westminsterdogshow 2023
Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022 Dave In Texas 2022
Jesse in D.C. 2022 OregonMuse 2022
redc1c4 2021
Tami 2021
Chavez the Hugo 2020
Ibguy 2020
Rickl 2019
Joffen 2014
Good morning kids. Considering transexuals are a protected victim class, should we not categorize the horror that happened in a Nashville school yesterday as a "mostly peaceful" mass-shooting? I don't mean to be flip considering the situation, but when one looks at the suicide rate of people who are brainwashed into thinking they're a woman trapped in a man's body or vice versa, or confused children whose psyches aren't fully formed and then physically and chemically mutilated by quack doctors and shrinks by parents who view their own flesh and blood as nothing more than the latest fashion accessory or the ultimate in virtual signaling, what happened in Nashville is hardly surprising.
Democrat Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee said Monday there was “no hope” of working with Republicans who supported Second Amendment rights, implying they were dangerous for supporting the Second Amendment.
“It’s hard for me to serve up there now with some of the people I have to serve with,” Cohen told MSNBC host Katy Tur. “They’re part of the danger. They could go — I’m not going to get into that — it’s just that they are so attached to guns and there’s no hope on them.”
. . . Cohen’s comments came after Audrey Hale, a 28-year-old female shooter who identified as transgender, killed three children and three adults at Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, before being engaged and fatally wounded by law enforcement after reportedly entering the school via a side door.
Cohen’s comments came as [so-called quote-unquote "president"] Joe Biden, congressional Democrats, media figures and celebrities demanded a ban on so-called “assault weapons” in the wake of the shooting.
“My name is Joe Biden. I’m Dr. Jill Biden’s husband, and I enjoy ice cream, chocolate chip. I came down because it was chocolate chip ice cream. By the way, I have a whole refrigerator full upstairs. You think I’m kidding. I’m not,” he said.
Well, in all fairness, Joey was channeling Leftist icon and hero Charles Manson who once quipped:
Death is no more important than eating an ice cream cone.
But of course, to the Left, it's the manner in which one dies and the situation surrounding the death, vis a vis scoring political points and advancing their aims, that's important. Hundreds of black males shooting and stabbing each other to death day and night in Democrat-controlled hell-holes? Criminals running wild in the streets raping, robbing and killing – B-urning L-ooting M-urdering? Ditto the massive waves of illegal aliens and the heroin, crack, fentanyl and whatever the hell else is flooding in from a non-existent border? Crickets.
And the deaths of Ashli Babbitt and Roseanne Boyland? Ditto-ditto.
Kudos to chicken-snarfing Cohen for demonizing guns and conservatives/Republicans in the same foul breath. He and his ilk could care fuck-all for the poor victims of socialism/leftism in the form of a psycho-tranny with evil on his warped brain. But as an expedient to disarming the populace who really are the only thing potentially standing in the way of them gaining absolute power, then let the glycerine tears flow down like a mighty river, to coin a phrase.
Steven Shaviro, a College of Liberal Arts and Sciences professor, wrote in a Facebook post on Sunday that while he does not “advocating violating federal and state criminal codes,” it is “far more admirable to kill a racist, homophobic, or transphobic speaker than it is to shout them down,” according to the New Guard. The professor was reportedly placed on leave and the incident was reported to law enforcement agencies for review.
“When right-wing groups invite such speakers to campus, it is precisely because they want to provoke an incident that discredits the left, and gives more publicity and validation to these reprehensible views than they could otherwise attain,” Shaviro wrote, according to a screenshot of the new deleted post. “These protesters get blamed instead of the bigoted speaker; the university administration finds a perfect excuse to side publicly with the racist or phobes; the national and international press has a field day saying that bigots are the ones being oppressed, rather than the people those bigots actually hate being the victims of oppression.”
. . . WSU President Roy Wilson responded to the post in a Monday email to the campus community condemning Shaviro’s language, according to a screenshot obtained by the New Guard.
“The post stated that rather than ‘shouting down’ those with whom we disagree, one would be justified to commit murder to silence them,” he wrote. “We have on many occasions defended the right of free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but we feel this post far exceeds the bounds of reasonable or protected speech. It is, at best, morally reprehensible and, at worst, criminal.”
And yet, this "professor" was not immediately shit-canned? Hey, Merrick Garland and Christopher Wray! Pfft. I suppose the solution is not just to ban the speakers you object to but to ban anyone who would want to attend their speeches in the first place.
But of course, Trump said "retribution" and that should immediately land him a date with Old Sparky, eh Steve Cohen? Meanwhile, in another part of the forest an aide to Senator Rand Paul – you remember Senator Paul, who was nearly beaten to death by a Leftist neighbor but which the propagandists described as merely a heated exchange which the Senator provoked – was assaulted and stabbed in D.C. A town that almost passed a bill further decriminalizing crime. And the assailant from what I understand was just released from a federal prison and has a rap sheet longer than a migrant caravan on the outskirts of Juarez.
A LinkedIn page that appears to belong to Hale indicates that identifies as a “he/him” and received an award in 2015 from the Nossi College of Art for achieving “greatness in the classroom.” Nashville School Shooter Identified as Transgender Artist
The suspect has been identified as Glynn Neal, according to Fox 5’s Allison Papson. He was reportedly just released from federal prison and has a long history of serious crimes, according to Virginians 4 Safe Communities. Rand Paul Staffer Stabbed In DC, Suspect In Custody
Robert Spencer: "The Paris of the West, where people die of drug overdoses on the street virtually every day and out-of-control theft is now dismissed as a 'basic city experience,' is finally getting tough. No, authorities aren’t cleansing the city of the scourges of drugs or tent cities or skyrocketing crime, but they are making sure San Franciscans are safe from the danger of a Little Free Library." San Francisco Gets Tough on Crime
"Cohen’s comments came after Audrey Hale, a 28-year-old female shooter who identified as transgender, killed three children and three adults at Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, before being engaged and fatally wounded by law enforcement after reportedly entering the school via a side door." (This freak belongs to you and yours, Cohen. You weaponized it; you own it - jjs) ‘Part of the Danger’: Dem Rep Says GOP Colleagues Are ‘So Attached To Guns,’ There’s ‘No Hope’
"Recent polls show that Trump’s approval ratings have improved since it was first reported that he faced potential indictment. The latest Morning Consult poll showed Trump has expanded his lead over Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.)." (for whatever polls are worth at this stage - jjs) Americans Know Indicting Trump Will Backfire on the Democrats
"Alvin Bragg and other Soros-owned big city DAs have nothing to do with putting hombres behind bars and upholding the highest standards of public safety. They have to do with the Marxist imperative of destroying to rule over the ruins." Fat, Stupid, and Diverse
CIVIL WAR 2.0: J-6 FBI FALSE FLAG "RIOT" & AFTERMATH, LEFTIST PERSECUTIONS, DEMOCRAT PUTSCH, AMERICAN DISSOLUTION
"Support for every traditional American value included in the poll has receded since 1998 besides 'money,' which has grown in importance. The data also shows young people and Democrats tend not to highly rank traditional American values as much as older adults and Republicans." Poll: Support for Traditional American Values, Patriotism Declines
"Having rich tastes and a fashionable ZIP code does not prevent such a person from doing nasty (and, yes, anti-white racist) things." Do White Leftists Really Hate Themselves?
BIDEN CRIME FAMILY REVELATIONS
"Cathay Bank, which has offices in the U.S. and communist China, voluntarily provided Johnson’s investigation with 200 bank records from 2017 and 2018 showing how the Biden family moved money through a complicated web of entities. The specific records revealed transactions between Hunter Biden-linked business entities and Chinese energy firm CEFC, whose top company lieutenant was the “spy chief of China,” according to Hunter Biden." Ron Johnson: ‘Bank from China’ Voluntarily Provided Biden Family Records While U.S. Banks Won’t
“The former president of the United States opened up with January 6 video, which is insane,” Kilmeade said. “He should be running from that, period. I don’t care his point of view, that is not a good thing for him. I thought that was absolutely awful. Even though he is winning in the polls, that will not help.” Fox News Host Brian Kilmeade Goes on the War Path Against Trump Following Waco Rally
RED-GREENS, CLIMATE CHANGE HOAX, DEMOCRAT-LEFT WAR ON FOSSIL FUELS, JUNK SCIENCE, LYSENKOISM
Glenn H. Reynolds: "As Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) tweeted: 'They’re after our stoves, our washing machines, and now, our air conditioners. Funny you never see them coming after private jets. The only goal of the ‘green’ agenda is making you SUFFER! That’s it!' It does seem the common thread in all these environmental proposals is making ordinary people’s lives worse. Especially senior citizens’ and minorities’." Biden’s Latest Target in His War on Appliances: Air Conditioning Units
"The legislation comes as Californians grapple with the fallout of the state’s green energy policies. The Newsom administration’s push to shutter refineries and transition the grid to renewable sources last summer caused per-gallon gas prices to skyrocket to $6.30 on average." California Legislature Greenlights Plan to Cap Oil Refinery Profits
Robert Spencer: "Ben Callegari, one of the authors of the new study, emphasized this: 'This gives us evidence to believe the population bomb won’t go off, but we still face significant challenges from an environmental perspective. We need a lot of effort to address the current development paradigm of overconsumption and overproduction, which are bigger problems than population.' What is coming? Socialism is coming, and the resulting famines and starvation will take care of overconsumption once and for all." The 'Population Explosion' Myth Blows Up
"Once again, a minor incident at a nuclear plant provokes unwarranted fears." Tritium Panic in Minnesota
"One thing about travel to foreign parts is that you get to see a major U.S. export – the stupid and expensive conceits and fashions of our educated-class rulers – being adopted by stupid and conceited educated-class rulers elsewhere in the world." Saving the Climate in Portugal, and More
THE ECONOMY, STUPID
". . . , the first time such laws have been overturned in five decades. The right-to-work measures had allowed residents to decline union membership in their workplaces and exempted them from being forced to pay union dues. Whitmer and other Democrats nevertheless celebrated the repeal, which marks a major victory for labor unions." Michigan Repeals ‘Right-To-Work’ Law In Major Victory For Unions
"Fields involving numerical skills are particularly at risk of disruption. Accountants, mathematicians, and financial quantitative analysts all received scores of 100 out of 100 for their exposure to AI. So too did authors and journalists." Study: Up To 80% of Jobs Could Be Disrupted by AI
"The FDIC revealed in a statement that the 17 branches of Silicon Valley Bank will be operated by First Citizens Bank as soon as Monday, while all depositors will automatically become account holders at the company. First Citizens Bank will purchase $72 billion of Silicon Valley Bank’s assets at a discount of $16.5 billion, while $90 billion will remain with the FDIC." Financial Authorities Announce Buyer For Collapsed Silicon Valley Bank
AMERICA AND THE WORLD IMPRISONED: CHINESE CORONAVIRUS FICTIONS AND FACTS
Ted Noel, M.D.: "Senator Rand Paul's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases bill unfortunately amounts to little more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." Rand Paul’s NIAID Bill is Much Too Timid
"While Lending’s fact-based conclusions on [Chinese] COVID caused him to lose six patients over the past three years, he '…got literally 100’s of ‘thank you’ from patients for writing [the update with its] truthful and scientific content. … People in general have covid burnout and VAX burnout (reflective in minimal Bivalent VAX usage) and now realize that the Govt and Big Pharma and certain people were full of crap and not being honest.'” Pushback: One doctor’s experience gives us all a ray of hope
"Following the protests at Stanford, the federal judge advocates for free speech." Kyle Duncan Says His Piece
"Bullies have a right to protest, but that right doesn’t extend to dragooning others into untruths—including the untruth that people who join a hateful mob have any intention of listening to a speaker in the first place. They don’t, and the rest of us are under no obligation to help them live that lie by playing along." Author Refuses to Play College Cancelation Kabuki
"Since the implementation of RCV in Maine, residents have witnessed firsthand how the system produces outcomes that contradict the desires of voters. During the 2018 midterms, then-incumbent GOP Rep. Bruce Poliquin lost to Democrat Jared Golden, despite Poliquin winning the most votes in the first round of voting. That outcome was due to the state’s ranked-choice voting system." Maine Republicans Introduce Bill To Stop Ranked-Choice Voting From Rigging State’s Elections
OFFICIAL DEMOCRAT PARTY/LEFTIST-ENDORSED ANTI-SEMITISM, ANTI-CHRISTIANITY
The report found that the Chinese “appealed” to the lawmaker’s ties to the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to win favor with them that they later used to score wins in a variety of areas, including delaying legislation that took action against Chinese propaganda, canceling resolutions that condemned China, and promoted false positive images of China. The report said the church has “long dreamed of expanding in China.” China Influences Utah Lawmakers By Appealing To Mormonism: Report
POLITICS
Michael Walsh: "Ron DeSantis has made his first unforced error in his nascent, as yet still-unannounced, campaign for the Republican presidential nomination 2024. Even worse, he showed weakness – and that, in this late-Roman Republic political climate, is an unforgivable sin. If DeSantis is not to be bullied out of the primaries by the raging bull elephant that is Donald Trump, he needs to do better, asap." "Not One Step Back"
"The former president has again defined the territory over which an upcoming national election will be fought. And in so doing, he’s done the nation a great service." Trump Again Defines National Priorities
"Trump during his term in office had some monumental successes, and there is no one in public life who could have done better at taking on the horrible excesses of our system." Trump Showed Us That We Are Losing Our Liberties
"If Putin follows through with this announcement, it would be the first time since the mid-1990s that Russia had stationed such arms outside the country’s borders. This comes as tensions continue amid the war in Ukraine." NATO Condemns Putin for Putting Nukes in Belarus
FOREIGN AFFAIRS, INTERNATIONAL
"The myopic focus on weakening Russia has had the unintended consequence of strengthening China." Racing to Multipolarity
"This month, Tehran and Riyadh announced that, after an extended session of talks in Beijing, the countries have agreed to restore ambassadors to their capitals and will focus on reconstructing their bilateral relationship. The Chinese Communist Party, an ally to both, touted the move as a defeat for the United States, particularly after an unpleasant visit by left-wing [so-called quote-unquote "president"] Joe Biden to Saudi Arabia last summer." Saudi Arabia, Iran Schedule Foreign Minister Meeting During Ramadan
"Netanyahu, who is seeking to expand the Israeli parliament’s lawmaking authority by curbing the Supreme Court’s power, on Sunday fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who had called for a pause in the reforms. Leftist protesters, already whipped up over what they perceive to be a threat to Israeli democracy, reacted by blocking streets and bridges and lighting fires on roadways." Netanyahu Postpones Judicial Reform Plan Amid Widespread Protests, Strikes
"Under these circumstances, it is hard not to sympathize with the pungent and despairing remark of the Przysucha Hassidic Rebbe, Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, who said of his quarrelsome people, 'I could revive the dead, but I have more difficulty reviving the living.'” The Scourge of Jewish Self-Division, or The 'Court Jews' Are Busy at Work
". . . a train belonging to Canadian Pacific, consisting of 70 cars transporting hazardous materials, derailed late Sunday night in North Dakota, approximately one mile southeast of Wyndmere . . . 31 of the 70 cars derailed, and some were found to be leaking petroleum used in the production of asphalt . . . There are suggestions that these recent train derailments are happening more frequently than usual, but it’s possible that the heightened attention is due to the East Palestine disaster. Similarly, concerns were raised last year about the frequency of fires occurring at food processing plants, which added to the supply chain crisis that was already problematic." Another Train Carrying Hazardous Materials Derails. What's Going On?
