Bring Proper English Back To Public Discourse. And The Mayor Of Chicago Is A Retard

"Illegal Alien" is a legal term to describe someone who has entered this country illegally, or who has overstayed legal, temporary permission to enter the country. There is no racial connotation. There is no sex connotation. There is no class connotation. It is a neutral term that is a perfect descriptor!

But the left has always made one of the tenets of its malign philosophy the destruction of traditional, logical language. George Orwell wrote about it at length, and 80 years later his thoughts are fresh and prescient, in particular in Politics And The English Language, and 1984.

Orwell would recognize the idiotic and incompetent mayor of Chicago as one of the foot soldiers in the left's battle against the English language!

Chicago Mayor Spazzes Out Over 'Racist' Term 'Illegal Alien'

Johnson called the term "racist" and sarcastically suggested that he should also call black people "slaves."

This is race-baiting on the most elemental level. Linking an objectively neutral term and activity to some nefarious race-based motivation is prime leftist doublespeak, and we on the right have been bombarded by it for many generations.

Race...class... sex...religion...political philosophy...they are all fair game.

Of course, calling people "fascists" is nothing new. The communists of the 1930s threw that term around just as cavalierly as their modern versions. But now they have expanded the manipulation of language to include everyone who is even modestly at odds with their political ideology. Fly an American flag? You're a fascist. Put on a coat and tie to go to church? You're a racist. Believe in the rule of law? You are a Nazi! Believe in the right of Jews to live in peace in their ancestral homeland? You are a racist colonizer.

But these are not just pejoratives; they are part of a careful campaign to shift definitions of previously unacceptable behaviors to sound far more benign. "Illegal Alien" sounds bad, because it IS bad! "Undocumented Immigrant," or simply "Migrant," sounds like somebody who dropped their ID on the subway. That's not so bad! Let's be nice to him and pay for his $3,000 ER visits and SNAP benefits and cell phone and housing and maybe even give him a CDL so he can get a job and kill Americans on the roads!

Take back the language! "Illegal Alien." "Criminal." "Rapist." "Pedophile." "Rioter." "Adult." "Assault Rifle." "Woman." "Man."

These words have clear, precise meanings in our wonderful language. We cannot allow the left to blur those definitions, or we get nonsense like "Undocumented Newcomer," "Minor Attracted Person," "Gender Fluid," Mostly Peaceful," "Harm Reduction," "Our Precious Democracy," "Reproductive Freedom," and a host of other terms carefully chosen to blur reality with the ultimate goal of subverting traditional culture, law, religion, and rational social opprobrium.

Simply using clear language to describe our many cultural, social, and political issues will go a long way towards solving them.

Posted by: CBD at 12:00 PM | Comments (297) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sunday Morning Book Thread - 10-26-2025 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

HT: fd

Welcome BACK 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 (384) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 26 October 2025

Top Story

• Clippy in the server room with a portable blender: Microsoft hopes Mico succeeds where Clippy failed as tech companies warily imbue AI with personality. (AP News)
  
  Mico is the new horrifying AI-driven mascot of Microsoft's inescapable AI-driven offense to reason, Copilot.
  
  Mico is... A grape? A purple raspberry? I don't know exactly, but kill it with fire.

  "When you talk about something sad, you can see Mico's face change. You can see it dance around and move as it gets excited with you," said Jacob Andreou, corporate vice president of product and growth for Microsoft AI, in an interview with The Associated Press. It's in this effort of really landing this AI companion that you can really feel."

  I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit.

  Tech-savvy adopters of advanced AI coding tools may want it to "act much more like a machine because at the back end they know it's a machine," Reimer said. "But individuals who are not as trustful in a machine are going to be best supported - not replaced - by technology that feels a little more like a human."

  "We glued artificial fur to our woodchipper so that you will feel comfortable as we feed you into it."
   

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (278) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Night "Club ONT" October 25, 2025 [The 3 Ds]

Welcome to Club ONT! A collaboration the 3D's - The Disco, The Dino, and The Doggo.

The D's don't have Jacks or better - looks like the Horde is opening.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (419) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Evening Movie Thread [moviegique]: Trick 'r Treat (2007)

The fall typically brings a spate of horror films as moviegoers seeking safe thrills head to the cineplex in advance of Halloween, which simultaneously expands its reach into the summer while being consumed by Christmas on the other end. While the stores are already full of Santa Clauses, the movie holiday window actually seems to narrow over time—nobody's watching "It's A Wonderful Life" in October.

Oddly, this year, the cineplexes are not exactly flooded with horror fare: The (perhaps final) entry in the Conjuring series; The (perhaps not final) entry in the Black Phone series; Good Boy (a horror movie with a dog as the final girl); and of course, scads of throwbacks, like Halloween, etc.

We happened upon the New York Film School's first horror movie marathon to help get in the spirit—a side-effect of going to Knott's Halloween Haunt in September is that by the time October rolls around, we've pretty much moved on, emotionally—and they showed, in one day, Funhouse (1981), Phantom of the Mall (198, In the Mouth of Madness (1991), Meathook (2024), and Re-animator (1985). We skipped the last, having just seen it.

But we also caught one special event from Fathom (at a price of $60 for the two of us, plus popcorn and a soda!), on the semi-obscure, semi-cult, semi-classic Trick 'r Treat, an anthology picture that feels like the last gasp of an era.

Even the lollipop is a thread that runs through more than one story.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:30 PM | Comments (355) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hobby Thread - October 25, 2025 [Roaming Rex]

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, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread. A spin of the Ace of Spades Wheel of Hobbies (TM) landed on travel themes.

Are you thinking "I don't even know what that means and I don't get around much these days but I'm eager to learn more. I can't wait to get into the content!" I knew it. Enjoy.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:30 PM | Comments (255) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ace of Spades Pet Thread, October 25

* * *

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

Would you like a treat?

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

Posted by: K.T. at 03:36 PM | Comments (102) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gardening, Home and Nature Thread, Oct. 25

Happy Week before Halloween!

From The Famous Pat*

This is the right side of my front porch. The pumpkin, I bought from the neighbor kids. The green pair are immature butternut squashes (might as well make use of them). The other item grew on a zucchini vine, which grew out of the bottom of a compost cage - that was its mother, but it was apparently fathered by a pumpkin last year. I don’t know what to call it - a zookapumpkin? A pump-zini?

What do you think, Horde? Interesting front porch!

Posted by: K.T. at 01:32 PM | Comments (43) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Costumes and Symbols of "The Baddies"

Do you know one when you see one?

One of my lefty social media friends posted one of those stupid 20-second "stories" - - the kind that end mid-sentence and disappear after 24 hours - - on the theme of a lefty discussion group centering on the "monsters" of the world wearing well-tailored suits.

No, make that "exquisitely" tailored suits.

