The Bidens have thought about what the American public craves, and what they've decided is that America just wants more Biden Cowbell!

David Strom quotes NBC "News:"

WASHINGTON -- Former President Joe Biden has told some Democratic leaders he'll raise funds, campaign and do anything else necessary for Democrats to recover lost ground as the Trump administration rolls back programs the party helped design, according to people close to him.

Biden privately met last month with the new Democratic National Committee chairman, Ken Martin, and offered to help as the party struggles to regain its viability amid polling that shows its popularity has been sinking, the people said.

So far, Biden's overture seems to have fallen flat. Democrats find themselves adrift, casting about for a compelling messenger.

Whoever that is, it's not Biden, many party activists and donors contend. He's tethered to the 2024 defeat and, at 82, is a symbol more of the party's past than its future, they argue.

"Who's going to want Joe Biden back in the game?" said a major Biden supporter, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk candidly about him.

Strom also writes that transgender violence is a real and growing concern, and that we must no longer be silent about it.

Gay-coded deserter and Chinese Agent Tim Waltz also believes that the Democrat Party needs him, too. Here he argues that abolishing the Department of Education will bring back Jim Crow, the Democrats' favorite stupid thing to say.

Karolien Leavitt wants to know what American students have gotten out of three trillion dollars in DOEd funding.

UFC star Connor MacGregor officially announces his candidacy for president of Ireland. Ireland needs a hero.

John Sexton points out that "Obama's Brain" Ben Rhodes -- the man who created the leftwing media "know nothing" Echo Chamber to sell the Iran Nuclear Deal -- is now admitting that a lot of the Democrat Party's current problems stem from their constant lying about Joe Biden's mental fitness.

The hard truth is that the Democratic Party, in its current form, cannot lead the opposition that is required. Faced with a relentless onslaught from Mr. Trump, the party has lost touch with an electorate that sees it as emblematic of what they hate about politics, a polarized culture, overseas commitments and an economy where being middle class doesn't feel like enough to get by.

The party has a credibility gap rooted in its initial willingness to support Joe Biden's decision to run for re-election while warning that the stakes were existential. If that was the case, then why ignore the overwhelming majorities of Americans who believed that he was too old to run, and choose loyalty to a Washington stalwart over the country's appetite for drastic change?

We are living through the reckoning of defending the status quo.

Posted by: Ace at 04:20 PM | Comments (317) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Noted Ladykiller Alec Baldwin has a new reality show on TLC, presumably because he's now uninsurable and unable to get hired to act. He actually shows his seven children on camera because that's very healthy for their development, as his Selfish Little Pig Daughter can tell you.

In what may or may not be an attempt to stir controversy to get people to notice this show is even on the air, his Fake Spanish Wife Hilarious cucked him publicly.

Megyn Kelly points out that Hilarious says not to believe anything Alec Baldwin says about anything except history, because he "just makes it all up." This is at 6:00 in the below clip.

(Personally I'd guess he also lies about history, but Hilarious is stupid and ill-educated so she can't say for sure that he is lying when he makes up a historic "fact.")

Alec Baldwin claimed that he never pulled the trigger when he shot Helyna Hutchins to death.

And here's his own wife -- or should I say, muher -- telling the world they shouldn't believe anything Baldwin says because all he does is lie.

Posted by: Ace at 03:34 PM | Comments (282) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Scott Jennings writes about the left inciting terroristic violence.

[T]his is deadly serious because the hysteria driving the critics of the President and Elon Musk is disturbing and dangerous.

On Tuesday, I had the pleasure of debating this topic with former Biden White House official Neera Tanden over on CNN. When given the opportunity to unequivocally denounce recent violence and vandalism directed at Musk's company Telsa, Tanden deflected and dissembled.

'Anyone who commits violence against Tesla or Congress or anyone else should be put in jail 1,000 percent, but that should not stifle dissent or opposition to Elon Musk,' she said.

Of course, Tanden points to the January 6 riots -- a shameful day that I have condemned at every chance -- because she would rather debate a strawman than face facts.

The truth of the matter is that mobs are not descending on Capitol Hill any longer - they're targeting Telsa. And Tanden won't clearly condemn it.

In cities across the country, Tesla vehicles, dealerships and charging stations have been vandalized, firebombed, shot at and otherwise attacked.

On Wednesday, a website - that I will not name - reportedly published the personal information of Tesla owners and an interactive map that uses an image of a Molotov cocktail as a cursor.

President Trump has labeled the violence as domestic terrorism and I couldn't agree more. But flip on your TV sets and you'll hear America's leading liberals reveling in the mayhem.

Take Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the hapless buffoon who recently ran for vice president on Kamala Harris's 2024 'Joy' campaign.

'I'm not a vindictive person or anything, but I take great pleasure in the fact that [Musk's] life is going to get very, very difficult,' he admitted during a town hall event on Tuesday.

There's a word for taking pleasure in another person's pain: sadism.

During Tim's rant, he pulled out his iPhone to reveal that he has belatedly added a stock widget to his home screen so he can watch Tesla's recent declining stock values - he said it gives him 'a little boost.'

(For the record, while Telsa stock has fallen in recent weeks, it is still trading above its price just five months ago and is worth more than General Motors.)

...

President Trump has labeled the violence as domestic terrorism and I couldn't agree more...

Far worse than Walz's hypocrisy is the fact he is justifying a manic anti-Telsa frenzy.

On Tuesday, late night 'comedian' Jimmy Kimmel cheered Tesla's recent stock drop (as his leftist audience applauded wildly). Then he stared into the camera and said -- with all the sarcasm he could muster -- "Please don't vandalize... don't ever vandalize Tesla vehicles," pausing dramatically to make sure you got the joke.

To me, his message was clear, ABC's Kimmel endorses the criminal destruction of Telsa cars.

Kimmel stared into the camera and said ¿ with all the sarcasm he could muster ¿ 'Please don't vandalize¿ don't ever vandalize Tesla vehicles,' pausing dramatically to make sure you got the joke.

For sure, the Left has condoned destruction when it suited them in the past -- whether it was justifying the violence of the George Floyd riots, or harassing Trump officials in public, or censoring speech on social media. And just as they smeared Trump as a dictator and a Nazi -- claiming he would cancel all future elections if he won and that he would tear up the US Constitution -- Elon now faces the wrath of Leftists who don't consider the consequences of their rhetoric.

'People are legitimately upset,' said Tanden on CNN.

Perhaps, but there's nothing 'legitimate' about domestic terrorism.

If Democrats can't summon the courage to say that then they have no business calling themselves patriots.

The Reaping Phase
@AceofSpadesHQ

very serious and important question for you, @KrystalBall and all the other neolib revolutionaries. I have a strong disagreement with you. Do I and other MAGA voters have a right to set your cars and businesses on fire? Let us know so we can all play by the same rules.

The Reaping Phase
@AceofSpadesHQ

The days of the left's claim to the exclusive right to political violence are OVER, @KrystalBall. If political violence is permissible, you better believe the right will partake in the orgy of arson and assault.

So choose carefully if you really want a civil war.

I don't like to talk about political violence, and I have avoided it before. But now "respectable" members of the media left are calling for political violence and it's time to go on the record:

The left is going to protect its terrorists. When they ago to trial, leftwingers will indulge in jury nullification and let their terrorists free to terrorize again.

They will cheer this as a victory. In fact, they will have engineered a bloody defeat.

Tokyo Rose was not "protected" just because she was part of the media. She was a propagandist for an enemy. The propaganda officers of a terrorist army are valid targets in war.

Media types who sign on to be the propagandists of domestic terrorists are themselves enemies and therefore #Eligible for the same treatment they urge for their enemies.

This is a delicate moment. I warn the left: You are not immune. If you call for domestic terrorism, you are yourselves perfectly valid, #Eligible targets for the same criminal behavior.

Either we all agree that political violence is unjustifiable in all cases, or we all agree that political violence is justifiable in all cases.