"At a congressional hearing, Becerra was unable to answer a basic question about how many of his Department of Health and Human Services employees actually show up to work." Joe Biden's Department of No-Show Jobs?
"According to a tweet by a NASA official, the first manned mission to ISS of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, carrying two NASA astronauts, has been delayed again, from the planned late April launch to sometime during the summer." Starliner’s first manned mission to ISS delayed again
"Using images of Uranus taken eight years apart by the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have detected significant seasonal changes in the atmosphere of the gas giant, caused by its unusual sideways rotation." Hubble spots long term seasonal changes on Uranus (but no Klingons - jjs)
FEMINAZISM, TRANSGENDER PSYCHOSIS, HOMOSEXUALIZATION, WAR ON MASCULINITY/NORMALCY
Robert Spencer: "Agatha Christie’s novels, along with the works of [Roald] Dahl and [Ian] Fleming, are just the beginning. Several comments on the Independent’s story ask if the woke censors will take their knives even to the Bible, and the answer is: of course they will. In fact, the Bible is likely quite high on their list, as it, more than virtually any other book, is likely to inspire thoughts that Leftists find abhorrent. Keep your hard copies well hidden." And Then There Were None: Woke Censors Come for Mystery Writer Agatha Christie
Christian Toto: "We need giants like Stephen King, Margaret Atwood and more to defend art." (King is a titanic Leftist; we'll see what happens when they take the red pen to his manuscripts - jjs) When Will Authors Stand Up to "Sensitivity Readers?"
“I can stand being a bad environmentalist because we all really are. I cannot stand being a hypocrite. And every single person who can fly in a private jet, including you, including George Clooney and everybody else, Leonardo DiCaprio, everybody, and I’m a big admirer of a lot of these people, Ben Affleck, I love these people,” Maher said. “But we all do it.” ‘Including You’: Maher Rips HuffPost Co-Founder For Being Hypocrite On Environment
"While you’re trying to wrap your head around the absurdity of this, I can’t help but wonder how sharing memes is racist and 'minstrelsy," but Disney remaking classic films and race-swapping traditionally white characters is not." CNN Accuses White Users of "Digital Blackface" for Sharing Memes
"We have enabled a culture of patricide." Daddy Issues
"The president who won it introduced it 40 years ago last week, having envisioned it many years before." The Weapon That Won the Cold War
NOTE: The opinions expressed in the links may or may not reflect my own. I include them because of their relevance to the discussion of a particular issue.
ALSO: The Morning Report is cross-posted at CutJibNewsletter.com if you want to continue the conversation all day.
On the one hand, the entire crypto industry is full of this kind of rule-bending bullshit when it's not outright stealing money and setting it on fire.
On the other hand, the people enforcing the rules sat around with their thumbs up their butts while the industry stole that money and set it on fire, and are only now taking action against much more minor infringements.
Along with a handy chart that shows the difference between the 1340P and 1360P. Not much at all on the CPU side, but the iGPU has 96 cores instead of 80 and runs 100MHz faster.
Dual HDMI, dual Thunderbolt, dual DDR4 SODIMM slots - not DDR5, which makes it more attractive to me because not only is DDR4 cheaper but I already have 128GB in 16GB modules sitting around from earlier upgrades, one M.2 slot, and 2.5Gb Ethernet.
I'd prefer AMD but AMD's 7000 series doesn't support DDR4 memory.
The ideal of an open internet is not a suicide pact, you retards.
Midjourney Art of the Day
The hands again aren't quite right, but they are attached to her wrists and there aren't three of them, unlike one of the other pictures in this batch.
If someone wanted to illustrate a fantasy role-playing game, Midjourney would be a godsend. Except that it doesn't understand what it's doing, it just makes a pastiche of what it's seen.
Now, it's seen literally millions of photos and pieces of art and it's grown very good at making pastiches, but it has no understanding and no imagination.
If you want an illustration, it's great. If you want an illustration of something, hire an artist.
[Roger Ball is a long-time, loyal Ace of Spades moron who comments under a different nickname and often corresponds with me and some of the other Cobs, offering up feedback and content suggestions. He is a former Navy pilot who flies everything from commercial jets for {huge airline} to paper airplanes with his progeny. I challenged him to once again take some of his content offerings and come up with a backup ONT to share with the horde. Thanks for coming out of the bullpen again tonight, R.B. – Buck]
DUST to DUST…not what you think
Greetings, horde. It is always an honor to fill these pages with…uh…you know the thing.
"This summary serves as a fact check on the top ten disasters that mainstream media attributes to climate change."
What boring lives we would have without disasters, no? Scott Johnson at Power Line addresses the “Extermination Nation” theme of the climate mafia: THE EXTINCTION NEXT TIME
Paul Ehrlich:”Oh, humanity is not sustainable. To maintain our lifestyle (yours and mine, basically) for the entire planet, you’d need five more Earths. Not clear where they’re gonna come from.”
Man. Sounds lake an expert if there ever was one, eh?
John Dutton (Yellowstone) might have a good perspective:
"We forget that what once separated the Western world from the rest was not race, climate, or natural bounty, but its gradual creation of meritocracies replacing the pre-civilizational rule of the clan, the tribe, or the race."
The tribes of grifters and looters lie and are supported by the Propaganda Media. And we are letting them win. For now.
DEI - DESTROY EVERY INSTITUTION, like our election system.
It has ditched regular fuel to run on a particular kind of biodiesel made, among other delicacies, from leftover ramen broth. It leaves a delicious aroma in the air and is less damaging to the mountainous landscapes and rice fields that it travels through.
Hey, as long as we have Ramen noodles, we’ll be just fine. Food and transportation for a free society. I think I would like the Japanese more if it hadn’t been for that whole Pearl Harbor, World War Two thing, but credit where credit is due.
Pilot Time
Crop dusting. Never have done but I wouldn't mind trying it. It looks like a lot of fun and a little dangerous. It's also a precision industry with GPS guided spray patterns and excellent turbine powered airplanes. Why, there's even a you tube channel for Ag flying! Ag Aviation Adventures, hosted by Tyson and Cally, has almost 20,000 subscribers.
They have good AV production quality and story lines. I do have a bone to pick, though. The following vid, Flying One of the First Ag Planes Ever Produced! talks about the Snow S-2 duster designed and built by pioneer Leland Snow. Now, I will never take anything away from Mr. Snow as he clearly was a great visionary and innovative force for agricultural flying.
There is some disagreement on the exact dates in various media, but a general "mid 1920's" will cover it, and it was certainly before the 1950s when Leland built his first Snow S-1. The Delta Flight Museum is a great place to go for the history of the Huff-Deland Puffer and subsequent Delta Dusters. I was surprised that even the commenters did not mention the Huff-Deland "Puffers". There are only two of those historic biplanes known to exist. One is in theSouthern Museum of Flight in Birmingham. The other is in the National Air and Space Museum
The definitive expert on the subject is retired Delta Captain and Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame inductee Jim Hoogerwerf. His extensive research is reflected in the following 2021 20-minute video presentation. It’s likely too much inside baseball for many but is offered for historical purposes.
[Shameless plug: The Delta Flight Museum is also a great place to spend a couple of hours, but be sure to check the website home page for scheduled hours and closings. t's an extremely popular event venue. – Roger]
There. You are now informed about an important industry that has a critical role in feeding (all kinds of food) and clothing (cotton) the masses.
Thanks again for spending a little time here tonight.
Firing up a coal-burning miniature train. I think it burns coal, but I'm not sure if the coal is burned just to produce smoke, while the train actually runs on electricity, or if the thing is actually propelled by the energy of the burning coal.
Quick Hits Update: Transgender Killer Confirmed; Left Behind a "Manifesto"
—Ace
Noted leftwing flake and frequent Allahpundit-linkee Aaron Rupar posted a completely faked, photoshopped image, supposedly a picture of a page from official Florida teaching materials. Again, it's completely fake, but that's how Aaron Rupar has always rolled.
Agatha Christie is the latest bestselling novelist to get the rewriting treatment for 2023 readers, according to a British newspaper.
The bestselling novelist in the world, Christie created enduring popular sleuths Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, and the Daily Telegraph reports that new editions of both these series have had original passages amended or removed by publisher Harper Collins.
The Telegraph states that digital versions of new editions of the books written between 1920 and 1976 (the year of Christie's death) include text stripped of "descriptions, insults or references to ethnicity, particularly for characters Christie's protagonists encounter outside the UK."
For example, in the book Death on the Nile -- published in 1937 and recently remade for the big screen by Kenneth Branagh -- references to "Nubian people" have been removed, as have several references to non-British characters' physiques. The word "local" replaces "native"
A line in Christie's debut novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles which has Poirot commenting on a character being "a Jew" has gone. And Christie's narration and sections of dialogue uttered by unsympathetic characters have also been cut, according to the newspaper.
Agatha Christie is not revered as a stylist, nor as a writer reflecting sociological realism; rather, her plots are clever & usually provide some sort of "twist." changing her language will hardly matter as it would in a more literary writer (Twain, Faulkner).
What a smelly old witch.
Someone, I think maybe Jim Treacher, wrote "Artists against art" in response to this attention-starved spinster.
Flashback, 2021: the American Booksellers Association joins the Hitler Youth and figuratively burns a book which the Maoists have decided should never have been published--Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier. They apologized for sending copies of the book to booksellers, as they always do with books to interest booksellers in buying them. They promised to "do better" in screening which books may be promoted and which ones must be figuratively burned.
Update: The transgender killer left behind a manifesto.
VIDEO: Nashville police chief confirms Audrey Hale identifies as transgender, suggests her trans identify motivated the killings: "We have a manifesto ... and a map of how all of this was going to play out." pic.twitter.com/Mss0FPqnUn
Lt. Col. Bearclaw, aka Alexander Vindman, slanders again. He claims that Senator Ron Johnson had been pro-Zelensky before he took a trip to Moscow and was, it is implied, there recruited as a RUSSIAN AGENT by Vladimir Putin.
Chuck Ross points out that Johnson went to Moscow in 2018, a year before Zelensky was elected President. So the claim that he supported Zelensky before his trip to Moscow is a false derogatory claim of fact, and therefore slander.
Cool story, but Johnson went to Moscow in July 2018. Zelensky wasn't inaugurated until 2019. https://t.co/sIn1fNl4fE
-- Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) March 27, 2023
These people need to just start being sued. Constantly.
They think because the leftwing ecosphere they exist in supports and promotes casual defamations agaisnt the out-group, therefore it's legally acceptable. It's not.
See, if you post a meme containing a black face, that's you effectively putting on black face and pretending to be black.
And that's racist.
Maybe you shared that viral video of Kimberly "Sweet Brown" Wilkins telling a reporter after narrowly escaping an apartment fire, "Ain't nobody got time for that!"
Perhaps you posted that meme of supermodel Tyra Banks exploding in anger on "America's Next Top Model" ("I was rooting for you! We were all rooting for you!"). Or maybe you've simply posted popular GIFs, such as the one of NBA great Michael Jordan crying, or of drag queen RuPaul declaring, "Guuuurl..."
If you're Black and you've shared such images online, you get a pass. But if you're White, you may have inadvertently perpetuated one of the most insidious forms of contemporary racism.
You may be wearing "digital blackface."
What is digital blackface?
Digital blackface is a practice where White people co-opt online expressions of Black imagery, slang, catchphrases or culture to convey comic relief or express emotions.
These expressions, what one commentator calls racialized reactions, are mainstays in Twitter feeds, TikTok videos and Instagram reels, and are among the most popular Internet memes.
Digital blackface involves White people play-acting at being Black, says Lauren Michele Jackson, an author and cultural critic, in an essay for Teen Vogue. Jackson says the Internet thrives on White people laughing at exaggerated displays of Blackness, reflecting a tendency among some to see "Black people as walking hyperbole."
If you're still not sure how to define digital blackface, Jackson offers a guide. She says it "includes displays of emotion stereotyped as excessive: so happy, so sassy, so ghetto, so loud... our dial is on 10 all the time -- rarely are black characters afforded subtle traits or feelings."
Many White people choose images of Black people when it comes to expressing exaggerated emotions on social media -- a burden that Black people didn't ask for, she says.
"We are your sass, your nonchalance, your fury, your delight, your annoyance, your happy dance, your diva, your shade, your 'yaas' moments," Jackson writes. "The weight of reaction GIFing, period, rests on our shoulders."
Why digital blackface is wrong
[C]ritics say digital blackface is wrong because it's a modern-day repackaging of minstrel shows, a racist form of entertainment popular in the 19th century. That's when White actors, faces darkened with burnt cork, entertained audiences by playing Black characters as bumbling, happy-go-lucky simpletons. That practice continued in the 20th century on hit radio shows such as "Amos 'n' Andy."
Put simply: digital blackface is 21st-century minstrelsy.
...
And yet even with that definition, it's hard to figure out exactly what is and isn't digital blackface.
This is the challenge that Elizabeth Halford faces.
Halford, a brand designer, wrote an apologetic essay in 2020 about how she made a meme out of Wilkins' "Ain't nobody got time for that" catchphrase and sent someone a GIF of the singer Beyonce repeating, "I'm not bossy, I'm the boss."
"I've engaged in digital blackface," Halford wrote." I've laughed at people of color on the news facing horrifying crime and disaster and loss. I've appropriated Black trauma as punchlines and peeled their faces off to put on my own and say what I can't say, to make you laugh, or just because it went viral."
Halford tells CNN she was bothered that she overlooked the context of Sweet Brown's interview. The woman had just experienced a tragedy.
"I guess we find it funny, the way (Black) people tell their story with so much flair," she says. "but at the end of the day, one woman's apartment building burned down while she was in bed."
...
Besides, Halford says, if she refrains from using any Black memes, she runs into another problem:
"Those are the most effective, because White people are so boring," she says.
I'm glad that we're stamping out the serious racism of people posting pictures of black people to react to news, while ignoring the completely-unserious racism of constantly deriding white people.
Jackson, in her Vogue essay, acknowledges it can be hard to know where to draw the line.
"Now, I'm not suggesting that white and nonblack people refrain from ever circulating a black person's image for amusement or otherwise..." she writes. "There's no prescriptive or proscriptive step-by-step rulebook to follow, nobody's coming to take GIFs away."
But no digital behavior exists in a deracialized vacuum, she says. A White person can spread digital blackface without malicious intent.
"Digital blackface does not describe intent, but an act -- the act of inhabiting a black persona," she adds. "Employing digital technology to co-opt a perceived cache or black cool, too, involves playacting blackness in a minstrel-like tradition.
So this is all cultural appropriation, huh?
I can't wait until the Racial Grievance Development Squad reads a book and discovers which race is mostly responsible for the invention and evolution of computers and the internet, as well as meme culture generally.
But they'll say you can't steal from White Culture -- because whites don't even have a culture.
What about your white American heritage are you proud of @NorthernBelle1_
? It shouldn't be a hard question. Unless it is. https://twitter.com/NorthernBelle1
Denying that an entire race has any culture at all is a particularly disgusting and blatant form of racism. But this claim is made to allow black racists to cry about cultural appropriation while continuing to enjoy all the advancements that white culture has brought them. They just claim whites do not have a culture to steal from; all the things whites have done are just part of the common culture, available to anyone.
But if you post a meme with Michael Jackson eating popcorn, you're engaging in 21st-century minstrelry.
John Kerry continues insisting that his private planes aren't contributing to climate change because he pays foreigners to plant some trees from time to time.
