Ace: aceofspadeshq at gee mail.com
Buck: buck.throckmorton at protonmail.com
CBD: cbd at cutjibnewsletter.com
joe mannix: mannix2024 at proton.me
MisHum: petmorons at gee mail.com
J.J. Sefton: sefton at cutjibnewsletter.com
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published.
Contact OrangeEnt for info: maildrop62 at proton dot me
Most people don’t know the name Alan Trustman. But they do know The Thomas Crown Affair starring Steve McQueen. Alan Trustman wrote that movie, and his story as a screenwriter is at once inspiring and infuriating.
I was friendly with him, and that itself is an inspiring and infuriating story. I had lost touch with him the past few years, but recently my father gave me Alan’s obituary, which he saw in The Boston Globe. Alan died on March 5th at the age of 95.
I graduated from Boston University’s film school in 1998 where I concentrated in screenwriting. In the early 2000s, I teamed with another writer to pen a number of scripts which we shopped to Hollywood. Many of our screenplays were Boston-set, of the true-crime or suspense variety.
Though his career as a Hollywood scribe was long since over, Alan Trustman, a Beantown native, was someone you sought out if you wanted to discuss Boston crime stories. I can’t remember how I first got in touch with him, but in the early 2000s we began to correspond by email.
Before the days of doxxing, people were less guarded about protecting their locations, and I frequently noted the signature line of Alan’s emails, which listed his retirement address—a place called Fisher Island in Florida.
Our correspondence petered out, but in 2005 I met a woman who was to become my wife (eventually ex-wife). As the relationship deepened, I was invited by her father to visit him in Florida, Fisher Island to be exact.
Fisher Island is an islet off Miami Beach. You can walk around it in thirty minutes. Not everyone knows everyone on Fisher Island, but when I mentioned to my former father-in-law I had exchanged emails with Alan Trustman, who also lived on the island, it didn’t take long for him to track Alan down.
After that, I would see Alan a couple times per year. Maybe once in Florida and then sometimes when he was back in Brookline/Chestnut Hill for the summer, where my wife’s family lived, as did Trustman when not snow-birding.
At the time, I was still making attempts to sell my own scripts while paying the bills in the family real estate business. Alan’s advice to me was consistently –and bitterly—as follows: forget screenwriting, stick with real estate.
I always listened patiently but was annoyed. ‘You had your time in the sun’ I thought, so why attempt to talk me out of going for it? Why be so negative about a passion people spend many years cultivating?
In one sense he was correct: screenwriting is a tough row to hoe. You’re unlikely to be able to support a family pursuing it. Even if you can grab a little success, you’ll eventually hit a dry spell. I knew this to be true, having many screenwriting friends and acquaintances who were on top of the world after selling something one year and then broke or waiting tables the next. There are only a handful of writers who spend their entire careers living off the income screenwriting provides.
Even so, one can be realistic without being discouraging, and Alan routinely chose the latter. What irked me more was he had put almost no time into developing himself as a writer before rocketing to the top.
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One of the first lines in Alan’s obituary notes he had nothing to do with the film industry or any kind of creative writing until one night, in his mid-30s, he was so disgusted by a bad movie he saw, he vowed he could do better.
I never got the full story on how his script made it to Hollywood and eventually Steve McQueen, but Alan did work for a prominent law firm and probably a few calls via the old boys network got him access.
It’s a story that is inspiring because we have all been there. We see a movie (or many, many movies) that are horrible and say 'I can do better than that.'
But I was never able to dash something off, make a few phone calls, and leapfrog to the top. I would say Alan’s story is nearly unique in this regard, which is why it’s so frustrating.
According to the obituary, “Although he had never written a line except for contracts and legal briefs, Mr. Trustman spent every Sunday afternoon for two months hammering out a script about a bank heist. When the William Morris Agency quickly sold The Thomas Crown Affair script to United Artists, he felt like Lana Turner, the star who was discovered ‘sipping a malt in a drugstore.’”
Yes, there are discoveries in screenwriting every day. In fact, that’s how it almost always goes. A writer, struggling for years, finally gets his or her script to the right producer or an agent takes a shine to a screenplay and brings it to studios. When the sale is made, the nobody becomes the toast of the town.
Except, with Alan, he did it on his first try. Only a few months into his new endeavor he not only completed a script, but also sold it—a feature that actually got made (when so many get lost in development hell), snagging one of the biggest stars of the day.
I don’t know whether to celebrate an industry that picks winners and losers like this or feel thankful it could happen to anyone, at any time.