This reminded me of a frequent misquote of C.S. Lewis along these lines (once apparently by Ronald Reagan):

The greatest evils in the world will not be carried out by men with guns, but by men in suits sitting behind desks.

The actual quote of C.S. Lewis is much more nuanced and detailed:

I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."

From the second preface to The Screwtape Letters

When we think of "The Baddies" of a police state, how often do we think of the costumes of the bureaucracy of that police state? White collars and suits rather than skulls?

Do the women of the bureaucracy of a police state have costumes? What about the women of the bureaucracy of a "thoroughly nasty business concern"?

Posted by: K.T. at 11:21 AM | Comments (261) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Classical Saturday Coffee Break & Prayer Revival

[Meme: H/T - Frankie]
[Music: H/T Hadrian]

*****

Good morning boys and girls and everything in between. Before we enter the Prayer Revival just a few housekeeping matters to go over. (Rulz for those of you in Clarksville)

1) This is an open thread. Feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate.
2) Be kind, be nice.
3) No. You may not run with sharp objects. I believe your Mother's note is a forgery.
4) Have a great weekend!

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 08:00 AM | Comments (371) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 25 October 2025

Top Story

• Tech companies have maxed out their credit cards in wild pursuit of the AI let's-not-call-it-a-bubble. (Notebook Check)
  
  Debt held by those companies has increased fourfold over the past ten years, to a total of $1.35 trillion.
  
  If the bubble bursts abruptly, the most highly leveraged of those companies - and their lenders - are going to be in a world of pain.
  
  As is the economy, meaning everyone who didn't borrow all that money and set in on fire chasing phantasms.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (203) | Trackbacks (Suck)

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night. Suddenly, An ONT Rang Out! The Maid Screamed!

Howdy folks! Welcome to Friday night. Ever feel like you've been here before?

Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:00 PM | Comments (460) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Shaggy Ewok Cafe

The Himalayas viewed from a satellite

Mama donkey and baby donkey.

A small act of heroism.

Buying three jet-boats off of Temu. I think they say the three boats cost over $10,000 so this isn't actually cheap.

China's lack of safety standards and disregard for human life has the positive advantage of producing some terrific amusement rides.

Colorized film from 1898-1900 England, featuring a train and a horse-drawn fire brigade.

The shelter's longest resident gets adopted, and the staff throws a party for her.

Stray cocker spaniel deploys his secret weapon for getting adopted: being both cute and sad.

Emaciated stray pittie breaks into someone's home looking for food, and winds up staying.

Goose greeting.

"Grand Tetons." I'll say.

Red pandas do not seem real.

Grizzly mom.

In case you missed it: Golden retriever is a real tiger mom.

Little paws. And big paws.

The original unaired pilot of The Munsters. Related, though not Halloweeney: The original pilot of Three's Company.

House lights set to Dragula by Rob Zombie. Related, but not Halloweeny: Someone lighted his house to look like the end of The Matrix.

Posted by: Ace at 07:20 PM | Comments (248) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Week In Woke

How many illegal aliens did Gavin Newsom give big-rig commercial drivers licenses (CDLs) to? How many Third World Assassins are out there driving thirty ton battering rams with no concern for the western rules of the road and little ability to even read English?

The number, as End Wokeness says, is "jaw-dropping."

Gavin Newsom alone, ignoring prior California governors and all other blue state governors, has granted CDLs to 62,000 Third World Assassins.

The same gang that illegally pulled down statutes of America's founding fathers are freaking out that Trump is remodeling a later addition to the White House.

Will no one do anything about the serious problem of white racism?

John Sexton reports on a sad story. A self-proclaimed pedophile rushed the stage at a Wikipedia conference, wearing a rainbow flag and carrying a gun. He threatened to kill himself on stage.

Sadly, some Wikipedia dweebs rushed him and stopped this pedophile from taking the Hero's Way Out.

From the NYT:

The man, draped in a multicolored flag, walked onto the stage and stood next to Maryana Iskander, the chief of the nonprofit group that runs Wikipedia, interrupting her speech. He announced that he was going to kill himself. He held a gun near his head and pointed it toward the ceiling.

The audience of well over a hundred people panicked.

Sexton:

So what prompted this? Well, the person with the gun, who has since been identified as Connor Weston, had the explanation draped around his neck as he walked on stage. Yet somehow the NY Times describes his motivation as "murky."

The armed man's motivations were murky. But he was wearing a sign around his neck that said "anti-contact non-offending pedophile" and he told the audience he was going to die by suicide to protest what he called Wikipedia's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on pedophiles.

The site has a rule that editors "who identify themselves as pedophiles will be blocked and banned indefinitely."

So murky. So, so murky. Muddy, actually. Our vision is obscured by ten thousand tons of heavy clay mud.

OUT: Protecting transgender felons by claiming their motives are unknown

IN: Protecting pedophile felons by claiming their motives are "murky"

Boy that Rainbow Flag sure does cover up a lot of sins, huh?

The Truman Scholarship Foundation is a taxpayer-supported scholarship fund that is supposed to be non-partisan. Students from all over the country, no matter what their politics, receive the scholarships for doing "public service" work.

But surprise! Most of the students getting these scholarships in red, Republican-heavy states are leftwing extremists who go on to work for Democrats or progressive organizations.

Winners of a prestigious, taxpayer-funded college scholarship selected from Republican-heavy states most often go on to work for progressive causes or Democratic politicians, with few taking jobs that advance pro-GOP or conservative causes, research from The College Fix finds.

Each year, the federally funded Harry S. Truman Scholarship provides a $30,000 grant for grad school to about 50 students with proven leadership potential and a commitment to public service. In return, they pledge to work in a public service role for three years after graduation.

The College Fix analysis shows the left-leaning imbalance in winners cannot be chalked up to a few individual career choices -- the data paints a portrait of systemic ideological filtering within a program funded by all taxpayers but whose outcomes serve the political vision of Democrats.

The Truman Scholarship Foundation seeks regional diversity in its selections, and tries to award its scholarships to students from every state.

The College Fix looked at Truman Scholar winners from Georgia, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio and Utah. These states tend to elect Republican politicians or are considered GOP strongholds. Michigan remains a swing state, voting Republican in two of the last three presidential elections.

Of the states' 125 Truman scholars from 2015 to 2024, 60 winners -- or nearly half of those surveyed at 48 percent -- went on to have at least one job working for left-wing, progressive or Democratic causes. In contrast, only three winners, 2.4 percent, could be found to have gone on to work for a conservative or Republican cause.

Top -- or formerly top -- schools are using "stealth rebranding" to whitewash their DEI discrimination programs, in defiance of the law.

A higher education watchdog group has published a series of investigative reports sounding the alarm on continuing diversity, equity and inclusion practices at some of America's top technology universities: MIT, Georgia Tech, and Caltech.