He also claims that his private planes are commercial flights -- because he's chartering them. He's making the claim that only if a plane is in owned by you is it truly private. If it's a chartered jet company which charters flights for the ultra-wealthy, well, then they're engaged in a commercial, not personal, aviation enterprie, and that makes these flights "commercial."
REPORTER: "People who go to Davos to talk about climate change fly private..."
JOHN KERRY: "They offset and they are working harder than most people I know to be able to try to effect this transition." pic.twitter.com/BS1FD5X0wP
On the other hand, French president Macron seems to be the victim of a false attack.
Macron while asking for sacrifices from the French people realizes he is wearing a 80,000 watch and like a magician makes it disappear under the table. Unworthy. pic.twitter.com/zRiQWFAR1M
In fact, according to French media reports, the watch in question is made by the French manufacturer Bell and Ross, costs somewhere between 1,600 and 2,400, and Macron has brandished it in other public appearances and photo shoots.
French news channel BFMTV debunked the 80,000 figure in its analysis, concluding instead that the watch is a variation of the Bell and Ross V1-92 Blue Steel, which typically sells for 2,400.
Um, no. It's, get this, another lie from the trans extremists.
A very based take from David Strom:
'm not exactly sure what they will be avenging. They claim a trans genocide is upon us, but in their own propaganda, they claim that 6 trans people have been murdered this year. There were 26,031 murders in 2021. The TDOV people claim 60 murders in 2022 for trans people. 1.6 million people in the United States identify as trans. That works out, I think, to 3.75 murders per 100,000. That is less than half that of the general population.
Black men die by homicide at a rate of 55 per 100,000. Trans people: 3.75 per 100,000.
Every murder is a tragedy and a crime, no matter the victim. But what is shocking about the murder rate for transgender people is how low it is, not how high.
The Daily Wire did a deep dive into the FBI stats and found that there is statistically almost no hate crime against transgendered people...
When trans activists talk about a "genocide," they are not actually talking about physical harm done to transgendered people. Their claim, actually, is that our desire to keep them from recruiting more people into their cult is a genocidal act, as they otherwise have no means to reproduce.
It's a neat sleight of hand if you think about it. But it also gives the lie to their claim not to be recruiting. They want to expand their ranks because the alternative is not being able to reproduce. The grooming itself is the point.
In Tennessee, a 28-year-old "heavily armed woman" entered a Christian school and began killing people, including children. This woman has been identified as "Audrey Hale" by NBC News.
If this is true, prepare for a media blitz of sympathy for the shooter and a condemnation of the victims and all other Christians -- essentially, the media will declare this shooting of Christian children to be kinda justified.
Ron DeSantis will be named as the real criminal here. Although Tennessee governor Bill Lee will share credit for that, having signed legislation that limits transgender "therapy" for children.
The media routinely publishes claims that to limit transgender procedures according to the age of the victim-patient is "literally genocide."
How many times did the media think it could claim that any disagreement with the extremist trans agenda was "literally genocide" before an extremist believed them and took action premised on the idea that she was "fighting genocide"?
Update: They awoke Biden from his daily 21 hour nap to comment. He started off with some ice cream humor before making his thousandth rote call for a ban on non-existent "assault weapons."
Biden: "My name is Joe Biden. I'm Dr. Jill Biden's husband. And I ate Jeni's ice cream. Chocolate chip. I came down because I heard there was chocolate chip ice cream. I have a whole refrigerator full upstairs." pic.twitter.com/W3vu3XXSgU
Its sick Its heartbreaking. A familys worst nightmare. Pres. Biden said gun violence is ripping the soul of the U.S. apart following the school shooting in Nashville. Biden called for a assault weapons ban after police reports of the weapons the shooter carried. pic.twitter.com/lT2hIgzhIG
Fired Woke "Gay Latina" Victoria Alonso Threatens Legal Action Against Disney; Disney Says She Committed a Clear Breach of Contract
—Ace
I mentioned that Alonso is a "gay Latina" (not "Latinx," bigot?) because her own lawyer is apparently making the case on just that. That Disney "silenced a gay Latina."
Another wokie using her sexuality as a sword and her race as a shield.
Disney fired her, they claim, because she breached her contract. Disney had an exclusive deal with her, but she produced the film Argentina 1985 for a rival studio. That's a breach right there. Disney then told her not to promote that film or any other rival studio's films. But she went out on the red carpet and promoted the film anyway.
After being fired from her longtime role as Marvel's VFX and postproduction president, Victoria Alonso is ready to fire back against claims about why she lost her job. Patty Glaser, Alonso's attorney, issued a Friday statement to Variety denying that Alonso was fired because of her role as a producer on Argentina, 1985. Instead, Glaser claimed that her client was "silenced" by Disney. (And no, she made no mention of the highly criticized visual effects in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.)
The Hollywood Reporter first reported that Alonso's involvement in Argentina, 1985 -- which Amazon Studios helped produce -- breached a contract she signed with Disney in 2018 that prohibited work with company competitors. THR claimed the veteran exec was given a pass under the condition that she would stick to Marvel projects moving forward and not promote any other work. Allegedly, Alonso's decision to promote Argentina, 1985 anyway caused her exit. "The idea that Victoria was fired over a handful of press interviews relating to a personal passion project about human rights and democracy that was nominated for an Oscar and which she got Disney's blessing to work on is absolutely ridiculous," Glaser responded. "Victoria, a gay Latina who had the courage to criticize Disney, was silenced."
What they're suggesting -- and Midnight's Edge agrees with this -- is that the breach of contract is just a pretext for the firing, not the real reason.
Midnight's Edge points out that as far as pretexts for firing go, this is a bulletproof pretext. If you're exclusive with one studio you're not allowed to work with another or promote a rival's films, period.
But they also agree that the bulletproof pretext was used to hide the more serious reasons for firing.
Like the fact that she went out on the red carpet to attack Disney for not being pro-gay enough, and bragging about how she browbeat Bob Chapek into getting into an extremely costly fight about the Parental Rights in Education bill. Which the Midnight's Edge people think cost them "billions" or even "tens of billions" due to the loss of control over the Reedy Creek district.
Several outlets have suggested this is a reference to Alonso's comments at the 2022 GLAAD Awards, where she called out Bob Chapek, then CEO of Disney, out for his handling of Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill. Reportedly, she was told after the awards ceremony that she could no longer do press for Marvel.
And apparently she kept talking to the press -- another breach. Or maybe not a breach, but an act of insurbordination against a superior giving her a direct order to stop dragging the company into her private political battles.
The report points out that Disney could have simply paid her out for any number of reasons, according to the recent backlash against Marvel VFX in the public eye. According to Puck's Matthew Belloni, the dispute first came up in mid-2021 while renegotiating Alonso's contract, with Disney discovering she had been producing Argentina, 1985 for Amazon Studios, a direct competitor.
"Disney's Alan Bergman and Marvel's Kevin Feige were super annoyed at yet another example of Alonso prioritizing her personal endeavors over the company, and the bad precedent it would set for other Disney executives"
Despite this breach, Disney granted leeway to Alonso due to her tenure at Marvel Studios and allowed her to keep her name on the project as long as she didn't promote it. In the following months, Alonso would give an interview to Indiewire about the project, as well as attend the BAFTAs in London. These incidents are what ultimately led Disney to let Alonso go.
It's just breach after breach with this bitch, and then she whines that as a Gay Latina she should be allowed to do whatever her ugly heart wills.
Note that bit about "they could have paid her out" (or paid her off). Apparently Disney did not give her a big pay-out on the way out the door, or she would not be risking it by threatening to sue Disney and attacking them.
It was reported that everyone was present at her termination.
Legal and human resources were all present. Disney seemed to imagine that this was going to be a non-amicable separation, and had all their legal and DEI ducks in a row for the firing.
Her lawyer claims that she was "terminated when she refused to do something she believed was reprehensible."
What could that mean? Spread suntan lotion on Bob Iger's luscious manly thighs?
The lawyer refused to add details, but the Midnight's Edge guys talked about this. I don't think they actually said it, but the feeling I got from them is that maybe Alonso refused to fire any of her LGBT employees. Iger had ordered the firing of 7000 people, and among those the first to go were many HR people. It might be that Alonso said "over my dead body" will any of the wokies and DEI advisors and "sensitivity readers" at Marvel be fired.
And then she was.
That's all speculation. They don't know themselves, and they didn't even say that; I'm just guessing that they were driving at that.
The lawyer continued making threats:
"Disney and Marvel made a really poor decision that will have serious consequences," Glaser concluded. "There is a lot more to this story and Victoria will be telling it shortly -- in one forum or another."
Other reasons for firing Alonso, as noted by the Midnight's Edge guys:
Alonso is in charge of special effects, and Marvel's special effects have gotten weaker and weaker, to the point now where people are openly mocking them.
Alonso is also in charge of physical production, and Marvel movies have gone greatly overbudget lately, requiring costly extensive reshoots.
Marvel movies have just generally been underperforming. Alonso, as Marvel's #2 executive, bears responsibility for that.
Combine the dwindling box office with the exploding production cost and you have a problem.
Alonso has also repeatedly alienated Marvel's largely straight male fandom by injecting woke politics into everything, including musing that the name "The X-Men" is outdated and sexist, and that Marvel might change the name of the group to "The Mutants" or "The X-People." She is also seen as a big advocate for the M-She-U -- Marvel's remaking itself into a mostly-female-skewing franchise.
The last big reason for firing her is that they had to fire someone, so it was either fire her or fire Feige. And they still have faith that maybe Feige can make a movie people will want to see again -- if they get rid of this woke scold, who, they're hoping, is the main problem here. I think they're hoping that this aggressive, butch woman was able to ride roughshod over this weak, retiring, feminine geek Kevin Feige, and he just wasn't man enough to tell her "No." So they think maybe without her there, the division can return to profitability.
But Kevin Feige has frequently championed the "M-She-U," so I don't think Disney will get out of its funk just by firing Alonso.
A lot of people are now saying that Marvel Phase IV just proves that Feige wasn't actually the guy making the trains run on time at Marvel. Rather, it was people like Jon Favreau and James Gunn and the Russo Brothers. They've left Marvel now, and we can see how well Marvel's doing without them.
In more bad news for Marvel: Jonathan Majors, who is intended to be the Thanos of the next few years in Marvel movies, was arrested and charged for being a Big Bad Guy in real life, specifically of slapping around his girlfriend. And "strangulating" her.
The actor Jonathan Majors was arrested Saturday in New York on charges of strangulation, assault and harassment, authorities said. On Sunday, an attorney for Majors said there's evidence that he is "entirely innocent."
New York City police said that Majors, star of the recently released "Creed III" and "Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania," was involved in a domestic dispute with a 30-year-old woman. Police responded around 11 a.m. Saturday to a 911 call inside an apartment in the Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea.
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"The victim informed police she was assaulted," a spokesperson for the NYPD said in a statement. "Officers placed the 33-year-old male into custody without incident. The victim sustained minor injuries to her head and neck and was removed to an area hospital in stable condition."
A representative for Majors denied any wrongdoing by the actor.
"He has done nothing wrong," the representative said in an email to the AP on Saturday. "We look forward to clearing his name and clearing this up."
On Sunday, an attorney for Majors, Priya Chaudhry, came out more forcefully, saying Majors "is provably the victim of an altercation with a woman he knows" and blamed the incident on the woman having "an emotional crisis."
Chaudhry said there was evidence clearing Majors, including "video footage from the vehicle where this episode took place, witness testimony from the driver and others who both saw and heard the episode, and most importantly, two written statements from the woman recanting these allegations."
The woman may have recanted, but that happens all the time in domestic violence situations. The prosecutor is apparently continuing the prosecution. I don't think they would do so if the video proved he was innocent.
The arrest of actor Jonathan Majors has upended the Army's newly launched advertising campaign that was aimed at reviving the service's struggling recruiting numbers.
Majors, who authorities said was arrested Saturday in New York on charges of strangulation, assault and harassment, was the narrator of two ads at the heart of a broader media campaign that kicked off at the start of the NCAA's March Madness college basketball tournament.
...
In a statement Sunday, the Army's Enterprise Marketing Office said that the Army was aware of Majors' arrest and was "deeply concerned by the allegations." It added that while Majors "is innocent until proven guilty, prudence dictates that we pull our ads until the investigation into these allegations is complete."
He may be innocent. He was the one who called the police. The woman could have been having an "emotional crisis" and hit him until he responded.
But for now, this is just more bad news for the Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight at Disney Marvel.
One of the Midnight's Edge guys said that Victoria Alonso urged the hiring of majors and "personally vouched" for him.
So maybe a little delayed-fuse bomb from the Gay Latina destroyer of franchises.
Riley June Williams has been sentenced to three years in prison along with three years of supervised release and a $2,000 fine...
She was just 22 years old at the time. Prosecutors had done their best to throw the book at the young woman, asking for more than seven years in prison. Her attorney requested one year and one day. The judge apparently felt that three years was a compromise. But as with so many of these show trials, a closer look at what Williams was actually accused of and the charges where they managed to obtain convictions doesn't exactly paint the picture of a dangerous desperado.
[Associated Press:]
A Pennsylvania woman linked to a far-right extremist movement was sentenced on Thursday to three years in prison for storming the U.S. Capitol, where she invaded then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office with other rioters.
Riley June Williams, 23, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was charged but not convicted of helping steal a laptop from Pelosi's office suite during the riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
A federal jury convicted Williams in November of six charges, including a felony count of civil disorder, after a two-week trial. But it deadlocked on two other counts, including "aiding and abetting" the laptop's theft.
She "invaded" the office.
I thought she was just an Undocumented Visitor, no?
She admitted stealing Nancy Pelosi's stupid gavel, which is a cheap implement that Jazz Shaw says would cost between $20 and $100, tops.
The prosecutors ginned up a case against her by claiming that her words were an "accelerant" for "mayhem."
So she was jailed for her words.
Riley entered the building through a door that had already been broken open by others. Once inside she allegedly "yelled at" some of the police officers. Prosecutors described her actions as "acting as an accelerant, exacerbating the mayhem." (Whatever that's supposed to mean.) She was also accused of "using men wearing helmets and body armor like a human battering ram," pushing them toward some of the Capitol Hill Police from behind. How much actual "pushing" of adult men the slightly-built young lady could manage was not explained.
...
At her trial, the jury didn't seem to be too impressed with the monstrous nature of Riley's crimes. They failed to convict her of "obstructing an official proceeding." That's the big ticket item that supposedly made the riot "an insurrection." They also refused to convict her of "aiding and abetting" the theft of a laptop from Pelosi's office. How does one even do that? How many people does it take to steal a laptop? Did she point at it and yell, "look! There's a laptop?"
In the end, Riley Williams was convicted of interfering with law enforcement officers, resisting or impeding law enforcement officers, disorderly conduct, and, of course, "parading." (They've charged everyone from the riot with parading.) And for that, the now-23-year-old Williams was sent to prison for three years. This is happening while actual rioters in California and Oregon who smash the windows out of stores and steal as much as $1,000 worth of retail merchandise are given probation if they are even pursued at all. It's one hell of a justice system we've got going here, isn't it?
The shroud of secrecy surrounding the FBI's foreknowledge and engagement in the events of January 6 is disintegrating, no matter how hard Beltway lifers try to keep it intact.
By Julie Kelly
March 23, 2023
After nine weeks of testimony from multiple government witnesses, including FBI agents, the Justice Department finally concluded its case-in-chief in the Proud Boys' seditious conspiracy trial on Monday.