Over the years, as I have presumably become wiser, I’ve recognized the Alan Trustman path to success is an indictment of the system, not a cause to celebrate it.
All it really demonstrates is that Alan had a good idea and got that idea to the right person. I doubt the original script he wrote was earth shattering, but it was a good vehicle for McQueen and his agents recognized it. Alan was lucky he wasn’t rewritten and cast aside, but for most this is the rule.
I never understood this about Hollywood. How can you praise something so highly and laud the writer who birthed it but quickly bring in others to redo the work? Clearly you didn’t think the script you proclaimed to be superb was really that. You probably liked the idea and thought it could eventually be worked into a movie, but rather than admit this is how most scripts get selected, you pretend the screenplay and the writer are the finds of the century.
It’s a gestalt everyone in the system is in on, and the system will circle the wagons rather than admit its dishonesty. It’s like listening to professional wrestlers insist matches are not staged.
Part of the trick is Hollywood convincing you they know something more. That they can judge material and potential in a far better way than an outsider can. After 25 years of observing this, I can say with definitiveness, they cannot. If you doubt me look at the amount of movies produced each year. Maybe 10% are good to superior; the rest could have been written by the first 100 people in the Cambridge telephone book (hat tip to William Buckley).
These days, the better writing is to be found in television and independent cinema, but most successful, contemporary feature scribes working toward Hollywood glitter can’t pull off what Alan did. They do put in years before breaking through, but that still doesn’t mean what they produce is beyond the ken of most reasonably intelligent people.
Nevertheless, Alan’s story is a slap in the face to all the people who grinded for years before getting a seat at the table. And it’s even more of a blow to so many talented people who never got a break but possessed similar skills and ideas. Screenwriting success is maybe 20% talent and the rest luck and timing. But few in Tinseltown will cop to this.
***
Why am I going on about Alan Trustman, a relatively minor player in the history of Hollywood? If I hadn’t come to know him personally, I might have nothing to say. But because he had instant success with minimal effort, while at the same time advising me to abandon my own dreams, his passing engendered many conflicting thoughts. Both anger and appreciation for his success, as well as the same for an industry that operates this way. I love movies and have devoted much of my life to the cinema in one form or another, but I hate the process by which many films are developed—and even more the lionization of that process.
I haven’t even discussed Steve McQueen and the movies Trustman wrote for him, The Thomas Crown Affair, and, perhaps, equally noteworthy, Bullitt. They are both solid movies, but I never was a McQueen guy. Nothing against him, but I suppose I’m more of a Lee Marvin or Charles Bronson and The Dirty Dozen fan as opposed to McQueen and The Great Escape.
Alan’s screenplays were also solid. He wrote a few more after he parted ways with McQueen, and his run as a successful screenwriter came to an end in the mid 1970s.
Would Alan have had the same success if he tried to break into the business today. I don’t think Trustman was the kind of high concept scribe every manager and producer is looking for these days. He wrote good screenplays with taut dialogue. They were well-structured and paced.
There really is something to be said for simplicity, and that may be why mainstream American movies are in such dire straights right now. Instead of telling interesting stories with clearly defined dramatic purposes, it’s a race to the bottom for the most surprising hook one can conjure. Either that or another sequel.
Originality is at an all-time low, and so perhaps Hollywood wouldn’t be a fit for a sui generis kind of writer like Alan. Whatever the case, rest in peace, Mr. Trustman. You have inspired and bedeviled me, and that is, perhaps, the mark of any effective writer.
Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the Horde in this little corner of the interweb. This is the mighty, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread. It is that time of the year, a spin of the Wheel of Hobbies (TM) came up with honey bees as a theme for this Hobby Thread.
As per usual Hobby Thread etiquette, keep this thread limited to hobbying. All (legal) hobbying is welcome. I understand that some people pay attention to military hardware, tactics and strategy as a hobby. Discussion of current military events permitted but must be made in the form of hobby commentary. Pants are optional. As always, puns are welcome and encouraged. Puns are a hobby of sorts, right?
Play nice and do not be rude. Do not be a troll and do not feed the trolls.
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Anyone among the Horde involved in beekeeping and making honey? Bees are very active in the spring gathering pollen and nectar. They need pollen and nectar to feed the brood in the colony (pollen for larvae and youngsters, nectar for adults). Spring is also the time to repair and build the hive after the winter.
Do you (or have you) kept bees? Seems like the people that are into beekeeping are REALLY into beekeeping and stick with it for a long time.