The left has made its choice. I warn you that the right is considering a very similar choice.

Lefty media types assume they're somehow untouchable. They're not. They're ringleaders. If the left imagines that they can agitate for their antifa Street Militias to beat up conservatives and destroy their property and set fire to their businesses again, and the right will meekly take it as we took it in the Summer of Love, I am providing them with the vital intelligence that We are no longer submitting to your reign of violence peaceably.

We also can stage "fiery but mostly peaceful 'protests.'"

Remember that your hero, the DEI president Barack Obama, used a drone strike to assassinate an American citizen for propagandizing for terrorism. Not actually committing it by his own hand, but by cravenly urging others to do his bloody work for him.

He was deemed a valid target in warfare. His American citizenship did not protect him, nor did his nominal claim to be a "political commentator."

It's important to let the left know what the New Rules are: what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

I know what the left believes: They have used their propaganda powers to establish the double-standard that the left is justified in burning down car dealerships and entire neighborhood whereas the right should be sent to prison for ten years merely for "parading in a public place."

But the left must understand: Your propaganda powers are at their lowest level in all of history. Witness the election of Trump 2.0.

We are done with the "domestic terrorism for thee but not for me" regime.

You are playing an extremely dangerous game. I think you have the right to be warned of the danger you're placing yourselves in.

Please desist from the path of madness and violence you're on or you will find the right joins you on this bloody path.

Is that what you want?

Everyone on the right has a Little List. Do you really want us to start checking people and businesses off our Little Lists?

War is easy to get into and hard to get out of. Please stop before we stop asking you to stop and simply embrace the #NewRules you've created.

The left seems to think they're the only ones "smart" enough and "brave" enough to embrace political violence. I've got news for you: A lot of us on the right have been thinking about this too.

Abandon your belief that you, the weakest and poorest-armed people in the country, can impose your will on the rest of the country through domestic terrorism, or get ready for the right to start taking their own trophies.

And get ready for "respectable" voices on the right to do exactly what you're doing -- making excuses for domestic terrorism or even actively encouraging it.

Posted by: Ace at 02:23 PM | Comments (438) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hello everyone. I hope you're all doing well.

Paul, Weiss acknowledged the wrongdoing of its former partner Mark Pomerantz, who was a key instigator/plotter of the Alvin Bragg fake charges against Trump in the Stormy Daniels matter.

President Donald Trump has reached a peace deal with a prominent law firm, agreeing to lift a punitive executive order in exchange for concessions that include an agreement to do pro bono work on behalf of conservative causes.

The White House said in a social media post Thursday that it would rescind the executive order Trump imposed March 14 on Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison as part of a broader assault on law firms he viewed as antagonistic.

Paul, Weiss pledged to abandon diversity policies and to provide free legal representation equivalent to $40 million for clients with a "full spectrum of political viewpoints" to include the president's antisemitism taskforce, "fairness in the justice system" and "other mutually agreed projects," according to the post.

Paul, Weiss had no immediate comment but the White House included a statement from the firm's chairman, Brad Karp, in the announcement.

"We are gratified that the President has agreed to withdraw the Executive Order concerning Paul, Weiss," Karp said. "We look forward to an engaged and constructive relationship with the President and his Administration."

The agreement removes the immediate threat to Paul, Weiss from an order that would have sharply limited its ability to interact with government agencies and its access to government contracts -- actions that a federal judge said in a similar case involving another firm appear to violate the Constitution.

I'm worried about the part of the agreement about $40 million for pro bono services for Trump's favored causes. That's not a direct personal benefit, but it is an indirect personal benefit. I think Trump made a mistake in agreeing to that or asking for that.

It feels like a trap to me. A judge will overturn this agreement and use that part of it as proof that Trump is weaponizing government for his own benefit. I wonder if Paul, Weiss offered that themselves, knowing it was a Poisoned Apple that Trump should not take.

Trump issued the executive order to punish Paul, Weiss for its past association with Mark Pomerantz, a former partner who investigated Trump's finances and payments to porn star Stormy Daniels for the Manhattan District Attorney's office. The lawyer ultimately resigned after District Attorney Alvin Bragg chose not to pursue charges.

"The President is agreeing to this action in light of a meeting with Paul, Weiss Chairman, Brad Karp, during which Mr. Karp acknowledged the wrongdoing of former Paul, Weiss partner, Mark Pomerantz, the grave dangers of Weaponization, and the vital need to restore our System of Justice," the White House said in the statement.

Posted by: Ace at 01:18 PM | Comments (338) | Trackbacks (Suck)

This is DEI.

A professor of physics and gender studies who has argued that "white empiricism" undermines Einstein's theory of general relativity now sits on a top physics advisory panel within the Department of Energy, raising questions from fellow scientists about the panel's integrity and providing a potential target for the Trump administration as it seeks to stamp out DEI within the federal government.

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a cosmologist at the University of New Hampshire who has suggested that string theory "failed to succeed" because the field has too many white men, was appointed to the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP) under the Biden administration in 2024. The panel advises the Energy Department on research and funding priorities for particle physics, giving it significant say over which projects receive federal support.

String theory failed because there was never any empirical evidence for it and in forty years of spending billions, no one has found any. The theory is a math-only, paper-only "theory" that is endlessly mutable. Every time a very expensive test rules out one configuration of string theory, they just change some of the formulas and champion this "new" model of string theory.

It's a 40-year hole we've been digging.

But for this DEI racist -- it's just that "White men" were doing the research into it, not brilliant Strong Empowered Feminist Grifters like herself.

Prescod-Weinstein will remain on HEPAP until 2027 unless the Trump administration takes action to remove her. Her role at the Energy Department has rankled some scientists, who say that an institution tasked with directing federal research should not be advised by a woman who, in one 2020 paper, wrote that "Black feminist theory intersectionality should change physics."

Prescod-Weinstein's "scientific accomplishments seem modest and her racialist and sexist view of science, combined with her uniquely destructive activism, ought to be disqualifying," said Sergiu Klainerman, a mathematician at Princeton University who studies the theory of general relativity. "It seems to me incredible that she has a voice on important decisions concerning the DOE physics division."

...

She first raised eyebrows in 2020 when she argued that a culture of "white empiricism"--in which "only white people" are deemed capable of objectivity--"undermines a significant theory of twentieth-century physics: General Relativity."

Now get ready for her to expose herself as an idiot grifter: This woman, who is now a high-ranking official in the DOE's high-energy physics department, has a grade-school level of what "relativity" means. She thinks it means what all freshmen non-science-majors thinks it means, which is that "we're all equal" or some bullshit.

I would like to put her under oath and force her to answer actual scientific questions about the theory. I don't think she could answer the most basic ones.

Einstein's theory is rooted in the "idea that there is no single objective frame of reference that is more objective than any other," Prescod-Weinstein wrote in Signs, a gender studies journal published by the University of Chicago. "Yet the number of women in physics remains low, especially those of African descent ... Given that Black women must, according to Einstein's principle ... have an equal claim to objectivity regardless of their simultaneously experiencing intersecting axes of oppression, we can dispense with any suggestion that the low number of Black women in science indicates any lack of validity on their part as observers."

In other words, if a black woman knows nothing at all about relativity or even high-school level physics, her opinions about it are just as important as those of an actual specialist in relativity.

Because, see, the theory of relativity just means that We're All Equal or something.

Later in the paper, Prescod-Weinstein blamed racism and sexism for the slow pace of scientific discovery in physics. "String theory has failed to succeed in expected ways," she said, "because the community--which is almost entirely male and disproportionately white relative to other areas of physics--is too homogeneous."

The argument attracted widespread ridicule from other scientists, including New York University's Alan Sokal, the physicist who famously conned an academic journal into publishing a paper arguing that quantum gravity was socially constructed.

Prescod-Weinstein "fails to note the most obvious explanation" for string theory's morass, Sokal wrote: "String theory has failed to succeed in expected ways because the problems being studied are extraordinarily difficult."