Five Proud Boys, including the group's leader, Enrique Tarrio, are accused of conspiring to "oppose the lawful transfer of presidential power by force" on January 6, 2021. It is Attorney General Merrick Garland's most consequential case related to January 6; convictions will help build a similar case against Donald Trump largely based on his infamous "stand back and stand by" remark to the Proud Boys during an October 2020 presidential debate.
Most of the evidence is nothing more than inflammatory, braggadocious chatter in group texts; Tarrio wasn't even present at the Capitol on January 6. Another defendant, Ethan Nordean, can be seen on surveillance video walking through an open door as Capitol police stood nearby.
Similar to other so-called "militia" groups tied to January 6, no one brought weapons to the Capitol that day; no one was charged with assaulting police officers or lawmakers. A key piece of evidence that prosecutors claimed was a road map for the "attack" on the Capitol wasn't produced by any Proud Boy but by a former intelligence asset who himself sent the plan to Tarrio through a third party.
But Tarrio is guilty of having an email account capable of receiving such criminal plans.
So everyone, if someone sends you something to your email box, the federal government believes that is evidence you yourself wrote it. Or should be construed as having written it.
The document represented just one more instance of how a government agent helped shape the government's narrative that the Proud Boys plotted in advance to carry out an "insurrection" on January 6. In fact, much like the FBI-engineered plan to "kidnap" Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, court proceedings confirm that FBI assets might outnumber criminal defendants.
At least 10 and possibly up to 15 FBI informants were embedded in the group months before and continuing after the events of January 6. Informants participated in numerous group chats, cozied up to leadership, and even accompanied the Proud Boys to Washington.
One known informant, according to a September 2021 New York Times report, was involved in the first breach of Capitol grounds and entered the building that afternoon.
But prosecutors and Judge Timothy Kelly have tried their best to prevent the public from learning the full scope of the FBI's involvement. The docket is littered with sealed hearings and filings; prosecutors presented to the defense team heavily redacted reports related to FBI informants just before the trial began.
"Everything has been done under cover," one defense attorney recently complained in court. A consortium of major news corporations also knocked Kelly this week for holding "sealed hearings and exclud[ing] the press and public from attending proceedings in this high-profile case."
Kelly also took the highly unusual and prejudicial step of requiring the defense to "pre-clear" questions with prosecutors before asking a witness about the use of informants--but information is slowly trickling as the defense finally gets their turn.
For the second time this month, Kelly suspended the trial on Wednesday after prosecutors confessed that a key witness for the defense, who was scheduled to testify on Thursday, had worked as an FBI informant during the entire investigation. Although prosecutors have known for months that the defense might call this person as a witness, they waited until the last minute to tell defense attorneys, who were blindsided by the news.
The DOJ "forgot" to inform the defense of the fact that they had an FBI spy in their ranks.
It got worse from there. A bombshell motion filed by the defense shortly after the disclosure revealed the informant cozied up to defendants and their attorneys for more than 20 months--from April 2021 until January 2023 when the trial began.
"During this period of time, the CHS (confidential human source) has been in contact via telephone, text messaging and other electronic means, with one or more of the counsel for the defense and at least one defendant," wrote Carmen Hernandez, the public defender representing Zachary Rehl. "During this period of time, the CHS also participated in prayer meetings with members of one or more of the defendants' families. The CHS also engaged in discussions with one of the defendant's family members about replacing one of the defense counsel. The above may not include all the communications that were initiated by or engaged in by the CHS."
The US Attorney overseeing the case said it's the defense counsel's fault for talking with an FBI informant.
Further, U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves' office argued, the fact that "defense counsel chose to communicate with the CHS about matters related to this prosecution is a decision made by them."
As the trial drags on, Kelly has his hands full running interference for the Justice Department. (Kelly is a former assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, the same office handling every January 6 prosecution.) The judge abruptly suspended the trial a few weeks ago amid the discovery of thousands of hidden messages exchanged between FBI agents that discussed doctoring a report about an informant, destroying evidence, and FBI surveillance of communications between Rehl and his former attorney.
...
Kelly this week similarly quashed a defense subpoena to compel testimony from another Proud Boy who also turned out to be an FBI informant. Proud Boy member Kenneth Lizardo, Kelly admitted in his order, "closely interacted" with the group, particularly Tarrio. Lizardo picked Tarrio up from jail on January 5--he had been arrested on charges of burning a Black Lives Matter banner in December 2020--and drove him to an underground garage where Tarrio met with Stewart Rhodes, the now-convicted head of the Oath Keepers.
Lizardo warned he would invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege to avoid potential criminal charges himself for his involvement with the Proud Boys and presence at the Capitol on January 6. So Kelly let him off the hook while noting Lizardo "has had a reporting relationship with the FBI."
But that's not what I'm really pointing out in that video, though. What struck me the most is how unprepared she was to deliver her talking points which so obviously make no sense. Apparently, she thinks it's hypocritical to believe that Putin is a war criminal while also asserting that America's borders are more important than Ukraine's borders?
How are those two things in contention?
...
The former press secretary's rise to MSNBC host is yet another example of a beltway acolyte on the far left who gets promoted specifically because of what position they held prior and what identity boxes they check. Past performance doesn't even factor into these decisions. It's all about notoriety and toeing the line. MSNBC saw Psaki avoiding questions and giving binder-read answers in press briefings and for some reason thought, "you know, we should give that woman a national television show."
Unrelated: Wow, hypochondriac and admitted mentally-ill hair-ripper-outer Taylor Lorenz claims she has long covid? I would never, ever have guessed that.
Taylor Lorenz, who still scolds people for not taking covid precautions, and claims to be disabled, immunocompromised, and suffering from long covid, was out partying without a mask this week pic.twitter.com/TGFWIXvpTI
Enemy comms. Isn't Sky another Rupert Murdoch fake-conservative venture?
Note that Posie Parker's real name is Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull.
Anti-trans rights campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull has hit out at New Zealand after fleeing the country following an altercation at one of her rallies.
The British activist, who also goes by the name Posie Parker, has been conducting a "Let Women Speak" tour of Australia and New Zealand.
She was holding an event at Auckland's Albert Park, where her supporters were vastly outnumbered by counter-protesters chanting "go home Posie, go home".
The anti-trans activist was outnumbered by thousands of counter-protesters.
Note they're calling the uninvited disruptors "counter-protesters." Parker was not there as a "protester" -- she was giving a speech after having secured legal permission to be there.
They are attempting to cast this just as a fight between "protesters" (Posie Parker) and "counter-protesters" so that the casual reader will come away thinking "both groups have the right to protest, right?"
But only one group was there to "protest." One group was there to hear a speaker they wanted to hear.
The counter-protesters, many of whom held signs emblazoned with messages of support for trans youth, managed to drown out Ms Keen's voice when she took to the rotunda at Albert Park.
Again, what as Posie "protesting"? She was giving a speech -- but she was prevented from doing so by trans extremist disruptors.
When she appeared on the stage, the anti-trans activist had juice, water and eggs flung at her.
She "had" these things "flung at her."
Was it the trans extremists who active-voice threw objects at her? Who can say. All we know is that passive-voice Things Were Flung.
In fact, she had them flung at her. She insisted on them being flung at her.
She assaulted herself, you see.
Here she is, being hustled away by a cordon of police protecting her from the mostly peaceful trannies, after having assaulted herself:
Eliana Rubashkyn, an intersex and trans activist, dropped a litre of tomato juice on Ms Keen's head, which she said represented the blood of "our people".
She told the media after the altercation that she had attended the event to "stop the hate against our communities".
"New Zealand needs to stand up in front of the world and say this is not welcome here. We protect trans people."
...
Upon leaving the event, she demanded to be taken to a police station citing fears for her life.
She took to Twitter hours after the event concluded, slamming the country as "the worst place for women".
I get to leave the worst place for women I've ever visited and they live there," she wrote.
"I will forever be indebted to them. We will not stop fighting until they are safe to live in their own land. I'm so sorry I couldn't do more."
She said she had left New Zealand on the advice of police, who "genuinely believed" she was lucky to be alive.
Trans/gay extremist group "Aukland Pride" denied that there had been any violence at the speech, claiming this was a "baseless rumor" and "urging" media not to report on what trans extremists had done.
Warning them, they mean -- the same can happen to you if you report the truth.
If you were @ThePosieParker in this video, would you have felt under threat?
The world is slowly waking up to the damage you are doing to women, children and the LGB whom you have betrayed and they don't like what they see. https://t.co/jXB0nXpvcGpic.twitter.com/fAHVH53WwC
Tāmaki Makaurau demonstrated its values today and stood up to the vile anti-trans hatred of Posie Parker.
The thousands of Aucklanders who came out to stand in solidarity with trans communities sent a clear message to Parker that intolerance will not be tolerated here.
Parker's subsequent withdrawal from her Wellington event demonstrates the power of community organising and solidarity in showing her that her hateful views are not welcome here.
She fled for her life, protected from violent trannies and trans "allies" who were buffeting the police cordon protecting her.
Or as you say, she "withdrew" become of "community organizing."
Auckland Pride unequivocally stands by peaceful protest as a means of counter protest, and does not endorse any physical violence, regardless of the extent of injury caused.
You're endorsing it here.
There is a narrative quickly taking hold amongst anti-trans groups and individuals that Parker abandoned her event because of violence from our community.
We reject this narrative. We are of the firm belief that the demonstration of unity, celebration, and acceptance alongside joyous music, chanting, and noise of 5,000 supporters was too loud to overcome and the reason for her departure - and not the actions of any one individual.
We also reject that there was any further physical threat from our community towards Parker. This is a baseless rumour that is being perpetrated by those who feel defeated by the events of today. We urge the media not to repeat these allegations without evidence.
J.K. Rowling
@jk_rowling
There are multiple videos of Kellie-Jay being assaulted. Women have become used to lies, threats of violence and outright denial of reality, but if you imagine anyone feels 'defeated', think again. Your men's rights activists showed the world exactly who they are. #LetWomenSpeak
She was also disrupted in Australia.
A female (?) Australian senator rushed the podium from behind Parker. Thankfully, she (?) was taken down by police.
Ripley's Hero: Adam Kinzinger Was On Board of Advisors to Alleged Pro-Ukraine Group That Scammed People Out of Millions of Dollars and Is Now Under Federal Investigation
In 2022, Newsweek ran a glowing story about an American man who claimed to be a volunteer fighting with the Ukrainian Army. Vasquez claimed in March 2022. that he'd "taken out 7 Russian tanks."
Former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger advocated for Vasquez, urging Twitter to verify his account, and posed in pictures with him.
Only the story of Vasquez joining the Ukrainian Army turned out to be fake. "Kinzinger's favorite Ukraine hero just deleted his account after it came out he is a fraud," Jack Posobiec said.
A representative of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the "ZSU," stated flatly that Vasquez has never had a contract to fight with the Legions of Ukraine, their foreign volunteer outfit.
"He will not be able to show enlistment papers with the ZSU. It is a rigorous process that requires weeks, if not months to complete. Invitation letter, Background checks, physical and intellectual tests, and a contract for either three years or until the end of mobilization.
"To be in ZSU means dedicating your life to ZSU. Not coming and going. Was James at the front? Seems so. Was James in the military? No. It is very specific. There are no special contracts with ZSU units, only Legion Units. I can't speak for Legion but James was not in Legion.
"For the sake of avoiding controversy I stayed out of it while other soldiers, real soldiers, called him out. I met James three times while I was in ZSU, all three times he was a civilian. It was shocking to see him say he was going on a mission to Soledar after we already left.
"But more shocking was the fact that James couldn't legally go on mission since he wasn't in the ZSU. Neither units, not companies, nor battalions can sign a soldier directly to a ZSU contract. It goes through a record/recruiting center and then to Brigade level."
...
In the March 2022 story, Newsweek quoted James Vasquez, saying "Alright. So far, we took out seven Russian tanks, after a long fire fight we took control of the area."
Kinzinger endorses anything fake having to do with Ukraine, so he also endorsed an organization called "Ripley's Heroes," supposedly established to raise money to arm the Ukranians.
The organization is now under federal investigation. A New York Times article describes the allegations. Ripley's Heroes, allegedly, bought optics technology on the restricted export list and sent it to our New Palz in Ukraine without bothering to get an export control waiver.
In fact, they seem to have made a straw purchase, concealing the identity of the buyer and the intended recipient.
Last spring, a volunteer group called Ripleys Heroes said it had spent approximately $63,000 on night-vision and thermal optics. Some of the equipment was subject to American export restrictions because, in the wrong hands, it could give enemies a battlefield advantage.
Frontline volunteers said Ripley's delivered the equipment to Ukraine without required documentation listing the actual buyers and recipients. Recently, the federal authorities began investigating the shipments, U.S. officials said.
In his defense, the group's founder, a retired U.S. Marine named Lt. Col. Hunter Ripley Rawlings IV, provided deal documents to The Times. But those records show that, just as the volunteers said, Ripley's was not disclosed to the State Department as the buyer.
In addition, the group raised over $1 million, but only a fraction of that has been spent on arming anyone. The Times details less than $100,000 of equipment being purchased.
Ripley's says it has raised over $1 million, some of it thanks to the former Connecticut contractor, Mr. Vasquez, who claimed to be the group's chief strategy officer and promoted Ripley's to his online audience.
Ripley's spent around $25,000 on remote-control reconnaissance cars last year, but they never arrived, shipping records show. Colonel Rawlings said Polish authorities held them up over legal concerns.
While "Ripley's Heroes" has applied for nonprofit status, he won't reveal where the money is going to the Times. He would have to do that if he were a legally-recognized nonprofit, so why is he refusing?
Colonel Rawlings has said that his group is awaiting American nonprofit status. But he has not revealed his spending or proof of a nonprofit application to The Times or to donors who have asked. So it is not clear where the money is going. "I believed these guys," said Shaun Stants, who said he organized a fund-raiser in October in Pittsburgh but was never shown the financial records he asked for. "And they took me for a fool."
Corporate records in Poland and the U.S. show that Colonel Rawlings also started a for-profit company called Iron Forge. In an interview, he said he expected his charity and others to pay Iron Forge for transportation, meaning donor money would be used to finance his private venture. But he said no conflict of interest existed because Iron Forge would ultimately send money back to the charities. Details are being worked out, he said.
None of that sounds real to me.
So Kinzinger started by endorsing a fake soldier and would up endorsing a fake armament "charity."
In fact, he was on the board of advisors of "Ripley's Heroes."
THE MORNING RANT: Economic Nationalism and the USA’s Historical Aversion to Unrestrained Free Trade
—Buck Throckmorton
Principled Free Traders™ have often been the target of my writing, not because of my having a deep ideological hostility to free trade, but because they have used the term “free trade” as a false-flag for their globalist hostility to US sovereignty, and for their open contempt for working-class Americans.
Unlike 1990s-era free trade, which was promoted as being about reciprocal, barrier-free trade, America’s 21st Century Principled Free Traders™ have advocated for unilateral surrender to foreign mercantilism. (Mercantilism is the economic theory that a country’s wealth increases by having a surplus balance of trade, using protectionism as necessary to ensure the favorable trade imbalance.) Principled Free Traders™ favor unrestricted access to the US market for products made in hostile, authoritarian countries, while gladly accepting that those countries maintain tariffs and prohibitions on importing products from the US.