The three case studies by researchers with the center-right National Association of Scholars focused on what NAS's Director of Science Programs Scott Turner called "the shapeshifting nature of the DEI regime," adding he is surprised at the extent of "the stealth rebranding."

The reports, published this month, found that the universities were "shuffling DEI employees to other administrative units where they can carry out the same program, but hidden away from scrutiny," Turner told The College Fix via email.

The case studies examined how DEI has been embedded in these institutions for decades, and can still be found, albeit in new forms, rebranded and under the radar.

Georgia Tech's case study notes that to get ahead of pending GOP-led legislation that would outlaw DEI, officials preemptively "scrubbed DEI language from its website and 'closed/moved' the LGBTQ+ Resource Center and the Women's Resource Center."

But according to the report: "Not a single DEI administrator was dismissed, however, indicating Georgia Tech's ongoing appeasement of DEI, rather than conforming to law."

A "transgender" powerlifter -- a male cheater who enters women's events -- was barred from competing by the powerlifting sanctioning body.

Tim Walz's gonzo left-wing Supreme Court just overturned that private organization's decision and declared that men are allowed to demolish women in "women's" sports.

The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that a biological male transgender athlete was discriminated against by USA Powerlifting when the organization did not allow that person into a women's competition in 2018.

The decision was unanimous, with five of the seven justices having been appointed by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, and the other two by former Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton.

USA Powerlifting (USAPL) is a national and international powerlifting organization that sanctions meets in the U.S. and in several other member countries.

The trans athlete, JayCee Cooper, sued USA Powerlifting in 2021, according to Fox News. Cooper alleged the organization engaged in discriminatory practices by rejecting the athlete's application to compete in the women's division in 2018, claiming it violated Minnesota's Human Rights Act.

The court's ruling said, "USA Powerlifting's policy at the time of the decision was to categorically exclude transgender women from competing in the women's division."

"We agree with Cooper that USA Powerlifting's policy is discriminatory on its face; there is therefore no genuine dispute that USA Powerlifting discriminated against Cooper because of her transgender status."

The left's jive against states barring transgenders from entering women's events is that we should leave these decisions to the private local governing bodies.

But when a private local governing bodies bans men from women's sports, they immediately get a government body to step in and overrule them.

The Dearborn City Council continues allowing mosques to break the law and blast the call to prayer as early as five thirty a.m. It has been years since the council claimed it would "check" the decibel level. It never actually checks it. And it's not just the decibel level -- the city law forbids the use of any speakers to blast messages out to the street. You can see the speakers right there on the outside of the mosques, this woman says. But Dearnborn officials will get around to "checking" on this, at some unknown future date.

Dearborn's police chief says it's no big deal and the speakers don't make much more noise than a truck when it hits a pothole. So, because a truck occasionally hits a pothole, and the city doesn't bother fixing the potholes, you should be cool with Muslims blasting their calls to prayer at 5:30 in the morning.

Posted by: Ace at 06:10 PM | Comments (192) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Democrats Vote Against Paying the Troops Currently Defending the Country Without Pay; The Two Vulnerable Georgia Democrat Senators Peel Off From the Party, Vote In Favor of Paying Troops

I still have trouble understanding how Georgia ended up with not one but two far-left lunatics as Senators.

I know that idiot football player cost us one seat. I forget how the other one happened.

They know they are very vulnerable to a GOP challenger so they've decided to pretend to care about the troops.

Sen. Jon Ossoff (Ga.), the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent in the Senate, and his home-state colleague, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), voted Thursday for a Republican bill to pay essential federal workers, including members of the military, during the government shutdown.

Ossoff and Warnock joined Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) in voting for the Republican bill. The measure failed to advance on a 54-45 vote. It needed 60 votes to move forward.

Ossoff's and Warnock's votes are notable because they have voted 12 times against a House-passed bill to reopen the government and fund it through Nov. 21.

They have, however, voted repeatedly for a Democratic alternative to fund the government through Oct. 31, permanently extend enhanced health insurance premiums and restore nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts.

Ossoff told reporters after the vote that "military service members, TSA workers, air traffic controllers, other federal workers have no choice but to come to work, and they should be paid for that work."

Ossoff voted for the Shutdown Fairness Act, sponsored by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), despite Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) calling it a "a ruse."

Schumer warned it would give too much power to the Trump White House to determine which federal workers get paid and which remain furloughed.

...

Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and Angus King (Maine), an independent who caucuses with Democrats, voted against the proposal to pay essential federal workers, even though they have voted repeatedly with Fetterman for the House GOP-drafted "clean" continuing resolution to reopen the government.

Earlier this week, the Democrat Whip Katherine Clark -- I never heard of her before either, so you're good -- went off-script and admitted the Democrat strategy is to make people "suffer" to increase the Democrats' "leverage."

A top House Republican is criticizing one of Democrats' senior leaders for saying the government shutdown and its effects are a "leverage point" to accomplish their goals on healthcare.

"It's appalling to see the number two House Democrat openly admit that the left is weaponizing hardworking Americans as 'leverage' for political gain, even acknowledging families will suffer in the process," Republican Study Committee Chair August Pfluger, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital.

"This isn't governance -- it's calculated hostage-taking, with struggling families caught in the balance as Democrats attempt to force through their radical agenda. Families are seen only as leverage by Democrats. We always knew it, now they're saying it out loud. Absolutely shameful."

House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., sat down for an interview with Fox News' Chad Pergram last week. At one point, Clark was asked about who Americans would find responsible for the ongoing shutdown.

"I mean, shutdowns are terrible and, of course, there will be, you know, families that are going to suffer. We take that responsibility very seriously. But it is one of the few leverage times we have," Clark responded.

Can you guess what she looks like?

Of course you can!

Posted by: Ace at 05:10 PM | Comments (247) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Surprise: Obese Transgender Generals Are Super-Pissed That Pete Hegseth Wants Them to Do Some Squats and Eat a Salad Every Once in a While

streiff at RedState gathers up the media amplifying the anonymous sniping of General Big-Bones and Admiral Funstuff.

Generals Are Whining That Hegseth Has 'Lost' Them, but the Facts Say They've Lost the Plot

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is the subject of another scurrilous article claiming, without proof or evidence, that he has lost the trust and confidence of the flag and general officer corps. A story in the Washington Times uses mostly anonymous sources to make the claim that Hegseth, "has lost the trust and respect of some top military commanders, with his public "grandstanding" widely seen as unprofessional and the personnel moves made by the former cable TV host leading to an unprecedented and dangerous exodus of talent from the Pentagon, said current senior military officers and current and former Defense Department officials." The whole article tells a different story.

The core of the critique seems to be that Hegseth is incapable of thinking above the level of an infantry major, and that keeps him from focusing on real stuff like, well, we don't know.