Well, and also, string theory has not produced a single accurate prediction nor resulted in any theory that advanced any other science or technology.

Sokal, of course, hoaxed leftwing gender ideology journals, like the one that published this grifter know-nothing's musings. From Wikipedia:

The Sokal affair, also known as the Sokal hoax, was a demonstrative scholarly hoax performed by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University and University College London. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of cultural studies. The submission was an experiment to test the journal's intellectual rigor, specifically to investigate whether "a leading North American journal of cultural studies--whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross--[would] publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions."

The article, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", was published in the journal's Spring/Summer 1996 "Science Wars" issue. It proposed that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. The journal did not practice academic peer review at the time, so it did not submit the article for outside expert review by a physicist. Three weeks after its publication in May 1996, Sokal revealed in the magazine Lingua Franca that the article was a hoax.

The hoax caused controversy about the scholarly merit of commentary on the physical sciences by those in the humanities; the influence of postmodern philosophy on social disciplines in general; and academic ethics, including whether Sokal was wrong to deceive the editors or readers of Social Text; and whether Social Text had abided by proper scientific ethics.

She's a "physicist" who can't be published in an actual journal of physics, just in "gender ideology" journals riffing pottishly about relativity meaning that everyone's opinion matters, man.

After the 10/7 Hamas slaughter and rape terror campaign, she of course accused Israel of genocide. I guess "relativity" proves that all methods of conducting war are equally valid, man.

Fire them all. All of them. The entire government exists now only to pay off otherwise-unemployable Democrat polemicist and actual anarchist revolutionaries.

Posted by: Ace at 12:03 PM | Comments (521) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ford’s External Combustion Vehicle Nightmare

The rolling debacle of everything associated with Ford’s electric vehicle agenda just keeps getting worse. Its flagship EV, the F150 Conflagration Lightning pickup truck, has just been recalled again, for the usual reason…

“Ford Recalls F-150 Lightning Over Fire Risk” [KBB – 3/07/2025]

Ford’s EVs aren’t the only thing burning. So is its cash.

You know how the EV fanatics love to toss the word “sustainable” around. Do Bill Ford and CEO Jim Farley not understand that the EV losses they keep piling up year after year are not sustainable? Ford lost another $5.1 billion on its EV program in 2024 after losing $4.7 billion in 2023, and it’s now projecting a $5.5 billion loss in 2025 from its EV division. Something that cannot go on forever will stop. Either it stops because Ford goes broke, or it stops when someone says, ”Enough.”

There has got to be some adult supervision somewhere in the Ford boardroom who will tell Farley and Ford that they gave it their best shot, but it’s now time to, ahem, pull the plug on this 21st century E-dsel.

The EV Death Pool

I never even got around to entering Canadian school bus manufacturer Lion Electric into my EV death pool, but it is already circling the drain. Unfortunately, it didn’t cease to operate before sucking up $160 million in US tax dollars, compliments of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Top Biden EV Bus Maker Nears Bankruptcy, Leaving School Districts and Tens of Millions of Taxpayer Dollars in Limbo [Washington Free Beacon – 02/07/2025]

The Biden administration awarded Canadian electric bus company Lion Electric nearly $160 million to manufacture hundreds of battery-powered buses for school districts nationwide as part of its sweeping climate agenda. In recent weeks, Lion has initiated bankruptcy proceedings, laid off all employees tasked with building its buses, and paused manufacturing operations.

There are dozens of school districts across the country still waiting on delivery of their Lion EV school buses.

Lion's financial demise leaves dozens of school districts—including those in California, Montana, North Dakota, Iowa, Alabama, and Maryland—questioning whether they will receive the buses the Biden administration promised them. Lion has yet to deliver $95 million worth of electric buses to 55 districts across the country…

The school districts that didn’t take delivery of Lion’s electric buses are actually the lucky ones. The school districts that got hurt the worst are the ones that took delivery of these barely operational abominations.

School districts could get a free Lion electric bus through the Biden EPA’s “Clean School Bus Program” for each functioning diesel school bus they disposed of. Now those school districts are without the functioning buses they got rid of, while also stuck with inoperable Lion electric buses.

“Maine’s Lion Electric school buses have been a disaster. What’s next?” [CentralMaine.com – 01/27/2025]

This woman proudly standing (cackling?) in front of a Lion electric school bus is not the President of the United States, for reasons including her support of “venture socialist” boondoggles like the one that sent taxpayer dollars to Lion Electric for inoperable EV school buses.

[h/t to Mike J.Y. (@MichaelinMI on Twitter) for reminding me to post about Lion Electric.]

Trump’s EPA is Beginning “The EV De-Transition”

This is why I voted for Donald Trump…

Posted by: Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM | Comments (340) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Allegory of Italy
Valentin de Boulogne

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (330) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Good morning kids. Well, it looks as if the Dept. of Education is indeed dead. Of course I fully expect some judge to crawl out of the rim of Kilauea and declare the action null and void at any moment. In the past 45 years, about the only thing the Federal DoE did was waste billions of dollars and aid and abet the poisoning of two generations of the minds of America's school children. So, in turning off a major brainwashing mill, the reactions from the criminal scum and mutants also known as the Democrat Party were predictable.

The Department of Education, one of the 100 worst legacies of ‘Jimmuh’, the late and unlamented former worst president, is being slowly phased out by the Trump administration. Expect multiple legal battles to come and the media hysteria has been mounting for much of last week. The problem however is… who cares? The D of E is one of those things that sound important but are really just ways for government bureaucrats, special interests and their massive allied constellation of contractors and crooks to buy second homes.

If it only was mere graft. But the DoE was far worse than that in what it spearheaded

The Biden junta's Department of Education threw away over $100 million on university grant funding to train K-12 social workers in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology, “anti-racism,” and critical race theory.

According to a Wednesday report from Parents Defending Education (PDE), the Education Department awarded $100,964,880 to 26 colleges and universities for the far-left trainings. The grants were awarded apparently to help students with mental health under the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration and the School-Based Mental Health Services grant programs. . . . The Education Department awarded an $8 million grant to Georgia State University’s Master of Social Work program in 2023. The program, which is directed at youth mental health, mandates a “Diversity and Social Justice” course, which “focuses on understanding and applying multicultural concepts to practice, developing awareness of one’s cultural identity, and exploring how diversity and justice issues impact generalist practice in the context of field education,” according to the university website. . . In addition to dismantling the Department of Education altogether, the Trump administration has also been focused on eradicating concepts like DEI ideology, critical race theory, and other discriminatory practices from schools. While the Trump administration had already slashed hundreds of millions in far-left teacher training, a Biden-appointed judge ordered the grants be reinstated.

Literally mainlining Mao and Mau-Mauism into the bloodstream of your children, from preschool to Post-graduate. It should be noted that every state in the union has its own Dept. of Education and you best believe that even in Red States, perversion, anti-Americanism, racialism and leftist indoctrination is in the curriculum to one degree or another.

And as far as judges are concerned, CBD and I discussed this on the latest episode of the podcast linked here and the sidebar. We are in agreement that Trump should disregard these lawless lower court hacks in black, but it raises the specter of the flaccid response from both Congress and SCOTUS in reining in these lawless tyrants as well as what a God-forbid never again Democrat president will do.

Funny how Democrats always view the actions of the court as sacrosanct, except of course when rulings don't go their way, then they go all out to either pack the court or delegitimize it. Failing that, attempt to impeach justices like Clarence Thomas, who they hate with a fury perhaps even greater than that for President Trump for a number of reasons, primarily in that he is the living embodiment that destroys so many of their beliefs and shibboleths about our society,their worldview and belief in their abosule moral authority to impose their will on us. And beyond impeachment, there's always assassination as an option, like what almost happened to Brett Kavanaugh. Lest we forget it was Chuck Schumer who openly threatened Kavanaugh and the other justices if they dared overturn Roe.