After doing a learn-to-code grave dance on those working class Americans who lost their middle-class lifestyle, Principled Free Traders™ argued that it was all cool, because products made by cheap foreign labor (and slaves) gave Americans more spending power.
As for me, the reality is that I’ve historically been more of a reciprocal free trader - what many of us called “fair trade” – than a protectionist, thus my contempt for the globalists who actively sought to harm America in the name of free trade.
While the original NAFTA liberalized nearly all agricultural trade among the three countries, there were a few notable exceptions. Canada maintained tariffs on dairy goods ranging from 241% for liquid milk to 298% for butter. The trade protection is an essential element of its national program to establish fair dairy prices and manage supplies.
It took Donald Trump demanding that NAFTA be renegotiated for me to finally understand that NAFTA still allowed carve-outs to benefit other countries at the expense of the US. In other words, not free trade, nor fair trade.
Curtis Ellis had an excellent piece at American Greatness a few days ago about our country’s history with foreign trade, and how protecting domestic economic production fueled America’s growth and prosperity. He also documents how even such famous free market thinkers as Adam Smith (“The Father of Capitalism”) was not a free trader, and certainly not a unilateral free trader who advocated surrendering to foreign mercantilism like today’s Principled Free Traders™ do.
This quote really stuck out, “We taxed foreign industry, not our own.”
We now have domestic statesmen and leaders who are ashamed to be Americans, and who seek to inflict harm on US manufacturing and American citizens if it will benefit those in foreign lands.
Below are a few snippets that I’ve blockquoted from Mr. Ellis’ piece, but please click and read the whole thing. It’s a little long, but it’s also a “read every word of it” piece.
Our founders understood that America could not be independent and strong if we relied on other nations for our manufactured goods. They understood the United States had the natural resources, the technology, the labor force, and ample customers at home to support domestic industry and be largely self-sufficient.
Washington believed the United States could manufacture as well as farm, and he instructed Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton to come up with a plan to develop industry on these shores.
Hamilton’s plan, detailed in his 1791 Report on the Subject of Manufactures, called for tariffs that would raise revenues and protect infant American industries against predatory competition, and government procurement contracts to encourage American manufacturers.
For most of this country’s history, tariffs were the main source of federal revenue. There are many valid criticisms of tariffs and the incentives they create. But we replaced that revenue source with onerous taxes on income and investments, with a whole other set of negative incentives…most importantly that government feels that earning an income is bad, and must be punished with progressive taxation.
The tax on imports raised revenue to fund the government and prevented foreign goods from smothering our own infant industries. Tariffs were the nation’s primary source of revenue for its first 150 years. Consider: we taxed foreign industries, not our own.
In 1791, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton delivered his Report on the Subject of Manufactures to President Washington. It laid out the plan for the federal government to nurture the growth of domestic manufacturing industries in the United States rather than allow the new nation to depend on manufactured goods from abroad.
Hamilton’s report stood in contrast to “free traders” who believed America should confine itself to farming, export raw materials, and buy manufactured goods from Great Britain.
What about other great Americans through the years?
How about Thomas Jefferson, who famously wanted the US to be a nation of small farmers, leaving industrial production in Europe, where finished goods could be exported to the US. The War of 1812 changed his mind, with Britain embargoing necessities of life that were not manufactured in the US.
Jefferson explicitly renounced his earlier belief that America should be a strictly agrarian nation that depended on England “for manufactures.”
He went out of his way to disabuse Benjamin Austin of that notion in 1816, writing: “To be independent for the comforts of life we must fabricate them ourselves. We must now place the manufacturer by the side of the agriculturist . . . Shall we make our own comforts, or go without them, at the will of a foreign nation? He, therefore, who is now against domestic manufacture, must be for reducing us either to dependence on that foreign nation, or to be clothed in skins, and to live like wild beasts in dens and caverns.”
How about Abraham Lincoln?
Lincoln ran on a platform of “protection [tariffs], homesteads [free Western land], rivers and harbors [internal improvements], and the Pacific railroad.” The industrial states of the North handed him the presidency. For building the transcontinental railroad, Lincoln insisted American steel be used even though British rails were cheaper. “When we buy manufactured goods abroad, we get the goods and the foreigner gets the money. When we buy the manufactured goods at home, we get both the goods and the money,” said Abe. More honest words have never been spoken.
Lincoln’s economic policy was driven by the conviction that production has primacy over consumption. Producing more enables one to consume more—that’s how to raise the American standard of living. Workers who produce more earn more and spend more. Consumption would rise in tandem with production and earning. Build it, and they will come.
The favorite argument of Principled Free Traders™ is that by exporting every possible job and industry to other countries, those who are aren’t left destitute can enjoy cheaper consumer goods.
President William McKinley had a very different opinion about cheap foreign goods, calling cheap “the badge of poverty.”
”They say ‘everything would be so cheap’ if we only had free trade. Well, everything would be cheap and everybody would be cheap. I do not prize the word ‘cheap’. . . It is the badge of poverty . . . when things were the cheapest, men were the poorest . . . Cheap? Why, cheap merchandise means cheap men, and cheap men mean a cheap country; and that is not the kind of Government our fathers founded. . . We want labor to be well paid, we want the products of the farm, . . . we want everything we make and produce to pay a fair compensation to the producer.”
President McKinley had much more sound advice, as documented by Mr. Ellis.
McKinley believed a foreign manufacturer had “no right or claim to equality with our own. He is not amenable to our laws . . . He pays no taxes. He performs no civil duties . . . He contributes nothing to the support, the progress, and glory of the nation. Free foreign trade . . . results in giving our money, our manufactures, and our markets to other nations, to the injury of our labor, our tradespeople and our farmers.”
If American industry has to pay taxes and the costs of our labor, health, and environmental laws, it only makes sense that foreign manufacturers should bear a similar burden if they want to sell on our shores. McKinley’s warning from two centuries ago rings true today. Change “Europe” to “Asia” and these ring as the words of a prophet:
”This country will not and can not prosper under any system that does not recognize the difference of conditions in Europe and America. Open competition between high-paid American labor and poorly paid European labor will either drive out of existence American industry or lower American wages.”
How about Teddy Roosevelt?
The man who succeeded McKinley in the White House, Teddy Roosevelt, declared, “Thank God I am not a free trader.” He understood how tariffs “will equalize the cost of production here and abroad; that is, will equalize the cost of labor here and abroad.”
So how about Adam Smith, the author of “Wealth of Nations” and also the man we honor as the “Father of Capitalism?” Not a free trader. Mr. Ellis provides a lengthy analysis of Smith’s beliefs about trade and the importance of national sovereignty and prosperity.
In 1776, Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, his foundational economic treatise on the principles of the free market system. Contrary to what so many today mistakenly believe and claim, Smith did not argue for a world without nations or a world where corporate interests came before national interests. Smith wrote about increasing the wealth of nations, not the wealth of transnational corporations or the wealth of “the global economy.”
Would Adam Smith approve of tariffs on foreign goods? Yes.
In The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith describes the circumstances when a nation should impose tariffs and restrict imports, when, as he wrote, it would be “advantageous to lay some burden upon foreign [imports], for the encouragement of domestic industry.” Notice he explicitly says he wants to encourage domestic industry—he makes a distinction between his nation’s industry and those of another nation. He is not writing about a global economy without distinction among nations.
Tariffs for the purpose of national defense? Adam Smith supported them.
First, Smith said tariffs are justified to protect industries “necessary for the defense of the country.” The defense of Great Britain, for example, depends very much upon the number of its sailors and shipping.
How to respond to trade barriers that block our country’s manufactured goods? This is where Principled Free Traders™ argue for surrender and capitulation. Adam Smith recommended retaliation.
“Some foreign nation [may restrain] by high duties or prohibitions the importation of some of our manufactures into their country. Revenge in this case naturally dictates retaliation, and that we should impose the like duties and prohibitions upon the importation of some or all of their manufactures into ours.”
Again, read the whole thing. There’s so much more, and it’s all just as important.
Our founders and our greatest Presidents agreed that that the US must never be dependent on foreign countries for food, provisions, or the ability to secure our national defense. And even the Father of Capitalism stood for economic nationalism.
I’m proud to be an economic nationalist if the alternative is “free trade” that is designed to harm Americans.
I like this piece, but another artwork has been in the news...a sculpture by some 23-year old guy named Michelangelo. Unfortunately photos of his sculpture of the biblical David don't do it justice. Nor do photos of his other famous piece called "Pieta." That one might be even better!
Let's not forget Rodin, who in spite of being a Frog could sculpt with the best of them.
There's another pasta eater named Donatello, whose version of David is quite different, but just marvelous.
So what's the connection between current events and three great sculptors? They all showed the genitalia of some of their subjects. Was it sexual? No*. Is it appropriate for children to see? I think the answer is yes, but my opinion means nothing, and the parents' decision is the only one that matters.
Anyway, it's an interesting topic, but arguing about what sculpture is the greatest in the world might be fun too!
*Although...I was in the Rodin Museum in Paris last summer and I photographed one of his pieces that struck me as discordant because of its overt sexuality. But that was the only one.
Still, the Junta and its propagandists went all in on generating a whole lot of smoke about an impending frog-marching of Trump to prison, so I can't imagine actual fire not to come with it. We shall see. That said, Trump himself hit the campaign trail and yet again drew a huge and raucous crowd down in Waco, TX. The propagandists of course are having a field day butchering his turn of the phrase "retribution" as a call for violence, when of course, it's nothing of the sort. It's meant purely in political/metaphorical terms. Of course, despite my own never forgive and never forget attitude about 2020, Trump makes the huge mistake of making it a central pillar of his campaign. The other thing that falls flat are his attacks on Ron DeSantis, and his attempt at imitating the Florida governor being tearful and pleading went over like a lead balloon.
As of right now, if I were to make a prediction, I think the nomination is Trump's to lose. Even if Bragg's case falls apart, no doubt they will try to manufacture even more crimes out of whole cloth, which will only make his support that much stronger. As for DeSantis, any more huge gaffes like the Ukraine flip-flop are going to sink him. Despite my not being sanguine about some of the names attached to DeSantis (Jeb Bush and Paul Ryan, among others), as well as Trump's running on 2020 revenge, I would have no problem eagerly voting for either, regardless of who comes out on top.
DeSantis has kicked serious ass as Florida governor on a whole host of fronts, and Trump's record of domestic and foreign policy accomplishments – along with exposing the Deep State by his mere presence – puts him in the pantheon of our greatest presidents.
Regarding the campaign, it's going to be what it's going to be and no amount of my wishing for the two of them to make the unprecedented move of turning their fire solely and in unison on the Democrats, RINOs and Deep State and seeing how things shake out is just not going to happen. Too bad, for them and for all of us. And of course, all this might very well be moot since the now institutionalized fraud machine will be more or less fully operational come election "season."
An explosive allegation was made: In Pima County, thirty-five thousand (35,000) votes had been added to each Democratic candidate in the election, including Joe Biden. The allegation was made anonymously by someone claiming that he or she met with Democrat Pima County election officials on September 10, 2020, where a plan to rig the vote was hatched. . .
. . . Thanks to the efforts of former Arizona Representative Mark Finchem and a brilliant analysis by pattern expert Shiva Ayyadurai, we can guess which precincts allegedly received the phony ballots. Finchem obtained precinct-level voting data for Pima County, the county he represented. These data included, by precinct, the number of people requesting mail-in ballots, the number of people returning the ballots, and the votes for each candidate.
Dr. Ayyadurai, a pattern recognition expert, noticed that Pima County’s 2020 election had an extraordinarily high mail-in ballot return rate (about 87 percent) when compared to the national average (71 percent) or the average of other Arizona counties (67.6 percent). Even more interesting was the pattern and distribution of precincts in Pima, when arranged by their mail-in ballot return rates. . .
. . . The figure below is a little complicated but worth studying. It is not an Ayyadurai graph, but is similar to the graphs in Dr. Ayyadurai's Pima County analysis. Ayyadurai calls it his “fishtail” graph, for obvious reasons. It is a fascinating diagram that seems to confirm massive fraud in the 2020 election. . .
. . . The unnatural pattern in this graph is almost impossible to explain unless there was fraud. There may be a temptation to explain Trump’s apparent loss by saying he was not as popular as other Republicans. However, that was probably not the case. As you can see in the image, Trump had a commanding lead over other Republicans in precincts with average or lower return rates. (And remember: The “average” for Pima -- shown with the vertical line -- was about 19 percent higher than other Arizona counties.) However, when we move to the right side of the graph, into the super-high (and very unrealistic) return rates of 92 percent to almost 100 percent, Trump starts losing relative to other Republicans, and Biden gains relative to other Democrats.
What does it mean? It appears extremely likely that those extra 35,000 votes were dumped into certain Pima county precincts, and/or votes were switched between the two presidential candidates.
Now apply Pima County to the swing districts in GA, PA, WI, MI and NV et voilà! 82 million votes for Biden. Is this proof positive? No, not by itself. But if you compare these kind of data analyses with other states as well as over time in prior elections, it's yet another piece of the puzzle that does not reveal the kitten in the basket of yarn.
Joe Biden says the events of January 6, 2021 were the greatest threat to American democracy since the Civil War. That invites a look at what happened at the Capitol on March 1, 1954, when Joe Biden was 11 years old.
Lolita Lebron, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andres Figueroa Cordero, and Irvin Flores Rodrigues, were members of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico (PNPR), which had attempted to assassinate President Harry Truman in 1950. On March 1, 1954, the four took a train from New York City to Washington, D.C., arriving at Union Station shortly after noon.
U.S. Representative Alvin M. Bentley (R-Mich.) took a bullet to the chest. A bullet struck Iowa Republican Ben F. Jensen in the back and Clifford Davis (D-Tenn.) suffered a wound in the leg. The gunfire also wounded Democrats George Hyde Fallon of Maryland and Kenneth A. Roberts of Alabama. Amid the chaos, members took quick action.
Congressmen and pages carried the wounded Bentley and others to safety, and one representative used his tie as a tourniquet. Rep. James Van Zandt (R-Penn.) rushed to the balcony and tackled Rafael Miranda, who had fired most of the shots. Capitol visitors overpowered three of the shooters, and a search of the city turned up Irvin Rodriguez.
The shooters were tried and found guilty. On October 26, 1954, Judge Lawrence E. Walsh sentenced them to more than 70 years, but none of the shooters would serve the full stretch.
Andres Cordero died in 1979. That same year, President Jimmy Carter commuted the sentences of Lebron, Miranda and Rodrigues. Carter’s decision sparked an objection from Puerto Rico Gov. Carlos Romero Barcelo who argued that the prisoners’ unconditional release would encourage terrorism and “constitute a menace to public safety.”
. . . President Carter and his secretary of state described the commutations as “a significant humanitarian gesture.” Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti saw “little substantial risk of the defendants’ engaging in further criminal activity or becoming the rallying point for terrorist groups.” The Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional of Puerto Rico (FALN) wasn’t listening.
Over the next decade, the FALN perpetrated 72 actual bombings, 40 incendiary attacks, eight attempted bombings and 10 bomb threats, resulting in five deaths, 83 injuries, and more than $3 million in property damage. Also active was the Ejercito Popular Boricua, known as the Macheteros. In January 1981, the Macheteros infiltrated a Puerto Rican Air National Guard base and blew up 11 planes, causing approximately $45 million in damages. The capture and conviction of FALN and Machetero terrorists brought the bombings to a halt.