The September 30 meeting--

"It was a massive waste of time. ... If he ever had us, he lost us," one current Army general told The Washington Times.

It was "embarrassing" and theatrical to a degree that "is below our institution."

"The theater of it all is below our institution," the officer said. "Several of these changes are being made already by the services. And they could be made by any secretary. ... They don't have to be announced on stage in public in this grandstanding kind of way."

Focus on the wrong things--

"Not about f------ haircuts," the current Army general told The Times, referring to Mr. Hegseth's deep focus on grooming standards, a view expressed by numerous sources.

The focus on haircuts is about making men wear their hair like men, rather than growing out their transgender locks. Sorry if this is a problem for you.

Another source described it as "the mentality of a midgrade officer" who is deeply focused on fitness, grooming standards, and other issues that typically don't reach the desk of the defense secretary.

"Hegseth's focus on fitness, weight and appearance reflects his experiences as a junior officer. These are perennial challenges at the small unit level; anyone who has commanded a small unit in the military understands where he's coming from,"

[Retired Marine Corps Col. Mark Cancian, now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies] wrote. "However, if his military experience had been at higher levels, he would have discussed strategy, threats and warfighting at the operational level. As it was, these topics were nearly absent from his remarks.

More at the article. The jive they're pushing is that insisting that the military enforce its already-existing standards somehow stops generals from scheming their 11th-dimensional chess plans to win wars. Which -- hey, great job with the last few wars, Geniuses.

And they're complaining that this is a "junior officer" agenda. Well... check this out: Enforcing grooming and fitness standards will be the job of, get this, junior officers. Generals are not going to weigh privates or count how many sit-ups they can do. That task will fall to lietuenents.

So what they're really arguing is just that these standards shouldn't be enforced by anyone.

It's just about trying to argue in favor of DEI and transgenders-in-the-military while, as usual, dishonestly pretending it's about something more defensible, like "warfighting."

Hey fatty -- if you skip a meal every day that gives you an extra forty minutes or hour to focus on "warnighting."

streiff notes that despite the claims that Hegseth is "deeply damaging" the military, recruiting is way, way up. Almost as if part of the appeal of the military is joining an institution in which masculine traits like courage and strength are prized.

He also points out that a military that fails to enforce the basic rules will also fail at the big stuff, too. But if troops aren't lacing their boots properly, you can bet they're also performing poorly at weapons maintenance.

You've heard about Van Halen's infamous contract rider which demanded a bowl full of M & M's with all of the green M & M's removed, right? David Lee Roth explains that that was never about the M&M's -- it was about other, crucial contract terms such as venues needing to have electrical systems that could actually support Van Halen's huge speakers and lighting systems. David Lee Roth says that if he walked backstage and saw the bowl of M&Ms with all the green ones taken out, he would be a little more confident that the power system would not blow up when the roadies set up the equipment.

In more DEI/falling standards news, Susan Crabtree reports that the Secret Service is not moving quickly to repair the long rot caused by Obama's and Biden's determination that protecting VIPs was of secondary importance compared to the main goal of staffing the Service with short fat women.

The whole article is alarming. The Secret Service is simply not reforming and is clinging to its DEI priorities, despite Trump's orders to the contrary.

The Secret Service agent assigned to protect the "model" and former vice presidential step-daughter, Ella Emhoff, turns out to be a part-time plus-sized model who has repeatedly failed her physical fitness exams.

Yes, that's the exact level of agent I think Ellie Emhoff has earned, but seriously, what are we even doing here? Why is this person an agent?

Have we just decided to grant Make A Wish dreams to all the stupid, unqualified, incapable people so they can feel good about themselves?

Trick question -- of course we have.

Susan Crabtree writes about the rot at the Secret Service.

The pressing question now, seven months after [Sean Curran] took the helm [of the Secret Service], is whether he and his team are doing enough to transform the culture, jettison DEI priorities as President Trump ordered, improve morale and retention, and return the Secret Service to its elite mission-focused status.

...

In an interview with RealClearPolitics, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, recalled how former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, who was forced to resign after her disastrous congressional testimony in the wake of the Butler assassination attempt, had aggressively promoted the "30x30" initiative under a Biden directive to make the federal government a DEI model for the nation. The DEI program promotes the arbitrary hiring of women with the goal of 30% women agents and officers by 2030.

The goal was one of Cheatle's top priorities, and she had achieved 24% women agents and officers in the agency by the time she resigned last year, according to several Secret Service sources.

"Now, if that is going to be your goal, and you're taking your eye off of your core mission, which is to protect individuals, and then you are no longer meeting your prescribed mission," Blackburn said, "this is how you end up getting ineffectiveness into agencies, and we see it in agency after agency."

"The American people are tired of this, whether it's the ESG or any of these other initiatives," she added. "They want government to do their job, and with the Secret Service, it is to protect these individuals who face constant threats."

...

Shortly after Curran was sworn in in March, he sidelined many of Cheatle's top lieutenants to bring in his own team. Just a few weeks later, however, a U.S. District Court judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from firing 19 intelligence officers who had previously served on DEI programs at the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The judge's order requires the employees to remain on paid administrative leave while they seek reassignments or appeal their firings.

There was no similar attempted mass firing of DEI officials at the Secret Service.

...

Over the past several years, agents also report that outside of the top details, including the team protecting the president and the vice president, some field offices around the country are allowing the honor system for self-reported physical fitness or are simply not requiring them. For years, there's also been such a manpower shortage, and agents are stretched so thin, that many offices have drastically reduced firearms practice, according to several sources in the Secret Service community.

He's keeping one of the most egregious DEI warriors on the staff:

Darnelly De Jesus, a 25-year agency veteran and proponent of DEI, became the Secret Service's agent in charge of its Office of Professional Responsibility last November, under then-acting Director Ron Rowe. Rowe was a Biden appointee and Cheatle's previous hand-picked deputy, whom then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas tapped to lead the agency after Cheatle's departure.

Curran has decided to keep De Jesus on his assistant director team. In that role, she oversees all agency misconduct cases and is ultimately charged with signing off on all disciplinary recommendations.

Serving as a member of the president's or the vice president's security team immediately positions a young agent for future promotions. But instead of pursuing that track, De Jesus rose through the ranks as the agency's chief ethics officer and the deputy assistant director of training, while serving as one of the agency's leading architects of and advocates for DEI recruiting and promotion policies.

In her current role overseeing misconduct cases, De Jesus is one of eight assistant directors who comprise the Secret Service's top-tier leadership team, aside from the deputy director and chief of staff.

Curran's decision to keep De Jesus in that post, and his more recent decision to promote another female agent who served as Cheatle's chief of staff, are raising questions among the rank and file about whether he's doing enough to break with the agency's recent past.