Funny, did SCOTUS ever overturn FDR's executive order rounding up Japanese Americans and putting them in concentration camps? The case was Korematsu. Meh, SCOTUS never overturned Dred Scott nor Plessy v. Ferguson. Just saying.

All things considered, the political and cultural winds are at Trump's and our backs at least for the present time on a whole host of issues. And as the Molotov cocktails go flying at Tesla dealerships, the flames seem to be setting the Democrats on fire.

This was the week I became convinced that Don Lemon is an undercover MAGA operative. The former CNN presenter was on Bill Maher’s podcast the other day and was asked about the dire outlook for the Democratic Party. Which way should it go?
“People love AOC” Lemon ventured. “People love Jasmine Crockett. People love Eric Swalwell and the like. I think the Democratic Party should put people out there who the people want — who they’re asking for.”
Maher begged to differ. People do not want these people, he pointed out. But Lemon continued to insist otherwise.
Personally I suspect the only person who ever even pretended to love Eric Swalwell was Chinese spy Fang Fang, who Rep. Swalwell was banging the other year. But that’s a detail.
As I say, the only explanation for Lemon’s statement (other than it being a characteristic brain-fart) is that Lemon is secretly working to keep the MAGA movement in power for the foreseeable future.

Because it is only if the Democrats swing to the hard left that they can make sure the Republicans continue in power unchallenged.
Because it is only if the Democrats swing to the hard left that they can make sure the Republicans continue in power unchallenged.
Desperate times may call for desperate thinking. But these are certainly desperate times for the Democrats.
Just consider how bad the situation is for the party.
First, it is utterly leaderless. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is trying to hold the party together, but his decision to allow a vote on the Republicans’ government funding bill has led to a fall out among the party’s gerontocracy.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 84, this week jabbed at Schumer for giving away to the Republicans “for nothing” in exchange. So dire has been the backlash against Schumer (a mere stripling of 74) that he has canceled his upcoming book tour. “Security concerns” have been offered as the reason.
But that isn’t security concerns from Republican rivals — but rather from disgruntled members of his own party.
Second, there is the dire bench that the Democrats have coming up. One-time golden-boy Gavin Newsom has spent recent weeks trying to tidy up his image faster than he tried to tidy up the Palisades.
Today Governor Gavin is trying to “reach out” and show himself to be a man of the political center. By interviewing Steve Bannon.
Yet the disasters of Newsom’s time as governor will continue to swirl around him. And it’s unlikely that smoke will be able to clear from a bit of light podcasting.
Then there is the left of the party that is trying to drag it their way. But just look at how pathetic it is. It sounds more like a street movement than a political movement.
At a recent protest against federal government expenditure cuts, Democrat Congressman Emanuel Cleaver told an audience: “I want to send a message to somebody. Elon, take your musty millions and musty Moscow rights to the moon. Because if you don’t, we are going to stand up, we are going to speak out, we´re going to march and we are going to do anything we need to do. You must your musty hands off our money or go to Moscow, you musty moo, moo, moo.”

The Gettysburg Address it was not.
But in case anyone forgets, Rep. Cleaver is a member of the Financial Services Subcommittee. And this is the best that he and his colleagues can do? To threaten to stand up and speak out and march and moo?
Similar vibes are coming out of Boston, where Mayor Michelle Wu yesterday announced again that her city will not comply with ICE or any other agencies seeking to remove dangerous illegal migrants from her area.

Confirming her stance, Wu said “We stand with immigrants, you belong here. Boston doesn’t back down. If you come for one of us, you will get all of us.”
So Wu is willing to stand-off against the federal government and law enforcement based on the idea that someone who breaks into America illegally and stays in Boston has as much right to be there as anyone who has spent their whole life working in the city and paying taxes there?
That’s a heck of a platform to run on.
Meanwhile the party’s road-kill are doing what they can to cheer themselves up. This week former VP Candidate Tim Walz (remember him?) cropped up to boast about how masculine he is and how threatening that makes him to Republicans. I won’t repeat the nickname that did for Tim. . . It´s not a much prettier picture in this town [NYC], where the best challenger the Democrats can run for Mayor is Andrew Cuomo — a former governor who was forced to resign in shame.
If the Democrats are willing to take any friendly advice they should accept the fact that they really need to come up with some coherent policies. Something at a higher level than a street protest.
But if you were their enemy? Well then, like Don Lemon, you’d tell them to go the way of AOC and Cleaver and Walz and Wu, and encourage them to moo and moo ’til they can moo no more.

To channel and paraphrase a popular insult, when your enemies are setting themselves on fire, don't cross the street to piss on them.

As for DOGE and the courts, if Trump ignores the hacks in black and charges forward, does he give Democrats an avenue of attack and as mentioned earlier, future precedent to ignore the courts. Then again they've used the courts and bureaucracy as both shield and cudgel to amass, maintain and increase their own political power, thanks to their amorality, criminality and the spinelessness of the institutions and people in them that were supposed to prevent that from happening.

Trump or no Trump, is our society so far gone that even 40 more years of Trump and MAGA administrations might not make a dent in reversing course?

At least the dismantling of the DoE is a positive and necessary opening salvo in the attempt.

May We now go from victory to victory and see our wonderful nation if not fully restored in our lifetime, then secure in the knowledge that it is well on that path that it will be, God-willing.

Have a great weekend.

And lastly, a quick shout-out and 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
• Huge fire shuts down UK’s Heathrow Airport all day Friday — more than 1,300 global flights disrupted as planes forced to turn around
  TRAVEL NIGHTMARE

• The move fulfills a key campaign promise.
  Trump Officially Signs Order To Dismantle Dept Of Education, Pledges: ‘It’s Going To Work’

  Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 07:30 AM | Comments (478) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Top Story

• The Asus Ascent GX10 is a $3000 version of the $4000 Nvidia DGX Spark. (Serve the Home)
  
  That is, it's a mini-PC designed specifically for AI processing, with 20 Arm CPU cores, a custom Nvidia AI GPU, and 128GB of RAM.
  
  It's a reasonable price for what it is, if you want that. If it was 80% cheaper I might buy one myself.
  
  
  

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (147) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Howdy Horde! Not much of an ONT tonight I'm afraid. I had car trouble tonight and just got in. What can you do? Most of y'all will be discussing March Madness anyway. I do have a few links to share.

Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:00 PM | Comments (461) | Trackbacks (Suck)

A whole series of weird, creepy "hidden mother" photographs.

Apparently:

Hidden mother photography is a genre of photography common in the Victorian era in which young children were photographed with their mother present but hidden in the photograph. It arose from the need to keep children still while the photograph was taken due to the long exposure times of early cameras.

The daguerreotypes that became publicly available during the 1840s had exposure times from tens of seconds to several minutes. While exposure times shrank as photographic technology developed, to get a clear picture of a child during the 19th century the child had to be persuaded to stay still, which could be difficult to achieve. One technique was for the mother--or sometimes the father, a nanny or the photographer's assistant--to be hidden within the frame, often behind curtains, under cloaks, or disguised as chairs. Mothers were also sometimes obscured simply by removing parts of the photograph afterward, or by them standing slightly off to one side so they could be cropped out. How successfully the mother was hidden varied. Sometimes, simply draped with fabric, their shape would be obvious. In some photographs, arms are clearly visible. A paper overlay could be used when framing the photograph to hide the parts showing the mother, focusing on the child instead The practice of hidden mother photography continued into the 1920s, fading away as cameras became more ubiquitous and exposure times became faster, rendering need to hold small children rigidly still no longer necessary.

It doesn't say why the mother had to be covered. I imagine the baby would keep turning to look at the mother, if it saw the mother, so they hid her under a carpet.

Capybaras are even cuter as babies because of course they are.

Pigeon has discovered a new way of hoarding food. Might make it hard to fly away with his haul, though.

You ever see an action movie and the hero is "hidden" up on the ceiling but the ceiling isn't that high and you're like, "There's no way if someone walked into that room he wouldn't naturally just see the guy perched on the ceiling. You just see it. Your cone of vision extends upwards, too."