On August 11, 1999, President Bill Clinton extended offers of clemency to 16 of the terrorists in federal prison. That prompted a report from the House Committee on Government Reform titled “The FALN and Macheteros Clemency: Misleading Explanations, a Reckless Decision, A Dangerous Message.” For the committee, the 16 terrorists, “appear to be most unlikely candidates” for presidential largesse. . .
. . . For Biden, the greatest threat to the nation does not proceed from Islamic jihadists, violent criminal cartels or genocidal Stalinist dictatorships like China. Remember, for the Delaware Democrat, the bosses in Beijing are “not bad folks,” and Communist China is not even competition for the United States.
For Joey Sponge-Brain Shits-Pants it is we the people of We The People that pose the greatest threat. Mostly to his 50-plus-year grift of selling his office out to the highest bidder, which goes hand in hand with the anti-American Left and Democrat Party's destruction of the nation, that has been going on since the time of Aaron Burr.
Kudos to the estimable Lloyd Billingsley for this article and one a few weeks back about the filthy commie slags from the Weather Underground who attempted to bomb the Capitol 40 years ago.
But Trump said "pussy!" Worse, he said "retribution!"
Victor Davis Hanson: "The megalomania of the current crop of students, faculty, and administrators at our radical universities blinds them to the claims of their generations of benefactors." Who Owns the University?
"As of now, one-half of the participants (roughly) who don’t believe that, for example, trans-identified men should be permitted to beat women unconscious in combat sports for the sake of 'equity' are essentially blacklisted from public discourse. This is no recipe for resolution." WATCH: Glenn Greenwald Expertly Charts the Populist Long Game
"Our age of decline could be preparing us for the rise of great men." A Time for Kendi
John Stossel: "Companies go through the motions. . . They hope it will protect them from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and lawsuits." Diversity Training Disaster
FIRST AMENDMENT ISSUES, CENSORSHIP, FAKE NEWS, MEDIA, BIG BROTHER TECH
"If the left, the Democrats, and the Mainstream Media (many would say they’re all one and the same) can convince people that Reagan cheated his way into the White House, then that puts the Reagan presidency and everything Reagan ever did under a cloud. Which, of course, is exactly what they want." Carter, Reagan, and American Hostages in Iran: NYT Goes Back to 1980 to Smear Republicans
"In the wake of James O'Keefe's ouster from Project Veritas, and the subsequent launch of his O'Keefe Media Group, the liberal media released a predictable barrage of hit pieces on him masquerading as journalism. " Project Veritas Is Nothing Without James O'Keefe
RED-GREENS, CLIMATE CHANGE HOAX, DEMOCRAT-LEFT WAR ON FOSSIL FUELS, JUNK SCIENCE, LYSENKOISM
"Multiple recent studies have demonstrated that a variety of commercially popular fish can be negatively impacted by their exposure to magnetic fields emitted by high voltage direct current cables, which can confuse their ability to navigate and in some cases leave them exposed to predators." Federal Regulator Acknowledges Danger To Wildlife Caused By Offshore Wind Farms
"The UN’s Panel on Climate Change published a frightening report earlier this month that we are sitting on a global time bomb, and according to CNN, 'time is running out,' without immediate drastic action." Limits to Growth Revisited
"Everybody used to regard two consecutive quarters of a shrinking economy as a recession." None Dare Call It Recession
"Opponents of this move say that an ongoing “war on cash” imperils privacy, limits access and puts us all at the mercy of untold technical glitches, such as chips that malfunction, or a malware attack on a credit card processing entity. We’ve all had these experiences to greater or lesser degrees, even at a grocery store or gas pump." We’ve Entered an Era When the US Gov’t Won’t Even Take Its Own Money
AMNESTY, IMMIGRATION, BORDER SECURITY
"An alert public, fed up with dealing with illegal immigrants –for that's what they are, not some imaginary 'migrants' – and horrified at the damage all around them by deadly drugs, slapped down those lies. And hard." Lyin’ Biden Does It Again
CRIME & PUNISHMENT, NON-DOSTOYEVSKY
"Price, who took office in November and has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from the progressive billionaire [Nazi collaborator] George Soros, attempted to sentence Delonzo Logwood to just 15 years in prison, though he was eligible for a sentence of 75 years to life." California Judge Stops Soros Prosecutor From Slashing Triple-Murderer's Sentence
"[Kim] Gardner is the local DA elected with money from [Nazi collaborator] George Soros who prosecuted Saint Louis homeowners instead of the Black Lives Matter mob of some 300 rioters who threatened them, filed a blatantly political prosecution of former Missouri Republican governor Eric Greitens, and allowed criminals to walk free, resulting in a high school volleyball player losing her legs after a released criminal plowed into her with a car." Missouri’s Attorney General Sues To Remove Soros-Funded Crime-Enabling Saint Louis DA
AMERICA AND THE WORLD IMPRISONED: CHINESE CORONAVIRUS FICTIONS AND FACTS
Clarice Feldman: "The public health establishment, like Icarus on wax wings (in their case, lies, power grabs, political manipulation, rich economic reward) flew too close to the sun and melted their means of staying aloft." The Public Health Establishment That Flew Too Near to the Sun
"Though well positioned to weather the pandemic, California instead pursued disastrous restrictions and cracked down on dissent." A Chinese Covid Postmortem
Ethnic Studies “tells kids of color they are stuck in a caste system based on race. It tells kids that ‘institutions chronically favor white people & disadvantage people of color.’ This curriculum will not help kids of color succeed. All it does is remove any reason to try.” VIDEO: Minnesota Mom Torches “Ethnic Studies” Bill
"The Fairport parents are taking the right steps to end this, using the laws already in place. Someone needs to stop the proliferation of obscene material being given to children under the guise of “diversity and inclusion.” Will it be the Monroe County Sheriff?" NY Parents Set to Sic the Law on School Board That Insists on Porn in School
"The president of the American Federation of Teachers makes a bunch of ridiculous and easily refutable claims." Randi is Wrong Again
"The hope that every student will someday perform at the same level is nothing short of utopic." Some Children Left Behind
OFFICIAL DEMOCRAT PARTY/LEFTIST-ENDORSED ANTI-SEMITISM, ANTI-CHRISTIANITY
"Two bills in Delaware and Vermont are looking to remove the religious right of Catholic priests to withhold information given to them during a confession to protect children from abuse, but Catholic advocates argue that these bills will only harm the church. Lawmakers have argued that mandatory reporting must extend to everyone, including the Catholic church to fully protect children from abuse or neglect.' State Legislation Could Strip Catholic Churches’ Right To Protect Members ‘Sealed Confessions’
"There’s a reason why this age group is ignorant of the truth about socialism. In America, young people learn about the horrors of the robber barons. In the UK, they learn about the real crown jewel of England – the National Health System. What they are missing is economics and economic history. Students are shocked to learn that 20th Century socialism killed more than 100 million people." Not Your Grandfather’s Socialism
THE UKRAINIAN "FRONT"
". . . stationing nuclear weapons of any range outside of Russia’s borders is a clear escalation and will worry several NATO nations on the perimeter of Ukraine . . . This is Putin trying to remind the U.S. and NATO that he could choose to go nuclear at any time — another reason for Biden to do everything he can to find a way to end the fighting as soon as possible." Putin Says Russia Will Station Nuclear Weapons in Belarus
Miranda Devine: "It’s one thing to dangle the rainbow flag outside our embassies in Kabul and the Holy See. It’s quite another to impose American social mores on traditionally Christian or Islamic countries. You know this kind of woke imperialism in our names won’t end well for anyone." White House’s Push for "Woke" Foreign Policy Will Backfire with Our Socially Conservative Allies
"It should be emphasized that, on the grand geopolitical chessboard, Honduras is as backyard as backyard gets, from the perspective of the United States. That the country’s leadership is so openly embracing Chinese influence is a major strike at America’s waning hegemony. The significance of the optics can’t have been lost on Honduras’s leadership, which means they understood the diplomatic blowback this move would generate and they did it anyway." American Decline? Honduras Government Openly Embraces 'One China' Policy
“First they shackled my feet and then they detained [me],” Haitiwaji described her arrest. “The woman’s condition in the detention centers are horrible. All women are shackled, and our language… we are all prohibited to speak.” The detainees are tortured and interrogated, Haitiwaji stated. (coming soon to America - jjs) Torture, Sexual Abuse, Sterilization: Uyghur Camp Survivors Testify at Congressional Hearing
* * * * *
"When the Berlin Wall came down, NATO accomplished its founders’ stated objective. It needed to be dissolved, find new enemies, or find a new mission for self-preservation." NATO’s Perilous Quest to Justify its Existence
"Gazans can continue to believe Israel is the source of all their woes – or they can face the truth." (meh, like pissing in the wind for 1,500 years - jjs) In Gaza, 70% Youth Unemployment Leads to Despair
"Our false humanitarianism confused our right to defend our society with a duty to make other societies more like ours." The Iraq War: No Refunds
"According to reports, an EF-4 tornado with wind gusts up to 170 mph leveled most of the Rolling Fork community, a town of about 2,000 near Mississippi’s western border. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, tornadoes reaching EF-4 or EF-5 levels are considered violent and extremely rare." Biden Junta Declares ‘Major Disaster’ In Mississippi After Dozens Killed By Tornadoes
"The Philadelphia Water Department said it is monitoring the release of a latex product along a Delaware River tributary in Bristol Township late on Friday. Authorities sent out a public safety alert on Sunday afternoon saying the city of Philadelphia recommends bottled drinking water from 2 p.m. until further notice." Philly Residents Urged Not To Drink Tap Water After Chemical Spill
"It’s a moot point now — as is Washington’s failure to adequately answer some basic aviation safety questions at his hearing. What’s clear is that Biden cares more about box-checking (Washington is black) than the safety of the flying public." Biden Nominee for FAA Head Withdraws After Republican Criticism
Elective surgical and chemical mutilation is not necessary and should not be abetted by government funding. States that refuse to follow immoral federal directives in this regard are not unduly discriminatory. Repealing rules that require this sort of “healthcare” should be a legislative priority for the Republican-led House. Why Are Medicaid Funds Used for "Gender-affirming Care?"
Robert Spencer: ". . . she offers the flip side of the experience of the black Americans in the early twentieth century who tried to pass as white in order to get better jobs or gain other advantages. For all the contempt that the woke have for American history, they are busy recreating its inequalities today, just in the opposite direction." Prominent Hollywood Native American Turns Out Not to Be Native American at All
"Woke is as magic as the use of 'spectral evidence' to pursue devilry and is just as dangerous and unproductive." In Search of Magic in America
"Mario Vargas Llosa describes his journey from the Marxism of his youth to the defense of democracy, free markets, and limited government of his mature years." Spokesman for Liberalism
NOTE: The opinions expressed in the links may or may not reflect my own. I include them because of their relevance to the discussion of a particular issue.
ALSO: The Morning Report is cross-posted at CutJibNewsletter.com if you want to continue the conversation all day.
An evergreen story, but in particular this time about the MSN news that is shoved down your throat unless you go through and switch it off in seventeen places. The Start Menu search will still look things up on Wikipedia which is something that nobody on the planet has ever wanted and I don't know how to turn that off.
If you remember my experiments with AI image generator Midjourney from a few months ago, well, that was version 2, and they're now on version 5, and it's improved just a tiny bit.
Hands are still its bête noire, but it's improving there too. I only had to retry that one once.
If you want something that looks like hand-drawn art it can do that too.
The old version was very good at generating body horror and Lovecraftian creepiness; I'll have to try that again and see if the changes have removed that or if it's still lurking.
Oh no, what has AWS done? I didn't spend fifteen years yelling at people not to use S3 as a file system just to be undone by the S3 team itself!
S3 is absolutely awful at managing files. It's as effective at that as a bucket is at holding angry bobcats. Treating it as a filesystem just makes that all the more painfully obvious.
Disclaimer: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask rather what's in this box labelled 'DANGER SALMONELLA'. Oh, it's turtles.
"All organizations that are not explicitly right-wing will over time become left-wing. John O'Sullivan
Quote III
“I haven’t seen any evidence that the seal of confession has impeded the prosecution of domestic abuse or child abuse, [and] as a mother of ten children, I am very serious when it comes to the safety of my children, so I do not want to downplay abuse …our church has had a terrible history of abuse,” Andrea Picciotti-Bayer
Quote IV
“The fact that we live in a city where they would rather fight someone that is doing something positive is what I find so disheartening,” Geoff Claus
A transgender woman has called for the dismantling of airport TSA screenings after she claimed an agent punched her in the testicles and 'yelled at me for having a penis'.
The flyer posted a since-deleted selfie showing her sobbing in a bathroom stall following the episode, complaining that her 'balls still hurt so bad'.
'I don't want the TSA agent that hurt me fired,' she said in a separate post. 'I want her educated and the entirety of TSA abolished altogether.'
Renat Heuberger gathered his co-founders on a glacier in the Swiss Alps for a celebration. The half-dozen men behind South Pole, the world’s leading seller of carbon offsets, raised their beers around a crackling fire: Business was booming and the Zurich firm’s valuation was hurtling toward $1 billion, making it one of the first “carbon unicorns.”
But the claims underpinning South Pole’s success have been losing ground like the ice underfoot that day two summers ago. The company’s biggest moneymaker is a mega-project in Zimbabwe called Kariba, which South Pole claimed has prevented the annihilation of a forest nearly the size of Puerto Rico. That’s South Pole’s business model: help finance projects that can credibly counteract rising levels of greenhouse gas, such as by stopping deforestation, and then sell the resulting credit to corporate clients who want to compensate for their own planet-warming pollution.
Indulgences, they are back to the dismay of Martin Luther.
‘Dad said: We’re going to follow Captain Cook’: how an endless round-the-world voyage stole my childhood
In 1976, Suzanne Heywood’s father decided to take the family on a three-year sailing ‘adventure’ – and then just kept going. It was a journey into fear, isolation and danger …
When we lived in England my days had a familiar rhythm. Each morning, my mother flung open the curtains in my room, and I tugged my school jumper over my head and pulled on my skirt before tumbling downstairs to eat cereal with my younger brother Jon. After school, we’d play on the swing in our garden, or crouch at the far end of the stream to watch dragonflies hovering above the gold-green surface.
I was used to this rhythm; I liked it and thought it would never change. Until one morning over breakfast, my father announced that we were going to sail around the world.
I paused, a spoonful of cornflakes halfway to my mouth.
“We’re going to follow Captain Cook,” Dad said. “After all, we share the captain’s surname, so who better to do it?” He picked up his cigarette and leaned back in his seat.
“Are you joking?” I asked.
Next to me, Jon watched Dad, his lips parted.
“Not at all,” said my father, puffing out a cloud of smoke. “I’m deadly serious.”
“But why?”
“Well, someone needs to mark the 200th anniversary of Cook’s third voyage, don’t they?” he said, raising his eyebrows at my mother.
“Of course they do, Gordon,” said Mum, returning his smile.
“I’ve told you kids about the captain,” said Dad, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray. “He was an incredible man. The people who were going to recreate his first and second voyages didn’t get their act together in time, so this is the last opportunity.”
Disgruntled Amazon corporate employees are reportedly devastated after a top human resources executive shot down an internal petition that asked the tech giant’s leaders to nix its return-to-office plan.
Approximately 30,000 workers had signed a petition begging CEO Andy Jassy to cancel his directive that most employees work on site at least three days per week. The return-to-office plan is slated to take effect on May 1.
Beth Galetti, Amazon’s HR chief, shot down the petition in a message to organizers obtained by Insider and signaled that the return-to-office plan will move forward as scheduled.