De Jesus' presence in leadership is seen as a symbol among Secret Service critics on Capitol Hill and numerous current and former agents who believe that misplaced DEI priorities during the Biden years contributed to the failures at Butler.

One agent, Rashid Ellis, has publicly blamed DEI for contributing to the near-assassination of Trump. Ellis, who opposes DEI, also argues that he was unfairly denied an agency leadership position and believes women gender quotas "played a factor."

Whatever action the Secret Service takes with regard to Ellis' complaints, De Jesus, a major DEI advocate who has the power to pull employees' clearances, suspend, or terminate them, will ultimately be the one signing off on those decisions. Some Secret Service employees fear that De Jesus could retaliate against whistleblowers, including Ellis, who have expressed concern about the agency's DEI policies on Capitol Hill and elsewhere.

As of Sept. 30, De Jesus' LinkedIn resume still touted her work during the Biden administration drafting an "enterprise white paper" on Cheatle's 30x30 initiative to hire more women, which she said was designed to "increase hiring, retention, and advancement with the projected goal of meeting 30% of women in the law enforcement by 2030."

After RCP inquired about her role in the 30x30 program, that bullet point disappeared from her online bio, although she still touted several other DEI accomplishments, including her cross-agency work creating "a ground-breaking first-line supervisory class for all females across 22 separate agencies." She also mentions her experience increasing staffing in two divisions from "35% to 80% in 10 months, resulting in a 128% increase in hiring, with 73% being qualified minorities and female candidates."

...

Curran has publicly said he disagrees with DEI initiatives, but many in the Secret Service community have questioned just how committed he is considering these two personnel decisions and just how deeply rooted and pervasive DEI became under Cheatle.

The whole article is worth reading. Sean Curran is not a "change agent," but another go-along-to-get-along liberal stiff.

This is amusing:

Under Cheatle's leadership, DEI had become so normalized that an overweight female agent who never passed her physical fitness tests was not only retained on staff -- she was allowed to moonlight as a model. The agent, who was featured in a magazine profile, traded on her job in federal law enforcement and hinted at her Secret Service position in a photo shoot labeled, "Undercover, But Never Underdressed."

The female agent, who bills herself as a "nationally published curve model, plus-size fashion and fitness influencer, and body-positive advocate" on social media, was assigned to protect Kamala Harris' stepdaughter, Ella Emhoff, in New York. After several failed attempts to pass a physical fitness test, the agent was placed in the Special Services Division, which handles support functions for the agency, including the maintenance of the armored vehicle fleet and the screening of mail and packages for the White House complex, according to four sources in the Secret Service community.

So all of our institutions are now just branches of the Make-A-Wish foundation, handing out lifetime jobs to unqualified, incapable, stupid people.

So of course this is a disguised GAINZZZ thread.

I wanted to mention: If you're taking creatine, let your doctor know. I may not have the details of this right, but I believe when creatine is metabolized, creatinine (actually a slightly different word) is made. Creatinine isn't dangerous in itself (if I have this right), but is a marker for problems with the kidneys.

So if you're taking high doses of creatine and don't tell your doctor, he may see elevated levels of creatinine (trust me, it's a slightly different word) and order tests for your kidneys.

My own GAINZZZ: None. I've been really busy and I haven't exercised much and I've just completely gone off keto. I'm getting back into a healthier regime, starting... last night at 8pm. When I finally had a low-carb meal.

How about you? Any GAINZZZ?

Or PROJEXXX, TRIPZZZ, or PLANZZZ?

Has anyone taken creatine and if so, do you find it helps your focus? I didn't have it for a few days but started taking it again last night and I think I'm much more focused today than I was yesterday.

Below, Paul Saladino talks creatine.

Posted by: Ace at 04:10 PM | Comments (249) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Feminization of Society: Threat or Menace?

Helen Andrews looks at what feminism has wrought.

Mostly dysfunction, decline, and dissension.

This might be a tough read for some women. I don't think this is about women per se, however: It's about women with a specific mindset, the mindset of woke feminism and Girlpower Marxism. The kind of woman being pushed to the fore and put in charge of corporations and academic departments is usually a highly-political feminist who puts feminism and feminist activism far, far above the needs of the corporation or institution she is supposedly serving.

Feminism was, is, and will always be predicated on the idea that Men Were, Are, and Always Will Be Wrong, and therefore any institution previously dominated by men is tainted and must be completely razed and rebuilt according to feminist Marxist principles.

It's like young blacks rejecting studying and reading as "Acting White." When you reject, wholesale, practices that have a proven track record of success, you're committing yourself to unsuccessful practices.

And so too with feminists, who see things like objectivity, professionalism, dispassion, and actual equality and most of all, capitalism itself, as antiquated notions of a diseased Patriarchy which must be rejected entirely.

They don't want to be seen as Acting Male.

And so they keep taking functioning institutions and changing them. And when you change every foundational aspect of a functioning institution, what you wind up with, most of the time, is a non-functioning institution.

And they keep calling this "victory."

2019, I read an article about Larry Summers and Harvard that changed the way I look at the world. The author, writing under the pseudonym "J. Stone," argued that the day Larry Summers resigned as president of Harvard University marked a turning point in our culture. The entire "woke" era could be extrapolated from that moment, from the details of how Summers was cancelled and, most of all, who did the cancelling: women.

The basic facts of the Summers case were familiar to me. On January 14, 2005, at a conference on "Diversifying the Science and Engineering Workforce," Larry Summers gave a talk that was supposed to be off the record. In it, he said that female underrepresentation in hard sciences was partly due to "different availability of aptitude at the high end" as well as taste differences between men and women "not attributable to socialization." Some female professors in attendance were offended and sent his remarks to a reporter, in defiance of the off-the-record rule. The ensuing scandal led to a no-confidence vote by the Harvard faculty and, eventually, Summers's resignation.

The essay argued that it wasn't just that women had cancelled the president of Harvard; it was that they'd cancelled him in a very feminine way. They made emotional appeals rather than logical arguments. "When he started talking about innate differences in aptitude between men and women, I just couldn't breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill," said Nancy Hopkins, a biologist at MIT. Summers made a public statement clarifying his remarks, and then another, and then a third, with the apology more insistent each time. Experts chimed in to declare that everything Summers had said about sex differences was within the scientific mainstream. These rational appeals had no effect on the mob hysteria.

This cancellation was feminine, the essay argued, because all cancellations are feminine. Cancel culture is simply what women do whenever there are enough of them in a given organization or field. That is the Great Feminization thesis, which the same author later elaborated upon at book length: Everything you think of as "wokeness" is simply an epiphenomenon of demographic feminization.

The explanatory power of this simple thesis was incredible. It really did unlock the secrets of the era we are living in. Wokeness is not a new ideology, an outgrowth of Marxism, or a result of post-Obama disillusionment. It is simply feminine patterns of behavior applied to institutions where women were few in number until recently. How did I not see it before?