That always bothers me. But this cat suggests that maybe it's real.

Speaking of action movies: Heroic entrance into a jeep.

"Good garden dog" helps his master bury the potatoes he's planting.

Magician wows the audience.

Have you ever seen snails eating?

Come out to the coast, we'll buy the dog a trampoline, we'll have a few laughs...

Dog takes his ailing fren out for a walk.

Cadyshack was real.

Seal makes human surfers look like n00bz.

Pet owners: I have no idea why I'm always exhausted every morning! Definitely watch through 2am.

Puppy and baby.

Posted by: Ace at 07:49 PM | Comments (314) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Finally, a non-insane ruling from the high court of New York State:

Breanna Morello
@BreannaMorello

New York's highest court just ruled against NYC's law allowing non-citizens to vote.

Voting is limited to citizens, the court ruled.

It was a 6-to-1 decision.

Would they have ruled this way before the election, before Trump announced to the world that Woke Is Dead?

New York's top court has struck down a law that would have let noncitizens vote in New York City elections, with the court's progressive majority overwhelmingly siding with Republicans who challenged the idea.

The law would have made more than 800,000 people eligible to vote in municipal contests such as mayoral races.

"We file some lawsuits that are stretches," said Joe Borelli, the former Republican minority leader of the New York City Council and one of the plaintiffs who challenged the law. "This one was, from the beginning, an open-shut case."

The law was approved in the waning days of Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration. When neither he nor successor Eric Adams issued a veto, it automatically became law in early 2022.

The legal battles since then have centered on language in the state constitution that says "every citizen shall be entitled to vote at every election for all officers elected by the people."

Republicans argued that this prohibits all noncitizens from casting ballots. Democrats on the City Council who defended the law said this language should be viewed as a floor rather than a ceiling, and that local governments have the power to expand the franchise further if they wish.

In a decision handed down by the Court of Appeals on Thursday, the judges brushed off the Democratic argument by a 6-1 margin.

"Under that interpretation, municipalities are free to enact legislation that would enable anyone to vote -- including ... thirteen-year-old children," Chief Judge Rowan Wilson wrote for the majority.

"It is plain from the language and restrictions contained in [the state constitution] that 'citizen' is not meant as a floor, but as a condition of voter eligibility: the franchise extends only to citizens whose right to vote is established by proper proofs," Wilson wrote.

In some related immigration news:

"We Finally Got You:" ICE arrests illegal alien who made herself a cause celebre when she moved herself and her three children into a church basement and demanded it provide her sanctuary.

'We Finally Got You.' Immigrant-Rights Advocate Arrested in Colorado.

Jeanette Vizguerra, who made national news evading deportation in a church basement, is the latest activist to be taken into custody by federal immigration agents.

An undocumented woman in Denver who became a symbol of immigrant resistance during President Trump's first term as she evaded deportation was arrested at work on Monday by federal immigration agents, her family and immigrant activists said.
Jeanette Vizguerra, 53, had been on her break at a Target store near Denver when immigration agents took her into custody, said Jordan Garcia, an immigrant-rights advocate with the American Friends Service Committee who has known Ms. Vizguerra for 15 years.

Recounting details of the arrest that Ms. Vizguerra had relayed to her family, Mr. Garcia said one of the agents told her, "We finally got you."

Ms. Vizguerra drew national attention when, in early 2017, she packed her clothes and moved with her three youngest children into a church basement in Colorado, hoping that the sanctuary of a house of worship would protect her from Mr. Trump's deportation plans. In 2021, she received a one-year stay of deportation from the Biden administration, but friends said Tuesday she was aware of her peril.

Her detention has already stirred a backlash from Colorado Democratic politicians and immigrant-rights supporters, who accused the Trump administration of trying to silence critics of its immigration crackdown.

Mayor Mike Johnston of Denver condemned Ms. Vizguerra's arrest as a "Putin-style persecution of political dissidents" that had ensnared a working-class mother who had dedicated her life to helping other undocumented immigrants.

Posted by: Ace at 06:42 PM | Comments (224) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Get out.

U.S. immigration authorities have detained a Georgetown University graduate student from India, who also teaches at the school, for allegedly having close ties to Hamas and spreading the terrorist group's propaganda and "promoting antisemitism on social media."

The detainee, Badar Khan Suri, was arrested Monday outside of his home in Arlington, Virginia, his attorney, Hassan Ahmad, said Wednesday.

Ahmad said his client is in the U.S. on a student visa to teach at the school. He also said the authorities who arrested Suri said they were with the Department of Homeland Security and informed him that his visa had been revoked by the government.

"Suri has close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas," Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin wrote on X. "The Secretary of State issued a determination on March 15, 2025 that Suri's activities and presence in the United States rendered him deportable under INA section 237(a)(4)(C)(i).

McLaughlin cited a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that "renders an alien deportable if the Secretary of State has reasonable grounds to believe that their presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences."

Georgetown University, a private Jesuit college in Washington, D.C., said it wasn't aware of Suri doing anything wrong, according to NBC News.

Meanwhile, the FBI has stopped hunting grandmothers in red hats and is now rolling up long-sought fugitives.

FBI Director Kash Patel
@FBIDirectorKash

BREAKING: I can now confirm that last night, working with @TheJusticeDept
and other interagency partners, the FBI has extradited one of our "Ten Most Wanted" from Mexico -- one we believe to be a key senior leader of MS-13, Francisco Javier Roman-Bardales.

He was arrested in Mexico and is being transported within the U.S. as we speak, where he will face American justice.

This is a major victory both for our law enforcement partners and for a safer America.

Thank you to our brave personnel for executing the mission. And thank you to Mexico's SSPC and FGE teams for their support of the FBI in this investigation and arrest.

MXM:

FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed Tuesday that one of the nation's most wanted fugitives, Francisco Javier Román-Bardales, has been successfully extradited from Mexico and is now in U.S. custody. Román-Bardales, a senior figure within the violent MS-13 gang, was arrested in Veracruz and immediately processed for extradition under joint efforts by U.S. and Mexican authorities.

Patel praised the mission's execution, thanking American personnel and Mexican law enforcement for their cooperation. "This is a major victory both for our law enforcement partners and for a safer America," he stated.

Román-Bardales has been charged in the United States with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, racketeering, and human trafficking, among other serious offenses. He is accused of orchestrating violent attacks on civilians and rival gangs, as well as overseeing MS-13's extensive drug trafficking and extortion networks.

The Trump administration has classified MS-13 as a terrorist organization, broadening the legal framework for pursuing its members. Some officials argue that this designation could pave the way for U.S. strikes against cartel operations in Mexico.

The DHS is also seizing smuggled drugs on the seas.

Homeland Security: Coast Guard has seized $500M of drugs in recent months

BY Susan Carpenter

The U.S. Coast Guard has seized more than $500 million worth of cocaine and marijuana off the coasts of Mexico, South America and Central America in recent months, the Department of Homeland Security announced Thursday.

In what Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called "an unprecedented seizure of illicit drugs," two Coast Guard vessels intercepted over 45,000 pounds of cocaine and 50 pounds of marijuana headed for the U.S.
What You Need To Know

The U.S. Coast Guard has seized more than $500,000 million worth of cocaine and marijuana off the coast of Mexico, the Department of Homeland Security announced Thursday

Two Coast Guard vessels intercepted over 45,000 pounds of cocaine and 50 pounds of marijuana headed for the U.S. in recent months

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called it "an unprecedented seizure of illicit drugs"

Many of the drug cartels the Coast Guard encountered in its recent cocaine seizures were among the eight groups Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated as foreign terrorist organizations last month

"This action is a testimony to President Trump's commitment to delivering for the American people and his unwavering dedication to our military strength, to our border security, our law enforcement, to our producing incredible results," Noem said at a portside event where she was flanked by Coast Guard officers. "His leadership is making America safe again."