“Given the large size of our workforce and our wide range of businesses and customers, we recognize this transition may take time, but we are confident it will result in long-term benefits to increasing our ability to deliver for our customers, bolstering our culture, and growing and developing employees,” Galetti said in the memo.
Last summer, we looked at the collapse of the power grid in South Africa. The country which previously had the most economically stable and prosperous government in sub-Saharan Africa suffered waves of unemployment and looting as its economy buckled under the strain. They’ve managed to put together some foreign aid to apply patchwork fixes since then, but there are still rolling blackouts taking place on a regular basis. This winter, however, the power grid problems are spreading in one of the more underreported stories of the year. Zimbabwe and Nigeria are now also experiencing near-total collapses of their power grids. People who still have jobs are having to work at night because that’s the only time there is stable electricity. Scheduled blackouts frequently last up to ten or even twelve hours per day, and both nations’ economies are tanking as a result. (Associated Press)
Why does John Kerry hate black people?
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The ONT Musical Interlude & Chicken Noodle Soup Emporium
Born on this day: 26 Mar 1948
Steven Tyler, multi-instrumentalist, best known as the frontman and lead singer of Aerosmith, known as the 'Demon of Screamin'. Aerosmith scored the 1989 UK No.13 single 'Love In An Elevator', their 1989 album Pump spent 53 weeks on the US charts, and the 1993 US No.1 & UK No.2 album Get A Grip, as well as the 1998 US No.1 & UK No.4 single 'I Don't Want To Miss A Thing'. In 2011, Tyler made his debut appearance as a judge on American Idol. via thisdayinmusic.com
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Born on this day: 26 Mar 1944
Diana Ross, American singer, The Supremes (1964 UK & US No.1 single 'Baby Love' plus over 20 other US & UK Top 40 hits). Solo (1980 US No.1 single 'Upside Down, 1986 UK No.1 single 'Chain Reaction'). During the 1960s The Supremes became Motown's most successful act, and is to this day the United States' most successful vocal group. As part of the Supremes, her success made it possible for future African-American R&B and soul acts to find mainstream success. via thisdayinmusic.com
March 24 (UPI) -- An 80-year-old Alberta woman who has been regularly donating blood for nearly six decades earned the Guinness World Record for the most whole blood donated (female).
Guinness World Records said Josephine Michaluk, 80, began donating blood at age 22 in 1965, and in the years since she has donated a total 203 units of blood. A unit of blood is roughly equivalent to a pint.
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Need a smile?
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Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by a BOLO For Tim.
Notice: Posted with permission by the Ace Media Empire & AceCorp, LLC. The views and opinions expressed here on The ONT do not necessarily reflect those of management, staff and advertisers. But should.
Howdy, Y'all! Welcome to the wondrously fabulous Gun Thread! As always, I want to thank all of our regulars for being here week in and week out, and also offer a bigly Gun Thread welcome to any newcomers who may be joining us tonight. Howdy and thank you for stopping by! I hope you find our wacky conversation on the subject of guns 'n shooting both enjoyable and informative. You are always welcome to lurk in the shadows of shame, but I'd like to invite you to jump into the conversation, say howdy, and tell us what kind of shooting you like to do!
Well I made it down to WeaselAcres for a a couple of days renewing my roots on the land. I didn't do any shooting this time, but you may recall last summer the sickle bar mower broke for no reason while I was trying to cut down a tree with it. Evidently, a sickle bar mower is designed to cut grass and not trees so this weekend I disassembled the bar and drive mechanism for inspection in an attempt to figure out what is wrong with it. Suffice it to say I need to order some parts.
2023 NoVAMoMe stuff is still down below (no new updates this week).
With that, step into the dojo and let's get to the gun stuff below, shall we?
Farm-O Update-O
Apparantly I now have a goat at the farm. I didn't realize stray goats are a thing but this little guy has taken up residence under my camper, so it looks like I'll need to get some goat chow. One of his hooves is a little overgrown, so I'm going to make some calls and see if I can get someone to look at it. WeaselGoat's name you ask? John C. Garand.
John the Goat
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F-Class Shooting and Scoring - a Primer
As promised last week here is a little primer on F-Class shooting and scoring which might help you appreciate the amazing results from the 2023 South African Nationals and F-Class World Championships currently being held in Bloemfontein, South Africa.
There are two styles or classes of F-Class shooting. F-Open and F-T/R. The differences are allowable rifle weight and calibers, as well as the mechanism supporting the front of the rifle. Open class rifles can be slightly heavier, are usually firing a 6.0 to 7.0mm cartridge and use a mechanical front rest. F-T/R rifles are lighter, usually .308 Win caliber (.223 Rem is allowable but few use it), and use a bipod as a front rest. Both are fired on the same targets, and really boil down to shooter preference. For example, I was an F-Open shooter but coached an F-T/R team. For various reasons, most shooters typically choose one style and stick with it for the duration of their shooting careers due to the specialized gear required for each. A good overview of F-Class shooting can be found in this article originally published in Guns & Ammo in October 2007.
ICFRA F-Class Long Range Target
International F-Class shooting is governed by the International Confederation of Fullbore Rifle Associations (ICFRA), and the targets used vary somewhat from the standard F-Class targets used in the United States. The center is a "V" rather than an "X", and the outer rings are scored 5, 4, 3, 2 rather than 10, 9, 8, 7. The size of the rings are the same at 5", 10", 20", 32" and 44", respectively. Long range matches are fired at 700m, 800m and 900m on the same style target for each, with 15 rounds plus two convertible sighters for score. A convertible sighter simply means the first two sighting rounds can be converted for score at the shooter's discretion. Shots in the 'V' or 'X' ring are tallied separately, receiving the highest score (5pts or 10pts) and the V or X count is used to break ties. This differs from U.S. matches in that 20 rounds are fired for score. With me so far?
So in an international match, such as those being held now in South Africa, a perfect score would be 75-15V (15x5 plus the V count) where a shooter placed all 15 rounds in the V ring, and would beat a score of 75-14V where a shooter had one shot outside the V ring but still inside or touching the 5 ring. Remember, there are usually three matches per day beginning at 700m (766 yd.), then moving back to 800m (875 yd.) and ending the day at 900m (984 yd.). Thus, a perfect day's shooting for all three matches would be 225-45V.
The South African Nationals started on the 21st, with many shooters using it as a warmup and practice for the World Championships beginning on Monday the 27th. So let's look at the scores for a sample match, Day 1 Match 3 of the SA Nationals, The Dalrymple Cup at 900 meters.
As you can see for this match, the winner in F-Open, M. Chui, shot a 75-12V.That means he was in the 10" 5 ring for 3 rounds and inside the 5-inch V ring for the remaining 12 shots. Not bad at 900m. You'll notice the guy in 2nd Place (a.k.a. first loser) did the same thing (the order of V counts can further break ties). As a matter of fact, each of the first twenty-eight shooters did not drop a point and are separated only by V count. Note to NZFrank - do you know Mr. M. Chui? If so, please offer him my congratulations!
Now let's look at F-T/R for the same match. The winner in F-T/R, J.D. Cilliers, fired a 75-9V. That's six rounds in the 10" 5 ring and nine rounds in the 5" V ring. It's not uncommon for F-T/R scores to be slightly lower when compared to F-Open due to the differences in the front rifle support mechanism, among other factors.
A bunch of my shooting buddies are there competing in both classes and shooting very respectable scores, while others aren't shooting the SA Nationals and are waiting for the World Championships to begin. To say the level of performance in competitive F-Class shooting is high is probably the understatement of the year. Let me just sum it up by saying a 5" circle at 900 meters is a very small target, and to make that shot 12 out of 15 tries is pretty amazing. The skill required to be competitive requires discipline, years of preparation, practice and the execution of every shot flawlessly. Next time you're shooting for groups, think about that. Diligent practice and application of good solid fundamentals can be rewarded with amazing results, and every single one of these guys and gals was a new shooter at some point. All it takes is a bunch of practice and dedication!
If you're interested in following along next week, here is a link to the 2023 F-Class World Championships Results page. As the Worlds get going, you're likely to see some fierce competition and remarkable feats of marksmanship.
GO USA!!!
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Guns of the Horde
First up, our pal MkY shares a range report of his trip with an air rifle.
I'd written you earlier about my new-found trouble with springer break-over air rifles. I solved it by going with a PCP rifle (Pre-Charged Pneumatic). I bought the Benjamin Marauder, in .22, and a 4500# scuba tank to refill it. Maybe $1100 total? Local dive shop charges $12.50 to refill the scuba tank
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This gun has now had 600 shots through it, and it seems to be consistent from 2800# to about 2000#. I expect the KE would be down at the lower end, naturally, so maybe not the hunting range of pressure. I had to re-sight it this morning. Rough handling is my guess; grandkids, employees, anyone who wants to shoot it gets to. I sighted it in at 30 yards. Previously I found it drops precisely 1 3/4 inches at 50 yards.
These are the targets at 20 yards. 10 shots each. Slightly low at 20. Not a worry for squirrels or brown-headed cowbirds.
I diagnosed my own flyers. Seems I have a tendency to slightly move the rifle to see where I hit. Good follow-through will solve this. Technique is technique, whether shooting a 7mm mag or a PCP in .22. Absolutely quiet. Sound hitting the target is louder than the discharge. No recoil.
Very nice shooting, MkY! And you're right, all of the same fundamentals of basic marksmanship are required, regardless of the caliber, which makes this a very cost-effective training tool. Nice shooting!
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Next, our pal Coelacanth shares a family heirloom!
Just above the grip is a very small crown stamp
My father-in-law wanted me to have this. It's an Enfield Model 2 Mark 1. He traded for it and its mate while running an artillery battalion in Vietnam. He said they were sequential serial numbers, and that one was right twist, the other left twist. He shipped them home at the end of his tour, and his bag was opened, and one was missing. It's a top break with a DA only trigger and is still very tight. He'd shot it rarely and it is spotless.
Very nice, Coelacanth! Thank you for sharing it with us!
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Range Reports
Next up we have a range report from our pal Washington Nearsider.
After meeting up with the NoVa Moron Gun Club last Sunday, I was uber motivated to get my rifles out and turn money into noise at CF Phelps Sighting-in Range.
I took my battle rifle (Larue Predator in 5.56), my battle rifle trainer (S&W M&P 15-22), and my precision .22lr (Ruger Precision rifle) with the purpose of confirming/zeroing my optics before CF Phelps closes for the season on March 31.
Larue Predator
S&W MP 15-22
Ruger Precision Rifle .22LR
When I got there, I immediately realized I'd left all my 5.56 magazines at home. It was raining pretty good, and I didn't have the ammunition to zero the red dot (Vortex Crossfire) I just put on the weapon, so I gave very, very serious thought to just packing it up and going home. But then I remembered that Osama fought in the rain, and one may not get to choose prime weather conditions when shooting for real, so I settled in to zero my 15-22 at 25m.
I quickly accomplished this, but .22 is cheap and fun to shoot, and I was there by myself, so I happily shot away for a while before switching over to the RPR.
I zeroed my optic (Vortex Diamondback 6-24x50), and then, as an experiment, used that zero to shoot at 50m and 100m. What I learned was more shocking than I should admit on this Smart Military Blog, but I was surprised, so perhaps some other shooters can use the gouge I picked up.
Shooting Eley Benchrest Precision rounds, I had a dead-nuts zero at 25m (5 rounds through one hole), so I expected I would hit low at 50m and 100m. This was NOT the case. At 50m, I was .75" above my zero, while at 100m, I was almost exactly 5.00 inches below. It took me a good minute of thought before I realized that at 25m, my rounds hadn't yet reached apogee*, or the top of their arc. Typically, sights and optics are arranged in such a way that the bullet leaves the weapon on a slight upward angle which forces it to climb before it peaks and then begins falling as gravity works on it. That means your round will intersect your zero at two different points - on the way up, and on the way down. This is not news to the seasoned shooters here, but for me it was revelatory. I noticed A Thing and was able to work out the why of it on my own.
Once I solved The Mystery, and had built myself a dope calculus, I began trying to use my optic to its maximum potential by engaging random targets (rocks and such) at unknown distances. The Diamondback is a First Focal Plane scope which means the reticle gets bigger as you zoom in. That means that if your round impacts -1.5 MRAD below your zero at 1x magnification, it will also impact at -1.5MRAD at 24x magnification. This is handy once you know where your round impacts at different distances
.
1x Magnification
15x Magnification
I was successfully able to engage various rocks from the near side of the range all the way to the backstop berm up at about 140m using the Swiss marksmanship theory, or 4th Generation Sniping. This theory basically holds that most human beings are actively trying NOT to be shot, so one doesn't typically have long periods of time in which to set up a one-shot, one-kill scenario. Instead, the Swiss view quick hits with more rounds expended as superior to a perfect single shot that took more than a minute to set up. The idea is to place effective fire on the target as quickly as possible vice putting a round through the target's left eye. You may never get to even take the shot if the target doesn't acquiesce to being still and exposed for as long as it takes you to acquire, dial, and engage him.
They use a 25m zero, which is also a zero at 300m using 5.56. If the target is close, they aim at the belt. If the target is far, they aim at the neck. Near is defined as being able to pick out clothing details or hair color with the Mk 1 eyeball.
It works for me, and as I don't intend to shoot competitively, effective fire is my actual goal.
The rain never quit, but I had a fantastic time. I learned something significant (for me) re: ballistics and was able to apply that lesson to engaging actual targets at unknown distances.
I'm going to go again next Friday so I can zero my battle rifle, and I'll keep my apogee lesson in my back pocket.
Great report, Washington Nearsider, thank you!
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*For the ballistics nerds out there, the top of a projectile's arc in flight is also called the Maximum (or Max) Ordinate and also sometimes Vertex Height.
Speaking of John C. Garand (the actual guy, not the new WA goat) here's an interesting video.
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There were lots of favorable comments on the GunBlue490 video last week on inspecting revolvers. Here's another video, from a different guy, on pre-purchase inspection of S&W revolvers.
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Learning about the Telephone
Q: Weasel, can we have a video on learning about the telephone?
A. Yes.
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NoVAMoMe 2023
Not so fast on the gun stuff, buckaroos! We have a little bit more on the NoVAMoMe to discuss. In fact, this will be the first of a long and seemingly endless series of reminders to get yo' big butt off the couch and come out and meet some of your online friends. Let's kick things off with a few NoVAMoMe FAQ.
Q: Is it fun?
A: Yes. Just ask anyone who has been to one. You will have fun, or else.
Q: When is it again? Did you say June?
A: Yes. A thousand times yes! June 10th, from 1pm til 6pm or so.
Q: I'm sort of a dork. Can I just slink-in, watch for a bit and then slink out without having to actually speak with anyone?
A: Yes. In fact, we have strategically placed large potted ferns for lurkers to hide behind.
Q: Will bluebell be there? I really want to meet bluebell.
A: Of course! Well, assuming things go well at the parole hearing.
Q: Is there food and drink?
A: Yes! $30 for a bigly buffet, and a cash bar. We had to bump up the food price a bit to cover costs this year.
Q: Can I make references, even veiled references to the secret MoMe location on the blog?
A: NO!Seriously, please don't.
Q: Sounds great, Weasel! How do I sign up?
A: We will again have an online page with registration and payment specifics, however, it's not yet live as we're still working out a few of the details. Keep an eye out here on the ol' Gun Thread or the main page sidebar for more info in the coming weeks.