Andrews notes that while we speak of feminism in terms of firsts -- first female Justice, first female astronaut, etc. -- the "tipping point" comes when women gain majority status in an institution.

And women now dominate many institutions, and nearly dominate many more.

The same trajectory can be seen in many professions: a pioneering generation of women in the 1960s and '70s; increasing female representation through the 1980s and '90s; and gender parity finally arriving, at least in the younger cohorts, in the 2010s or 2020s. In 1974, only 10 percent of New York Times reporters were female. The New York Times staff became majority female in 2018 and today the female share is 55 percent.

Medical schools became majority female in 2019. Women became a majority of the college-educated workforce nationwide in 2019. Women became a majority of college instructors in 2023. Women are not yet a majority of the managers in America but they might be soon, as they are now 46 percent. So the timing fits. Wokeness arose around the same time that many important institutions tipped demographically from majority male to majority female.

The substance fits, too. Everything you think of as wokeness involves prioritizing the feminine over the masculine: empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition. Other writers who have proposed their own versions of the Great Feminization thesis, such as Noah Carl or Bo Winegard and Cory Clark, who looked at feminization's effects on academia, offer survey data showing sex differences in political values. One survey, for example, found that 71 percent of men said protecting free speech was more important than preserving a cohesive society, and 59 percent of women said the opposite.

...

Female group dynamics favor consensus and cooperation. Men order each other around, but women can only suggest and persuade. Any criticism or negative sentiment, if it absolutely must be expressed, needs to be buried in layers of compliments. The outcome of a discussion is less important than the fact that a discussion was held and everyone participated in it. The most important sex difference in group dynamics is attitude to conflict. In short, men wage conflict openly while women covertly undermine or ostracize their enemies.

My own take here is that men tend to have one-on-one conflicts whereas women tend to call up all of their friends and allies when they have a conflict and get as many people as possible on their side and against their opponent.

Men's conflicts resemble private duels. Women's conflicts resemble political campaigns.

And that's what we see everywhere in society now: we no longer have arguments. We have, instead, political campaigns and popularity contests for every single minor personal issue.

Bari Weiss, in her letter of resignation from The New York Times, described how colleagues referred to her in internal Slack messages as a racist, a Nazi, and a bigot and--this is the most feminine part--"colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers." Weiss once asked a colleague at the Times opinion desk to get coffee with her. This journalist, a biracial woman who wrote frequently about race, refused to meet. This was a failure to meet the standards of basic professionalism, obviously. It was also very feminine.

Men tend to be better at compartmentalizing than women, and wokeness was in many ways a society-wide failure to compartmentalize. Traditionally, an individual doctor might have opinions on the political issues of the day but he would regard it as his professional duty to keep those opinions out of the examination room. Now that medicine has become more feminized, doctors wear pins and lanyards expressing views on controversial issues from gay rights to Gaza. They even bring the credibility of their profession to bear on political fads, as when doctors said Black Lives Matter protests could continue in violation of Covid lockdowns because racism was a public health emergency.

I have railed about this a lot: The entire concept of "professionalism" and "professional detachment" went out the window as women began dominating fields. No longer do the professions seek to detach professional expertise from mere personal feeling and opinion. Now, professional power is used to leverage personal feelings and opinions and inflict them on the public.

We keep seeing this in corporate decisions. Look at Star Wars: The smart, obvious play was to keep making Star Wars movies as they'd always been, power fantasies and light war dramas mostly aimed to appeal to male sensibility. (Women just don't have as many fantasies about physically dominating their opponents.)

But Kathleen Kennedy decided to take a brand bought for $4.05 billion and use it to further her personal political ends.

And we just keep seeing this again and again with Bud Light, Cracker Barrel, Amazon's disastrous series under Jennifer Salke, etc. We keep seeing a complete failure -- or an intransigent refusal -- by women in power to consider that maybe a brand that has historically appealed to men or traditionalists should remain that way. They feel that the brands are icky as they are, and must be reshaped into something they'd personally enjoy.

I keep saying the same thing: If someone told me to write a Hallmark holiday romance movie, I'd watch 20 of them, make notes about what the basic fantasy being offered to viewers was, and attempt to duplicate that. I would not make the male character the protagonist and make the drama about whether or not he'd land the unobtainably beautiful female lead. I would not add guns and Brazillian jiu-jitsu. (I would add a lot of dogs, but that's fine, because women like dogs. Who doesn't.)

But every time I turn around that's exactly what female "professionals" are doing, charging into fields they know little of with the Mighty Confidence of a Fourteen Year Old and remaking it all per their personal whims and fancies. They just seem incapable of ever removing themselves from the equation and, well, doing a detached, professional job. It never seems to move beyond Personal Growth and Validation with them.

...

The field that frightens me most is the law. All of us depend on a functioning legal system, and, to be blunt, the rule of law will not survive the legal profession becoming majority female. The rule of law is not just about writing rules down. It means following them even when they yield an outcome that tug at your heartstrings or runs contrary to your gut sense of which party is more sympathetic.

A feminized legal system might resemble the Title IX courts for sexual assault on college campuses established in 2011 under President Obama. These proceedings were governed by written rules and so technically could be said to operate under the rule of law. But they lacked many of the safeguards that our legal system holds sacred, such as the right to confront your accuser, the right to know what crime you are accused of, and the fundamental concept that guilt should depend on objective circumstances knowable by both parties, not in how one party feels about an act in retrospect. These protections were abolished because the people who made these rules sympathized with the accusers, who were mostly women, and not with the accused, who were mostly men.

These two approaches to the law clashed vividly in the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. The masculine position was that, if Christine Blasey Ford can't provide any concrete evidence that she and Kavanaugh were ever in the same room together, her accusations of rape cannot be allowed to ruin his life. The feminine position was that her self-evident emotional response was itself a kind of credibility that the Senate committee must respect.

If the legal profession becomes majority female, I expect to see the ethos of Title IX tribunals and the Kavanaugh hearings spread. Judges will bend the rules for favored groups and enforce them rigorously on disfavored groups, as already occurs to a worrying extent. It was possible to believe back in 1970 that introducing women into the legal profession in large numbers would have only a minor effect. That belief is no longer sustainable. The changes will be massive.

She points out that both men and women agree that law will be transformed by women and how it will be transformed. The only difference is whether or not Girlboss Fiat becoming the only rule in law is a good thing or a bad thing.

The problem is not that women are less talented than men or even that female modes of interaction are inferior in any objective sense. The problem is that female modes of interaction are not well suited to accomplishing the goals of many major institutions.

I don't doubt that many women could do a professionally-detached, "masculine" kind of job in many professions -- if they wanted to.