The drug seizure is the result of 14 different interdictions of drug-smuggling vessels off the coasts of Mexico, South America and Central America, four of which happened over a span of 15 minutes.

Since President Donald Trump was sworn in, the U.S. has seized over 80,000 pounds of illegal drugs, according to U.S. Coast Guard acting Commandant Adm. Kevin Lunday. The drugs were intercepted by the Coast Guard in partnership with the departments of Homeland Security, Justice and Defense and 22 Central American, South American and European partners.

It's amazing what a government can do when it's focused on actual government functions, rather than being weaponized into the Armed Wing of the Democrat Party.

Posted by: Ace at 05:43 PM | Comments (261) | Trackbacks (Suck)

As you know, Fox News' polls always skew Democrat because their in-house polling expert is himself a partisan left-wing Hillary Clinton donor. Because FoxNews is a garbage organization that cons the rubes.

But even their skewed poll shows Trump and Republicans at their highest approval rates ever.

Nearly two months into his second term, President Donald Trump's approval rating matches his all-time high.

Congressional Republicans also enjoy record ratings, while views of congressional Democrats tumble near an all-time low, according to the latest Fox News Poll.

Half of voters, 49%, approve of the job Trump is doing as president, matching his high from April 2020. That's also better than at the same point in his first term (43% approved in March 2017). He is at high marks among key groups, including women, Black voters and voters under age 30. (For reference, in January, a 52% majority of voters approved of the job Trump was doing handling the presidential transition.)

Keep in mind that Trump has made major big-time moves since the transition, many of which are -- or would have been, in years passed -- extremely controversial. To have majority support while you're tearing down the entire Old Order is amazing.

His approval rate will go higher once his crusade to bring down the Regime is accomplished and he passes into a more peaceful stage of his presidency.

Depending on how the bets he's making now turn out, this could well be the lowest level of support he'll see during his second term. I think most of these bets will pay off, politically.

Nine in 10 Republicans approve of Trump, while the same number of Democrats disapprove. Six in 10 Independents disapprove of his job performance.

Don't worry about the independents being against us. "Independent" is a malleable category with people drifting in and out of it. As the Republican Party coalesced around Trump, liberal Republicans either became Democrats, or were given New York Times columnist jobs, or became independents. Meanwhile, many Republican leaners who had been Republican-aligned independents simply began identifying as Republicans.

Also, many Democrats who are either are worried that the party has become too woke and too crazy -- or are angry that the party isn't woke and crazy enough -- now call themselves "independents."

This is a change from years past when "independents" were a Republican-leaning group. Now most Republican leaners are simply Republicans.

Overall, 51% disapprove of the job Trump is doing, including 45% who strongly disapprove.

...

Congressional Republicans hit their highest approval rating ever this month, as 43% of voters approve and 55% disapprove. While that is upside down by 12 points, it still constitutes a significant improvement from the 36-point net negative rating in October 2023 and the 55-point low a decade ago.

News across the aisle isn't as rosy. For Democrats in Congress, 66% disapprove of the job they are doing, with only 30% approving -- nearly matching their record low of 29% approval in November 2013. The current 36-point deficit represents a marked decline from the 23-point difference in October 2023, the last time the question was asked (37% approve, 60% disapprove), and the high of +10 in April 2009 (50-40%).

2013 was a time when the Tea Party was thriving -- but opposed by the Republican Party itself. Now the Republican Party has been taken over by Tea Party types, who are largely MAGA now.

My point is: The Republican Party was not poised to capitalize on Democrat unpopularity in 2013, as Mitch McConnell considered his own base his primary political opponent. Now it is unified, and well-positioned to make the Democrats pay for their extremism and pro-terrorism insurrectionary tendencies.

The boost to the GOP approval is primarily attributable to more Republicans backing their party today (88%) than in October 2023 (54%). Again, the partisan contrast is striking, as only 49% of Democrats approve of their party's lawmakers today vs. 74% in 2023.

...

Vice President JD Vance's job rating is in negative territory by 8 points: 45% approve, 53% disapprove. Among Republicans, his approval (85%) is slightly lower than Trump's (92%) and Congressional Republicans' (88%).

By an 18-point margin, voters disapprove of the job Elon Musk is doing at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) (40% approve, 58% disapprove). Most Republicans (78%) approve, while nearly all Democrats disapprove (93%).

Secretary of State Marco Rubio breaks even with 47% both approving and disapproving. He is the only administration official who receives double-digit approval from Democrats (11%).

Don't worry about the Democrats, though: They have increased their hold on the AWFLs, even as the AWFLs drive every other bloc out of the party.

Posted by: Ace at 04:42 PM | Comments (309) | Trackbacks (Suck)

I don't think he can abolish by executive order, as it is authorized by Congress.

A tactic he's using -- I think he did this with USAID -- is to defund/dismantle agencies to the "minimum level allowed by law." I expect that's what he'll do here -- he'll order government lawyers to look into the very minimum amount of funding and functionality of the DoEd required by law, and cut it to that level.

Congress will have to take it from there.

President Donald Trump will sign an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education, fulfilling a major campaign promise. The move shifts education authority back to states and parents, sparking fierce debate from both supporters and critics.

Key Details:

Trump has long criticized the agency, calling it a hub for "radicals, zealots, and Marxists."

White House says the order will "empower parents" and refocus education on student outcomes.

Critics, including teachers' unions, argue that only Congress can legally abolish the department.

The executive order follows the Senate confirmation of Linda McMahon as Secretary of Education, who pledged to oversee the agency's closure.

Congressional approval is required for full dissolution, but Trump aims to reduce its influence immediately.

...

"The federal government has failed American students," Trump said in a statement. "For too long, unelected bureaucrats in Washington have pushed radical agendas while test scores plummet. It's time to return power to parents and local schools."

The White House justified the decision by pointing to declining student performance, citing National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores, which reveal falling proficiency in math and reading. Additionally, the administration highlighted the strain placed on public schools by illegal immigration, arguing that resources have been diverted away from American students.

"Over the past four years, Democrats have allowed millions of illegal minors into the country, straining school resources," said Harrison Fields, White House principal deputy press secretary. "Coupled with CRT and DEI indoctrination, this is harming our most vulnerable students."

...

Despite Trump's executive order, Congress holds the ultimate authority to eliminate the agency. The Constitution's Article II requires legislative approval, and with only 53 Republican senators, the White House faces an uphill battle.

Trump is making Reagan look like a Bush.

Speaking of Trump ending things that never should have begun:

President Donald Trump held a "very good" call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday, following a preliminary agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin one day earlier. Trump said the discussions focused on aligning Ukraine and Russia's "requests and needs" and that the ceasefire negotiations remain "on track."

Key Details:

Trump announced the call with Zelenskyy on Truth Social, stating it lasted about an hour and was largely based on the conversation he had with Putin on Tuesday. "Just completed a very good telephone call with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine," he wrote, adding that the talks centered on ensuring both sides' concerns were addressed.

Putin agreed to halt strikes on Ukraine's energy infrastructure for 30 days, though the ceasefire has yet to extend to frontline combat or civilian areas. Special envoy Steve Witkoff suggested a full ceasefire could be reached in the coming weeks.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz will return to Saudi Arabia on Sunday to continue ceasefire negotiations, with a potential Trump-Putin meeting also on the table. It remains unclear whether a Ukrainian delegation will attend.

Posted by: Ace at 03:35 PM | Comments (426) | Trackbacks (Suck)

"Woman."

Police in Loveland, Colorado have arrested a suspect in connection with several "offensive and hateful" vandalism incidents involving incendiary devices at the local Tesla dealership. The suspect, who goes by the name Lucy Grace Nelson, is a biological male (formerly Justin Thomas Nelson). The alleged "trantifa" activist was arrested just before midnight on Monday after a weeks long investigation and "incorrectly booked" into the Larimer County Jail as a female, according to the Post Millennial's Andy Ngo on X.