OK, I'm talking to YOU Mr. or Ms. I'll Go Next Time. Guess what? The next time is here. It's a really fun event and we would love to have you join us. Hopefully some NoVAMoMe veterans will speak up in the comments and encourage the introverts to stop being big baby chickens and make this the year to come out of the shadows!
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Musical Interlude
Here are the Doobie Brothers and Long Train Running
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Gun Basics 101
New video from the She Equips Herself gal! This week's video is on handgun cleaning.
Here is a brief write-up from Cigar Afficionado and here is the Corrida website. Very well constructed and they come in profiles from mild to el strongo. Cigar One has boxes of 20 on sale right now for $132 + shipping, or about $7 each. Honestly, I'd pay twice that. They're really that bueno!
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Here are some different online cigar vendors. You will find they not only carry different brands and different lines from those brands, but also varying selections of vitolas (sizes/shapes) of given lines. It's good to have options, especially if you're looking for a specific cigar.
A note about sources. The brick & mortar/online divide exists with cigars, as with guns, and most consumer products, with respect to price. As with guns - since both are "persecuted industries", basically - I make a conscious effort to source at least some of my cigars from my local store(s). It's a small thing, but the brick & mortar segment for both guns and tobacco are precious, and worth supporting where you can. And if you're lucky enough to have a good cigar store/lounge available, they're often a good social event with many dangerous people of the sort who own scary gunz, or read smart military blogs like this one. -rhomboid
Anyone have others to include? Perhaps a small local roller who makes a cigar you like? Send me your recommendation and a link to the site!
This week's mailbag entry is from our pal Just Call Me Roger. Funbags in the Mailbag!!
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Please note the new and improved protonmail account gunthread at protonmail dot com. An informal Gun Thread archive can be found HERE. Future expansion plans are in the works for the site Weasel Gun Thread. If you have a question you would like to ask Gun Thread Staff offline, just send us a note and we'll do our best to answer. If you care to share the story of your favorite firearm, send a picture with your nic and tell us what you sadly lost in the tragic canoe accident. If you would like to remain completely anonymous, just say so. Lurkers are always welcome!
That's it for this week - have you been to the range?
Food Thread: Goat Cheese Is A Breeze, Unless It Makes You Sneeze, Otherwise Please, Give It A Squeeze, It Really Is The Bee's Knees!
—CBD
Many's the long night I've dreamed of cheese--toasted mostly.
-- Ben Gunn [In Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island]
Cheese is almost always a good thing; as a meal, a topping, an addition, and all things in between! And recently we have been enjoying goat cheese in salad. And why goat cheese? because it has just enough firmness to provide the occasional small chunk, but it blend deliciously with the dressing and seems to coat the lettuce leaves with a delectable frisson of tartness that compliments the dressing and the lettuce.
I usually make a classic vinaigrette with the addition of a small amount of honey because I like a hint of sweetness, and it is that contrast with the goat cheese that works so well.
We have used Parmesan to great effect as well, and I won't throw you out of my dining room for suggesting it, but goat cheese works with more than just flavor, and I really like ingredients that do double duty.
The Frogs will often use rounds of baguettes toasted with goat cheese as toppers on composed salads, and I absolutely approve, especially if the salad has sauteed gizzards in it! And if you haven't had deep fried goat cheese you simply haven't lived life to its fullest!
Give it a try. You can start with Feta if the idea of goat cheese makes you pause. Yeah, it's got a bit of gaminess, probably from the trace amounts of caproic acid in the goat milk.
Give it a shot...you'll like it...I promise! My word as a dildo!
I was poking around the sewer of the internet and came upon a World Health Organization (WHO) page on Food Safety. I was curious how far into the article I would get before I began cursing. The bullet points at the beginning of the article had some sketchy math, but that's par for the course with government organizations.
But then I found this!
Of most concern for health are naturally occurring toxins and environmental pollutants.
Oh...bullshit! The vast majority of food borne illness is caused by inadequate food storage during processing and storage, and poor food safety in the home and restaurants. Sure, there are naturally occurring toxins, but they are far down on the list of problems. Just like environmental pollutants! The suggestion that consumption of environmental poisons is the top concern in world food safety is laughable. But politically expedient!
Here's another doozy!
The burden of foodborne diseases falls disproportionately on groups in vulnerable situations and especially on children under 5, with the highest burden in low- and middle-income countries.
Oh...I see! Food safety is a big problem when countries can't afford modern food safety systems like clean food production facilities and refrigeration in stores and restaurants and homes?
Who knew?
And you knew this one was coming!
Urbanization and changes in consumer habits have increased the number of people buying and eating food prepared in public places. Globalization has triggered growing consumer demand for a wider variety of foods, resulting in an increasingly complex and longer global food chain. Climate change is also predicted to impact food safety.
There is the predictable Global WarmingTM reference! But they are also suggesting in the last quotation that poverty is an issue, but here they are suggesting that wealth is an issue.
Why, if I didn't know better I would guess that there is a political agenda embedded in this article.
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Commenter "Doof," who sure does like to drink good bourbon, sent this along and asked what I thought about it, and presumably premixed cocktails in general.
I think I already know the answer, but would you even consider buying this?? 70 proof. $41.99 at a hole in the wall shop on Cape Cod.
Yup...he knew the answer.
I think cocktails should be fresh. I have tasted the packaged ones and I think they are dreck. Maybe there are good ones out there, but I haven't tasted any. Even the hipster "Barrel Aged Cocktail" affectation in some bars are sort of...eh. I think they taste flat and boring.
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This is really, really embarrassing. I was unaware that there were so many people on earth who were so profoundly stupid that they would try this and actually eat the stuff.
I have ranted before about the difficulty in finding reasonably small chickens for roasting. Not too long ago I could find a three+ pound chicken in most stores. Now? Not a chance. They are easily another full pound bigger, and I think that comes with a downside in tenderness and flavor.
I understand the economic advantage of growing them bigger. Less processing and packaging time/pound, and it is possible that chickens grow through that weight range more efficiently (that's just a guess).
But I don't think they taste as good! Sure...in a braise they should be fine, but not roasted, or in tartare (email me for my recipe).
Yeah...I'm a grumpy old fart, but DAMN IT! I want a tender chicken!
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Dessert is usually an afterthought after the Seder. But I like desserts with big meals, and as long as it isn't a coconut macaroon, I'm fine with most of these. Well, except for the matzoh toffee crack at the end. My mother used to try to make something like that, and while she was a marvelous and inventive cook, she didn't know desserts...at all. So I was subjected to weird bitter chocolate concoctions that were just awful.
On second thought, it does look promising, so maybe one of you can make it and test it out on your kids or dogs or cow-orkers!
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[Hat Tip: JT]
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Just send me oysters. Lots of oysters, and I will provide special dispensation for those without taste who insist upon maple syrup with their French Toast. And pork rib roasts from the front end of the pig where all the good and fatty meat lives, carrots that don't taste like stalky chalk, spare bottles of Van Winkle Special Reserve 12 Year Old Bourbon, an herb garden that actually produces herbs (but no basil!), well-marbled NY strip steaks and elk backstrap to: cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com.
And don't think that the rest of you are off the hook with maple syrup and French Toast: I'm still watching you! And I am watching you perverts who shake Manhattans and keeping a list for the Burning Times.
You all know the problem. A small rug slides on the hardwood floor and people die! It's long past time that Congress regulates this issue, with registration, serial numbers, training and qualification mandates, minimum age before legal use, etc.
But in the meantime, regular Americans have to struggle with the sometimes existential problems associated with the deadly combination of highly polished and slick floors, and inadequate slide resistance on small rugs.
Hell, should we call them "Saturday Night Specials?"
[Addendum] For some reason an earlier version posted instead of the complete opus.
That strip of perforated material is sticky on both sides to hold the floor and the rug.
Of course it doesn't work for more than a few weeks, and every time one moves the rug to clean its stickiness is degraded. I even tried spraying some glue on it, which didn't work for more than a week!
Where Is Galileo When We Need Him? Stop The Pendulum!
—CBD
Is this the typical American pendulum? We often swing from insanity to insanity until we (usually...hopefully) find some relatively levelheaded middle ground.
At first glance that is exactly what it is. Michelangelo's sculpture of the biblical figure David is one of the glories of Western civilization, and arguably* the greatest sculpture ever! The typical 6th grader can find prurience on a box of oatmeal, so concerns that a simple viewing of David and his genitalia are going to sexualize these kids seem overwrought and hysterical. Any competent teacher can control that, explain the historical use of nudity, link the sculpture to the Bible, and then tell the story of David and Goliath!
Hope Carrasquilla of Tallahassee Classical School in Leon County is no longer employed by the school. She was given a choice by the school board – resign or be fired. She chose to resign. Why? Well, that is the question. Was it because sixth-graders were shown a picture of Michelangelo’s David sculpture in their Renaissance art history class?
Carrasquilla’s termination was the subject of a last-minute emergency board meeting that was scheduled for 7 a.m. Monday. Three parents complained about the photo being shown in class and how the exposure to the world-renowned classic was handled. The school is a charter school. Parents send their children there for a classical education. Renaissance art history is to be expected as part of the curriculum. These are sixth-graders, not kindergarteners. Typically, sixth-graders are 11 and 12 years old.
School board chair Barney Bishop told CBS News Saturday that Carrasquilla was asked to resign over "a number of other issues,'' and the latest incident was the culmination.
He claimed that Carrasquilla knew that if she blamed the Michelangelo photo for her resignation, the "mainstream media" would "twist it" and wouldn't report the truth.
Without more information it is difficult to understand why this teacher was sent packing, and because our experience over the last generation has taught us to discount pretty much everything ever uttered by any official anywhere, we may never know the entire story.
But "Michelangelo's David is not pornographic. Books portraying sex between minors and adults are pornographic, and insidious because they are undoubtedly part of a carefully constructed program to desensitize children to the horror of pedophilia. Viewing an absolutely spectacular sculpture with tremendous historical context is simply part of a well-rounded education.
Would I be irritated if I weren't informed beforehand of the topic and the photo being used? Maybe. Probably not. But I can't speak for other parents, and it is reasonable for those three parents to be irritated.
On the other hand, this will be used by the leftist media to show the evil of "censorship" and how parental notification laws are injuring our children! Which is arrant nonsense and can be refuted with ease.
So what happened? Who the hell knows!
*We can discuss this on The Art Thread...The "Pieta" ain't bad, Donatello's "Mary Magdalene" is in the running, and some guy named "Rodin" did some good stuff! [Just don't mention Duchamp or you're gonna get savaged!]
There's another sneak peak for the Dungeons and Dragons movie I reviewed this Sunday the 26th at 2pm in various theaters.
Forgotten 80s Mystery Click Frontman quit his old band over his resistance to adding synthesizers to their sound, and then released a cover of a Louis Prima song loaded with synthesizers Holy shit this is crap. I forgot how bad this was. I thought his big complaint is that he didn't like the non-hard-rock his old band was taking? His version also doesn't improve on the original.
Steve Martin doing his Let's Get Small act. I've listened to this album 400 times. I never had a visual to associate with it. I always imagined it in black and white, because the album art was in B&W. I mistakenly said that this recording could be during the sessions when he recorded Let's Get Small. I thought he did that at the Troubador. But he didn't; Simon Jester just reminded me he did that at the Boarding House. My mistake!
Author, historian and expert on Islam, Robert Spencer is CBD and J.J.'s special guest where, with the backdrop of Donald Trump's imminent arrest and detention as a political prisoner, they discuss his timely book "The Sumter Gambit: How the Left is Trying to Foment a Civil War," as well as major realignments in the Middle East, and much more!
@zerohedge - 2h
SEC Hits Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul, Soulja Boy And Others With Crypto Fraud Charges
Posted by: andycanuck
Big scoops from Kamran Pasha about Disney According to his source "sparrow" who has proven reliable in the past, and who is he has confirmed the identity of, Bob Iger has ordered a full audit of Kathleen Kennedy's Lucasfilm. He's suspicious about the spending going on over there, and why Kennedy could only offer an insulting $5000 payoff to a producer she offered a job to, and then withdrew the offer. Iger wants to know why money is so tight that only $5000 was offered in a breach of contract case where a more typical payoff would be $500,000. Apparently Lucasfilm offered to do their own internal audit, and Iger said no, he wanted Disney's own accountants to audit Lucasfilm. Sounds like he said, "I'm ordering a complete Shut-Down of Star Wars until I can figure out what the hell is going on down there." Pasha also says that there will be more big names being fired at Disney. Not as big as Victoria Alonso, but part of the point of that is that when the next big names get fired, the press won't be as interested because it's a let-down after Alonso's firing
That former San Francisco police commissioner and would-be politician just deleted one of his tweets telling someone complaining of having $10,000 and passports stolen from a car to go back to the suburbs, p*ssy. He kept the first tweet up, though. Meanwhile San Francisco will probably jump at the chance to elect him DA
Kathleen Kennedy suffers a brand new string of humiliations and failures Discussion/speculation: Victoria Alonso had been set on a glide path to a "soft exit" back in 2021 The key idea here is that Alonso's position was made-up only for her. The position did not exist before they gave it to her, and it almost certainly will not exist now that she's gone. They're suggesting that she was "promoted" to a non-vital job as part of a plan to eventually get rid of her. But after the huge cost overruns of Marvel's latest flops, they decided to push her out sooner rather than later. Although she's in charge of VFX, she's also in charge of "physical production," meaning the actual shoots (and re-shoots, and re-re-shoots, and re-re-re-shoots) of Marvel movies. Note that it's been previously rumored that both Marvel and Lucasfilm have taken to a shooting technique they call "scrapbooking," where they film multiple possible endings and multiple plot-exposition scenes which will lead to those possible endings. Then they choose which movie they want to assemble after test screenings. And because audiences haven't liked these movies lately, they wind up having to do re-shoots and more re-shoots later. This is obviously very costly. I don't think that's Alonso's fault, though: Having a good script in hand isn't part of physical production, it's part of development. And ultimately it's Feige approving this "scrapbooking" CYA strategy rather than just getting the script into proper shape before shooting and saying, "The script is the story, period."
Not positive this is actually happening, though. But multiple channels report on it.
Manhattan's Soros DA Alivin Bragg contacts police in anticipation of indictment of Trump next week No more protection for Democrats, including presidents, their families, and their corrupt wives like Hillary. LOCK THEM ALL UP. If one side is going to risk political civil war by jailing the leaders of the other party, then we're all playing that game. Alvin Bragg better stay within NYC's limits, too. That m*****f***er looks like violates drug laws on the daily, and I can see Red State Police sniffing at his hotel doors to see if any illegal substances are being consumed.
Forgotten 80s Mystery Click: Hall and Oates Deep Cuts Edition This is from 1980's Voices. It was never a single, but maybe it should have been. Operator, International Oh-One-One, oh/Put your love on the line, put your ear to the phone/Baby, it's no longer than a night and a day/But where you are is so far from the U.S. of A/And it ain't so easy, easy on the heart
S3E8: The Irish Democracy episode, as author, historian and editor of The-Pipeline.orgMichael Walsh joins CBD and J.J. from his home in Ireland to ask the ultimate question of "what are you prepared to do" to fight for whatever is left of America, the Trump vs DeSantis battle, will the Chi-Coms implode before we do, the abject incompetence of those who would be our overlords, climate madness, and a whole lot more!
Forgotten 80s Mystery Click In the early-mid eighties, a big band's singer went solo, and made this song, written for his girlfriend Sherrie.
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