The problem is, feminism teaches women to despise a professionally-detached, masculine kind of approach to any job. They see it as the Devil's Work. They want to tear down everything and rebuild on feminist, matriarchal, and frankly Marxist first principles.

Andrews turns, finally, to the idea that women just naturally out-competed men to take over the institutions so they should enjoy the fruits of their victory.

That's nonsense, she points out. Women won because they passed laws to guarantee women's victory.

The most obvious thumb on the scale is anti-discrimination law. It is illegal to employ too few women at your company. If women are underrepresented, especially in your higher management, that is a lawsuit waiting to happen. As a result, employers give women jobs and promotions they would not otherwise have gotten simply in order to keep their numbers up.

...

Anti-discrimination law requires that every workplace be feminized....

Women can sue their bosses for running a workplace that feels like a fraternity house, but men can't sue when their workplace feels like a Montessori kindergarten. Naturally employers err on the side of making the office softer. So if women are thriving more in the modern workplace, is that really because they are outcompeting men? Or is it because the rules have been changed to favor them?

Read the whole thing. I've cut a lot of good stuff.

Posted by: Ace at 03:10 PM | Comments (372) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Left-Wing Psychopaths Melt Down Over, Get This, Trump

Trump, along with some donors, is funding a free-to-the-taxpayer renovation to the White House. Specifically, he's building a long-planned but never built ballroom.

Here's the terrorist-aligned AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Construction started this week on the $250 million ballroom that President Donald Trump is adding to the White House as construction crews began tearing down the facade of the East Wing, where the new space is being built.

The 90,000-square-foot ballroom will dwarf the main White House itself, at nearly double the size, and Trump says it will accommodate 999 people.

Trump said on social media that the ballroom won't cost taxpayers a dime because it is being privately funded by "many generous Patriots, Great American Companies, and, yours truly."

Here are some things to know about the newest White House construction project:

Why is Trump building a ballroom?

Trump says the White House needs a large entertaining space and has complained that the East Room, the current largest space in the White House, is too small, holding about 200 people. He has frowned on the past practice of presidents hosting state dinners and other large events in tents on the South Lawn.

Hm, why would Trump, who has been the target of multiple assassination attempts, both of which were permitted by Secret Service incompetence bordering on accomplicehood, want to stop doing outside events and instead keep inside the safety of walls?

And gee, why would the left object to that, and demand that Donald Trump remain out in the wide-open where snipers can shoot him?

Who is paying the $250 million construction tab?

Trump says the project will be paid for with private donations and that no public money will be spent on the ballroom. The White House promised to release information on which individuals and corporations have pledged or donated money and invited some of the donors to an East Room dinner last week, but has not released a comprehensive list and breakdown of funds.

Some $22 million for the project came from YouTube, a Google subsidiary, as part of a recent settlement for a 2021 lawsuit Trump brought against the company.

The White House also has not said how much of his own money Trump is contributing.

Publius says the White House is trolling the left by giving the renovation its own website. Publius says to scroll down to "Major Events Timeline."

The timeline is freakin gold.

1998
Bill Clinton Scandal

2012
Muslim Brotherhood Visit

2023
Cocaine Discovered

2023-2024
Trans Day of Visibility

LMAO

Posted by: kerncon

The absolute clownfuckery of one of Bill Kristol's more garish grifters from the Bulwark:

Gavin Newsom, who never saw a construction project he didn't want to kill with infinite red tape -- ask the victims of the Palisades fire -- is beside himself.

Posted by: Ace at 02:10 PM | Comments (327) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Academic Fraudster and Congressional Grifter Mikie Sherrill Also Made Unsubstantiated Conspiracy-Theory Accusations Against Fellow Congressmen, Alleging, WITHOUT EVIDENCE, That They Were Ringleaders of the J6 Nonsensurrection

This daffy, ditzy conspiracy theorist who cheats on tests and uses insider information to trade defense stocks while serving on the House Armed Services Committee -- and who may be elected NJ governor in two weeks -- accused Republican Rep. Loudermilk of being a Secret Mastermind behind The Great Unruliness of 6 January 2021, because he led a couple of tours in the Capitol Building before January 6th.

It was a dry run for the greatest threat this Republic has faced since... like two days before, if I'm being honest.

Mikie Sherrill, the Democrat nominee for New Jersey governor who is battling allegations over a military academy cheating scandal, also faced a congressional ethics complaint in 2021 for tarring a fellow lawmaker with allegations later disproven by Capitol Police.

The ethics complaint was submitted against Sherrill and a number of her Democratic colleagues after they referred for investigation Republican members of Congress to the U.S. Capitol Police and both the House and Senate Sergeants at Arms for giving private tours on Jan. 5, 2021.

The members billed the tours suspicious because they were in advance of the Jan. 6 riot.

One of the Republican members accused was Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., whose office conducted a tour of House office buildings the day before Jan. 6.

Sherrill's letter sparked a probe by the Democrat-led Jan. 6 Committee into whether Loudermilk was giving a reconnaissance tour to Jan. 6 rioters.

He told them exactly where Nancy Pelosi kept her prized coat-rack! He was in on the plot from the start!

However, the U.S. Capitol Police reviewed security footage from that day and concluded neither Loudermilk, nor his staff, nor his guests were acting suspicious at all and that the lawmaker had simply given a routine tour to constituents.

"Rep. Sherrill made false accusations, without evidence of any wrongdoing, with apparently no thought of the threats to the safety of myself, my family, and others. The truth prevailed, which it always does, and the real damage at the end of the day was to her own credibility," Loudermilk told Just the News in a statement Thursday.

Meanwhile, in Virginia, a Special Prosecutor was just appointed to investigate child-murder-fantasist Jay Jones.

The investigation isn't about him calling for the murder of state representatives, the children of state representatives, and police.

No, the investigation is about the curious case of Jay Jones speeding, doing 116 mph in fact, on a road with a posted speed limit of 70.

In Virginia, speeding by more than 40mph over the limit gets you an automatic "recklessness" upgrade to your fine, which always results in loss of license and even jail time.

But not for Jay Jones! Oh dear, not for a Democrat politician!

Jay Jones got zero jail time and also zero days of a license suspension.

Instead, he got 1000 hours of community service.

Now, that may sound like a lot of community service -- that's more than 40 full 24-hour days, according to my quick use of a desk calculator.

But Jay Jones supposedly did all 1000 hours of community service in just one year, while working full-time at his law firm and also working for his own political action committee.

Even if he spent 24 hours almost every weekend -- two 12 hour shifts in a row, Saturday then Sunday -- doing "community service," he would only just complete these hours in a year.

So how did he do it?

Simple -- they let him claim that the hours he spent working on his own self-serving political action committee counted as "community service."

And so a special prosecutor has been appointed to investigate the judge who gave him such a light non-sentence and whichever court officer approved this obviously-sham "community service."