All the major media outlets, including the Denver Post, CBS News, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, and Fox News, are referring to Nelson as a woman in their reports.

Police launched the investigation on Jan. 29 after they found incendiary devices on the scene of the first vandalism incident, according to a Loveland Police press release.

Investigators said two more incidents occurred at the dealership on Feb. 2 and Feb. 7. Photos and video taken at the dealership after the Feb 7 incident showed several Cybertrucks and other Teslas with red X's spray painted across the windshields, and graffiti on the building reading "NAZI CAR." There was also reportedly broken glass in the lot and incendiary devices found at the scene.

Investigators said that Nelson, 42, returned to Tesla dealership Monday evening "while in possession of additional incendiary devices along with materials attributed to vandalism" and that detectives were able to apprehend him before more damage occurred.

The attacks came amid left-wing calls to boycott Tesla to protest what agitators reportedly call "Elon Musk's moves to destroy our democracy."

Nelson "has a long history of posts obsessing about fighting fascism and white supremacy," according to Ngo.

A year ago on Reddit, the trantifa agitator was actively calling for violence against the GOP, Reddit Lies posted on X.

More at the link, including this lady's history of indoctrinating minors into transgenderism via the internet.

Posted by: Ace at 02:25 PM | Comments (500) | Trackbacks (Suck)

This particular grifter office refused to allow DOGE to even enter and sued to keep DOGE out. The judge, miraculously, declined to stop the president's appointed officials from doing their jobs.

This judge is Beryl Howell, the extremely partisan political actor who has granted TRO after TRO against Trump and eagerly sentenced J6ers to long terms in prison.

A federal judge on Wednesday declined to temporarily block the Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) takeover of the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), after the organization said its power was seized without lawful authority.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell expressed alarm about the manner in which DOGE accessed the building but said the now-fired board members likely don't have authority to sue in their official capacity, calling some aspects of the lawsuit "a stretch."

Howell declined to bar DOGE from accessing USIP's facilities and systems, acting in USIP's name or declare void the apparent removal of its board.

She also declined to forbid further trespass against the independent institute, after it said in court filings DOGE conducted a "literal trespass and takeover by force."

"I am very offended by how DOGE has operated at the institute and treated American citizens trying to do a job that they were statutorily tasked to do at the institute," Howell said. "But that concern about how this has gone down is not one that can sway me in my consideration of the factors for a [temporary restraining order], which is an emergency relief that is extraordinary."

F*** you.

Now DOGE comes in with a police presence to clear out the trash.

DOGE employees, with the aid of a master key and DC Metropolitan Police Department officers, finally gained control of the massive office building in Foggy Bottom on Monday, ending a standoff by US Institute of Peace bureaucrats barricaded in their offices. On Monday evening, DOGE employees accompanied by MPD officers and high-ranking administration officials stormed the building using a master key provided by the building security service, precipitating a brief scuffle before the building was liberated.

...

DOGE staffers returned Monday and found organized resistance to entry.

Contrary to earlier reporting by The Washington Post and The New York Times, which claimed the institute merely locked its doors, photographic evidence exclusively obtained by the [Daily Caller News Foundation] shows locks had been physically removed from the exterior doors, effectively destroying entry mechanisms. The official said USIP staff removed the locks.

Moreover, staff contacted Washington's Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) in an attempt to prevent DOGE personnel from entering, citing barricaded doors and security concerns. MPD officers later confirmed these obstructions upon arrival, further discrediting claims that USIP had only engaged in passive resistance. Much of USIP's leadership, including Moose, barricaded themselves on the building's fifth floor, closing window shades and blocking access points in a last-ditch effort to resist DOGE's entry, the official told the DCNF.

The obstruction didn't end at damaged doors. Prior to Monday's confrontation, USIP leaders disabled telephone lines, internet connections and other IT infrastructure, forcing communication among staff through walkie-talkies, according to the official. This deliberate effort to disrupt operations delayed DOGE's entry and added to the confusion during Monday's standoff.

Using a master key provided by the security contractor, Trump's team, accompanied by MPD officers, bypassed the damaged and barricaded entryway and "entered the facility through emergency stairs." Confronted with determined leadership and overwhelming force, resistance crumbled, and the insurrectionists exited the building.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by: Ace at 01:25 PM | Comments (447) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Luke Rosiak
@lukerosiak

One of the 7 federal agencies shuttered by DOGE on Friday is the most DOGE-able agency of all time. FMCS (before the pandemic!) had a 9-story K Street tower for 60 employees. Its halls were lined with oil paintings of those employees, and other art purchased from the boss's wife

Luke Rosiak:

One of the seven small federal agencies that President Donald Trump ordered downsized or eliminated on Friday was rife with corruption, with its employees hiring friends and relatives, commissioning paintings of themselves, and using government credit cards to indulge in constant luxuries.

The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) occupied a nine-story office tower on D.C.'s K Street for only 60 employees, many of whom actually worked from home, prior to the pandemic. Its managers had luxury suites with full bathrooms; one manager would often be "in the shower" when she was needed, while another used her bathroom as a cigarette lounge. FMCS recorded its director as being on a years-long business trip to D.C. so he could have all of his meals and living expenses covered by taxpayers, simply for showing up to the office.

FMCS is a 230-employee agency that exists to serve as a voluntary mediator between unions and businesses. As an "independent agency," its director nominally reports to the president, but the agency is so small that in effect, there is no oversight at all -- and it showed, becoming a real-life caricature of all the excesses that the Department of Government Efficiency has alleged take place in government.

This reporter spent a year investigating the agency a decade ago, and I found egregious and self-serving violations of hiring, pay, contracting, and purchase card rules. One thing I could not discover is why the agency actually existed, other than to provide luxurious lifestyles for its employees. Endless junkets to resort destinations, which employees openly used to facilitate personal vacations, were justified as building awareness of the agency in the hopes that someone would actually want to use its voluntary services.

FMCS seemed, quite clearly, to exist for the benefit of those on its payroll, and not much else. One employee told me: "Let me give you the honest truth: A lot of FMCS employees don't do a hell of a lot, including myself. Personally, the reason that I've stayed is that I just don't feel like working that hard, plus the location on K Street is great, plus we all have these oversized offices with windows, plus management doesn't seem to care if we stay out at lunch a long time. Can you blame me?"

"Recreation and reception fund."

Top FMCS official George Cohen used a "recreation and reception fund" to order champagne and $200 coasters for his office, and to purchase artwork painted by his wife. The tiny agency commissioned paintings of its top employees -- as one employee told me, "like they were reigning kings or something...I've never seen anything like it before." It spent $2,402 retouching the portrait of someone who briefly held the top job in an acting capacity.

FMCS employees "unblocked" their government credit cards to turn off typical abuse protections, then used them to apparently fund personal expenses and simply bill anything they'd like to the government. One employee leased a BMW; another (IT director James Donnen) billed the government for his wife's cell phone, cable TV at both his home and his vacation home, and even his subscription to USA Today.

Employee Dan W. Funkhouser used his FMCS card to rent a storage unit near his home in rural Virginia, two hours from the office he supposedly worked at, which was used to store personal possessions such as a photo album of his dog, Buster. Funkhouser also spent $18,000 at a jewelry store near his house, and "destroyed all purchase card records upon leaving the agency," an audit said.

When Charles Burton retired from FMCS, he incorporated an LLC to which another FMCS employee paid $85,000 using his purchase card, listing it as a "Call Center Service," even though the company had neither a website nor a working phone.

When an accountant, Carol Booth, blew the whistle on financial abuses to the General Services Administration, which manages purchase cards and contracting, Cohen forced her to send an email (which he wrote under her name) rescinding her statement.

Like something out of "The Office," the employees spent an inordinate amount of time and money congratulating one another for being employed there and engaging in "work" that really amounted to pampering themselves.

One purchase was for $30,000 on trinkets marking employees' anniversaries. The agency's office was absurdly oversized, but it refused to move. It hired a consultant for a "Hallway Improvement Project" to decorate. It had an in-house gym for employees, and purchased a $1,000 TV for the gym, a $3,867 ice-maker, and a $560 stereo.

