which was provided to Fox Digital, shows taxpayers were expected to foot the bill for an estimated: $123,766.29 in annual cleaning and landscaping costs, $37,899 for audio and visual maintenance, $54,292.99 in annual 'artifact storage' costs, $8,900 for 'Magnetometer maintenance,' $46,000 for X-ray maintenance, an estimated $123,000 in utility costs, and $207,326 in annual costs to fund two security guards for the museum during operating hours. The total annual operating costs totaled just more than $600,000."

X-ray machines and magnetometers are expensive security apparatuses. So they're spending millions to protect a fake museum from all its literal ones of visitors.

More spending on "artifact storage." Now, I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist, but I just googled it and it turns out that the $52,292.99 spent on "artifact storage" just happens to be what it costs for a large incubator for Reptilian Eggs.

Coincidence?

Serious, and possibly controversial question:

Remember when we all thought Obama was the worst president ever?

Has Biden eclipsed him?

Posted by: Ace at 12:22 PM | Comments (508) | Trackbacks (Suck)

THE MORNING RANT: Buck Shots – 4/04/2025

My apologies, but personal obligations prevented time for much content today. But here are a few quick shots:

There are some conservative legal minds I follow on Twitter, whom I greatly admire, and I am very impressed at their efforts to document all the legal machinations going on with the rogue federal judges and their extra-constitutional interference in the Executive Branch. Unfortunately, documenting this nonsense is like trying to be the scorekeeper in a game of Calvinball. The Trump administration is trying to play by judicial rules that are constantly in flux, and outside the enumerated powers of the Constitution.

I assume the day is coming when Donald Trump will let John Roberts know that the Chief Justice had a chance to sit on that zoo judiciary of his, but now it’s too late, and those rogue judges will just be ignored going forward.

In fact, President Biden already set the precedent that the President can boldly ignore judicial rulings, including from the Supreme Court itself. In Biden’s own words, “The Supreme Court blocked me from relieving student debt. But they didn’t stop me.” Democrats, the media, and the Washington establishment were uniformly ecstatic at Biden for ignoring the Supreme Court.

Thanks to Joe Biden, President Trump has the green light to ignore not only the rogue federal judges, but also SCOTUS itself, and no one has any standing to complain. They didn’t think the new rules would ever come back to haunt them.

The Supreme Court tried to block me from relieving student debt. But they didn’t stop me.

I’ve relieved student debt for over 5 million Americans. I’m going to keep going. pic.twitter.com/m1yh6lYGph

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 30, 2024

*****

Did any of you see this story out of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel? “Wisconsin Trump voter, whose wife was detained by ICE, says he doesn't regret his vote”

Wisconsin Trump voter, whose wife was detained by ICE, says he doesn't regret his vote https://t.co/aN9GmBtMOf

— Journal Sentinel (@journalsentinel) March 22, 2025

It reminds me of this gag:

Posted by: Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM | Comments (339) | Trackbacks (Suck)