John Sexton points out that people who drive more than 40 miles per hour over the speed limit usually have their licenses suspended or revoked, and often do jail time:

If you were caught driving 46 miles per hour over the speed limit in Virginia, would you expect to serve jail time or at least have your license suspended or driving privileges restricted? Those are the kinds of consequences many Virginia drivers have had to face but Jay Jones did not.

7News reviewed more than a dozen reckless driving cases in New Kent County, Virginia, where Jones was convicted of reckless driving in 2022, for driving 116 miles an hour.

SEE ALSO | Virginia leaders condemn Democrat AG candidate's violent text messages sent in 2022

Court records show, one man was found guilty of driving 115 mph in a 70 in New Kent County. He got 10 days in jail, his license was suspended for six months, he was fined $2,000, and once he got his license back, he could only drive to and from work.

On the same day Jones received his sentence, a Woodbridge man was sentenced to 30 days in jail for driving 115 mph in a 70-mph zone. The Prince William County man's sentence was suspended as long as he didn't speed again. The Woodbridge man's license was suspended for six months, then restricted, and he was fined $1,500.

Another man was found guilty of reckless driving for driving 104 mph in a 70-mph zone in New Kent County. That earned him 20 days in jail, a six-month license suspension, and a $1,250 fine.

Jones, a former Virginia lawmaker, got no jail time for driving 116 mph in a 70 on I-64. He paid a $1,500 fine, his driving privileges were not impacted and he got 1,000 hours of community service.

The Richmond Times Dispatch reported that Jones completed those 1,000 hours -- equal to 25 weeks of full-time work -- in just one year.

Well, easy! They credited him working at his actual jobs as doing "community service." That's the Special Justice that First-Tier connected people get.

From National Review:

The certificates signed by representatives of the NAACP and MOM PAC attest that Jones completed more than 500 hours of community service for each organization within the 2023 calendar year. In order to complete that number of hours within one year, Jones would have had to dedicate ten hours of every week to MOM PAC and ten hours to the NAACP, all while working at the law firm Hogan Lovells full time. Social media posts show Jones also traveled the state campaigning for fellow Democrats throughout that year.

Current AG, and Jones' opponent, Jason Miyares says that Jones must drop out as he is seeking the office that will decide whether or not he should go to prison or not. As clear a conflict of interest as one could imagine.

Posted by: Ace at 01:10 PM | Comments (279) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Kash Patel Announces 31 Suspects In Huge NBA/Mafia Sports-Betting Operation

I didn't cover this yesterday because I thought it was a Pete Rose situation. IIRC, Rose was accused of betting on baseball, but not the games he played in. So this was a violation of the rule but not evidence he was throwing games for money.

But apparently, NBA players did throw games for money, and told their mafia partners which games they'd be throwing. Specifically, some players left the games early or claimed an injury to not play, and tipped off the mafia that they'd be doing so, thus either throwing the game or cutting down on points scored (which is a big area of sports betting).

So, belatedly, I'll mention the story now.

With my apologies -- I thought it was some bullshit about players betting on online poker against league rules or something.

FBI Director Kash Patel on Thursday morning announced a sweeping federal investigation alleging at least 31 defendants -- including an NBA player and an NBA coach -- were involved in illegal gambling schemes.

"You hear a lot about our work of defending the homeland and crushing violent crime. Well, this work is also representative of a colossal portion of the FBI's mandate to keep America safe and to keep our entertainment industry fair and secure," Patel said at a press conference in Washington, D.C., announcing the probe.

He and other federal prosecutors said the probe is, in fact, two cases: one related to the NBA and the other to illegal, rigged poker games.

Patel and U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Joseph Nocella, Jr., said the overall probe was "years-long," across 11 states and involved tens of millions of dollars.

"Your winning streak has ended," Nocella said.

He and Patel also confirmed reports from earlier in the morning that Miami Heat player Terry Rozier and Portland Trailblazer coach Chauncey Billups were arrested earlier in the day in connection with the probe.

Prosecutors also said Mafia crime families were involved in the rigged poker games, which included X-ray machines to see face-down cards. They said members helped collect debts for a cut of the winnings.

Regarding the NBA games, he alleged Rozier was involved in a scene in which players didn't play or left games early, in an attempt to influence scores and betting.

LeBron James is tangentially involved (but not implicated -- not yet, anyway).

Knowing the extent of players' injuries -- if they can play, if they can't play, or if they can play but with a diminished capacity -- is important information when you're betting. Teams generally keep this stuff as secret as possible and only disclose what they absolutely have to, by league rules.

Knowing in advance if a big play-maker will or won't play, or can play but will be impaired, is valuable information in betting.

One NBA player passed information about LeBron James' injuries to his mafia partners.

Details of LeBron James' injury status were sold by his pal and former Los Angeles Lakers coach Damon Jones as part of a massive prop betting scheme, according to court docs and law enforcement sources.

Prop bets -- "proposition bets" -- are bets made about a proposition other than who will win or lose. Like, "Will LeBron James score at least 30 points in tonight's game?"

Normies mostly bet on the outcomes of games. More serious gamblers put a lot of money on these proposition bets.

Jones, an ex Cleveland Cavs player and "unofficial assistant coach" for the Lakers during the 2022-2023 season, sent a message to one of the betting ring members on Feb. 9, 2023 urging him to place a large bet on the Lakers' opponent the Milwaukee Bucks, because James would be out with an injury that night, the sources told The Post.

"Get a big bet on Milwaukee tonight before the information is out!," Jones texted, according to the indictment.

The player, whom sources identified as James, did not play after reporting a lower body injury, and the Lakers lost.

Jones is a longtime friend of James who played with him on the Cavs earlier in James' career.

Jones also separately received $2,500 for hawking a supposed injury tip -- which turned out to be bogus -- about another Lakers star player before a Jan. 15, 2024 game against the Oklahoma City Thunder.

$2,500?

Shaq was asked about this and made the obvious point: "You're making nine million a year -- how much more do you need?"

And committing a serious crime that can get you banned from a lifetime of lucrative work for twenty-five hundred bucks?

Risk-reward, fellas. Risk-reward.

I can't really think of any political angles here. The media is talking up the perils of allowing sports betting out of Las Vegas and into everyone's laptops and phones. As a billion dollar business turns into a trillion dollar business, the opportunities for graft skyrocket.

I guess that's a decent take, though I don't know if the answer should be betting prohibition.

I don't like seeing sports betting commercials every other minute and I guess I think it's pretty sad that this vice is now so popular, but I'm not sure I really care enough to care.

I'm certainly happy to see another woke sports league take another fat shiner to the eyes.

How are you doing? I don't know if you've checked the calendar, but it's all Friday up in this piece.

Posted by: Ace at 12:10 PM | Comments (342) | Trackbacks (Suck)