The expenses that were actually business-related were hardly better. It paid, for example, $895 "for Suzanne Nichter's enrollment in the English Essentials: A Grammar Refresher course" and $735 "for Lakisha Steward to attend Listening and Memory Skills Development Course."
All expenses paid lifestyle

FMCS used federal jobs as a spigot of cash for friends and relatives. Allison Beck, a former union lawyer who became a top FMCS official, employed her sister-in-law as a "special assistant," and an inspector general found evidence that she tried to create a high-level job for a friend.

FMCS employees allegedly steered contracts to friends, allowing them to write the "statement of work" that would be used to choose the contract winner -- resulting in, of course, their own selection. Such "trainers" were paid $1,500 per day per person to train FMCS's staff, plus $163 an hour for travel. When a low-level employee eventually said the extra travel pay ran afoul of federal rules, a contractor made clear he viewed it as an entitlement, huffing: "Work we have successfully performed for the agency for more than a decade -- at great personal sacrifice, I should add -- will be taken away unless we comply in an unquestioning manner with your edict."

Scot Beckenbaugh, a top agency official, was paid $174,000 a year, but that wasn't enough: He had his "duty station" listed as Iowa so that he could have all of his living expenses and food paid for in D.C., where he lived and worked, as if he was on a six-year-long business trip. When an employee raised the issue to an agency lawyer, the lawyer told him he "should not raise these issues ... it would open a can of worms."

FMCS hired a former mail carrier who lived in Pennsylvania, Lu-Ann Glaser, for a high-level, D.C.-based job, and agreed to pay for her to stay in a hotel for half of every month -- even though it would have been easy to find someone better qualified who didn't need to be put up in a hotel to simply do her job.

Paul Voight, a human resources official, was listed as living in D.C. even though he actually lived in Wisconsin, in order to fraudulently obtain higher cost-of-living pay. Voight's boss was Artur Pearlstein, who left the agency to become a law professor, and was then re-hired after his academic career imploded in a plagiarism scandal. His first move in his new job was terminating an independent investigation into FMCS staff abusing taxpayer funds for personal gain.

Cohen, for his part, steered work to his previous employer, despite signing ethics forms saying he would not.

Many of the agency's top employees lived outside of the typical Washington, D.C., commuting area, and only stopped in the area occasionally, in an era before telework was routine. Its CFO, Fran Leonard, would come to the office twice a week but leave by 2:00 p.m.

The agency had, inexplicably, an office in Honolulu.

It funded constant travel of its employees to exotic locales, on the pretext that it was drumming up business for the federal agency -- an admission that there was little demand for the agency's existence.

In one month, Beck traveled to Italy and Switzerland, where she conducted a business meeting -- over video chat. Then she went to Tunisia and an island off the coast of Georgia. She flew first class and forced the agency to reimburse her for mileage when she drove to her vacation home in Maine.

The agency had three full-time media relations staffers, none of whom would speak to me, almost certainly one of the only reporters to ever call.
Cash grants for insiders

The agency's existence is predicated on the idea that it is an impartial mediator, biased neither towards labor nor management. But its staff largely comes from a union background, and it gave out grants to promote union membership. But it was too incompetent to do much ideological damage; its employees' comfort always came before helping unions.

Anyone could request cash grants from the agency, with the only requirement that they mention some nexus with unions, however tortured. It doled out a seemingly random assortment of giveaways to private businesses, perhaps because they were the only ones who knew the grants existed.

It gave $63,000 to a hospital that went bankrupt; $51,000 to a childcare company to help it pay government licensing fees; and $57,000 to a company to "strengthen of culture of continuous improvement to drive us to world class excellence!"

What surprised me most about my FMCS investigation was what happened afterward: nothing. An inspector general made a referral to the FBI, but there were no prosecutions. Instead, President Barack Obama nominated a chief subject of the investigation to the top job.

A decade later, Trump has done what even the agency's own employees said should happen: shut it down.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by: Ace at 12:06 PM | Comments (453) | Trackbacks (Suck)

To the vast disappointment of the Forever-War^TM supporters, President Trump's efforts to end the pointless border war in Ukraine may be entering a new phase. Both the Z-man and Putin have agreed to end energy infrastructure attacks which, while it might seem incomplete and narrowly focused, is a boon for the people who are suffering. Z-man and Putin certainly aren't!

An incremental ceasefire leading to a total cessation of fighting might not be the quickest way to get to an end to this bloodbath, but President Trump is in his element as a negotiator, so it isn't surprising.

Putin is in a position of strength as he consolidates his military gains in Ukraine. Obviously it has gone very badly for Russia compared to their rosy and optimistic plans for a three day campaign, at which any student of Russian military history will smile and nod and say...Yup! pretty typical!

But Russia is much bigger than Ukraine, has shorter supply lines, and will, in the end, succeed in taking the territory it desires. Perhaps they have already accomplished their goals, and the current fighting is simply to wear down Ukraine to the point at which it must agree to whatever ceasefire is proposed, no matter how much worse than the one it was offered three years ago!

Zelenskyy Also Agrees to Limited Russia-Ukraine Cease-Fire in Call With Trump

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has agreed to a moratorium on attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure following a March 19 phone call with President Donald Trump.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and national security adviser Mike Waltz issued a statement on the Trump–Zelenskyy call, saying that the two leaders “agreed on a partial ceasefire against energy.”

Zelenskyy confirmed the development in a post on social media platform X, saying, “I supported this step, and Ukraine confirmed that we are ready to implement it.”

Trump’s and Zelenskyy’s phone conversation lasted about an hour and came a day after Trump proposed the moratorium on energy infrastructure attacks to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

It is already fracturing!

Italy's Meloni Backs Trump's Peace Efforts in Ukraine, Urges 'Pragmatism' in Europe on Trade Talks

Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni on Tuesday called for “pragmatism” to prevent an EU-US dispute over tariffs from escalating into a full-scale trade war, and expressed support for U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts for a ceasefire in Ukraine.

Speaking to the Italian Senate ahead of a meeting of EU leaders this week, Meloni made her first wide-ranging comments touching on Trump policies that have shaken Europe in the two months since he took office.

Meloni struck a diplomatic tone on tariffs and expressed favor for Trump’s moves to establish a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine as a possible pathway to end the war in Ukraine. She also ruled out sending Italian troops to Ukraine, and spoke against the proposal for a security force by Britain and France. And she pledged to forge ahead with a controversial and stalled plan to vet migrants outside of the EU borders in Albania.

No, of course not. But Raytheon and Northrop Grumman and Pratt & Whitney, and Lockheed Martin sure are cheering for that! It is a testament to Donald Trump's independence from the military-industrial complex that he is not willing to commit American treasure and blood to a border dispute 4,000 miles away.

This is a war whose antecedents are not simply that Putin is a bad man. Regardless of how you feel about him and Russia, NATO has been pushing closer and closer to Russia's traditional borders, and only a jingoistic Russia-hating, war-loving retard would fail to understand that it was probably not a good idea.

Well, as NATO crumbles, perhaps it is incumbent upon the UK and France and Germany to step in, send troops and cash, and do what they are clamoring for! Yeah, that's not going to happen for a few reasons, the most important of which is that their militaries are a sadly diminished and ineffectual shell of what they once were. They will bluster and pontificate, but ultimately they will agree to Donald Trump's plan for a ceasefire, because they simply don't have a choice.

I guess I sound like a Putin supporter, but I'm really not. I just don't think that it is worth the blood and treasure of the West to intervene in a border dispute between two countries whose borders have been bouncing around for a very long time.

If both countries could lose, I would be happy!

[Crossposted at CutJibNewsletter and X]

Posted by: CBD at 11:00 AM | Comments (292) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gustave Boyer in a Straw Hat
Paul Cézanne

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (372) | Trackbacks (Suck)