Do you have a spiffy and stylish beekeeper outfit? Can you explain why beekeepers cover their whole body and then pull frames out of a hive with bare hands?
Do you use honey in your food preparation? Do you put honey in your tea?
Do you use honey for home health remedies?
Do you use beeswax products? Lip balm, candles, polish, etc.
Did you dress up like a bee for Halloween? Have you done crafty things with bee inspiration?
Young TRex had an allergy to bees which caused a life-long discomfort with flying things armed with stingers. Will need Horde help on this one.
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Random honeybee trivia gathered from around the interweb:
They have five eyes. Two large compound eyes for detecting shapes and movement, plus three smaller simple eyes on top of their head for light intensity and navigation.
The waggle dance is their GPS. Forager bees perform a figure-eight "waggle dance" inside the hive to communicate the exact distance, direction, and quality of food sources to other bees.
Honeybees have an extraordinary sense of smell. They have 170 odorant receptors, giving them a sense of smell about 50 times stronger than a dog. They can even be trained to detect explosives or landmines(!).
One queen, thousands of eggs. A healthy queen can lay up to 2,000-2,500 eggs per day and may produce over a million eggs in her lifetime.
Tiny honey producers. A single worker bee makes only about 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in her entire lifetime (usually 4-6 weeks as a forager). It takes roughly 2 million flower visits to produce one pound of honey.
Hexagonal perfection. Bees build honeycombs with hexagonal cells, the most efficient shape for storage and strength with minimal wax. They produce beeswax from special glands on their abdomen.
They see ultraviolet light. Honeybees can't see red but can see UV patterns on flowers invisible to humans, acting like landing strips that guide them to nectar and pollen.
Thermoregulation experts. A colony keeps the hive at a steady ~93–95°F year-round. In summer, they fan their wings for air conditioning. In winter, they cluster and vibrate to generate heat.
Worker bees have specialized careers. Female workers change jobs as they age: cleaning the hive, nursing larvae, building comb, guarding, and finally foraging. They are all female (except drones).
The ultimate sacrifice. When a worker bee stings (to defend the hive), her barbed stinger gets stuck and rips out, fatally injuring her. The queen has a smoother stinger and can sting multiple times.
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Beekeeping for beginners:
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Beehive parts explained:
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How do bees actually make honey? What's all this about a second stomach?
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How to "read" a frame. Lots of up close detail.
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Why do bee keepers use smoke?
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Spin the frame to extract the honey and re-use the wax hexagons:
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A flow hive? Never heard of a flow hive:
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Its not all about the honey. Don't forget about the beeswax:
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What's the buzz with all the yellow spots on your car? It is bee poop!
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Bee DIY crafts:
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Did you know that counterfeit honey is a thing? Honey is the third-most-faked food in the world, behind milk and olive oil. The FDA tests honey each year.
What makes honey counterfeit? Adding undeclared cheaper sweetener ingredients like corn, rye, or sugar beet syrup.
In 2021-2022, the FDA collected and tested 144 imported honey samples and found 10% of those samples to be "violative." In the 2022-2023 assignment, the agency collected and tested 107 imported honey samples and found 3% of those samples to be "violative." The 2025 number was 4% (same for both domestic and imported). Data here.
The exact amount of fake honey in the world is up for debate. An analysis by the Honey Authenticity Project, an association of activists and industry members, places the number of fake or adulterated honey at 33%. A 2018 study of honey for sale in Australia found that 27% of the products tested were faked or had other ingredients mixed in.
Are you wise in the ways of "honey laundering?"
"Honey laundering" became widespread when Chinese laboratories began modifying high-fructose corn syrups to make them look like pure honey.
The sugars in these syrups - known as C4 sugars - became popular for honey counterfeiters in the 1970s, with the invention of high-fructose corn syrup, according to Richard Anderson, director of Siratech, a private lab in Texas that detects fake and adulterated honey.
But they were soon easily detected in tests, so honey counterfeiters modified their methods to use syrups developed from plants with C3 sugars, like rice, beets, or cassava.
The adulterated syrups can be used to dilute a smaller batch of real honey. They can also be fed directly to bees, replacing flower nectar, Anderson told Insider.
Earlier honey authentication tests analyzed the pollen inside honey and traced them back to their source. But some honey launderers have gotten smart, treating honey so that it's difficult to trace.
First Lady Melania Trump announced the expansion of the White House honey program with the addition of a newly installed and fully functioning beehive on the South Lawn. Hand-crafted by a local artisan in the image of the White House, the beautiful, new hive will add two new bee colonies to the existing two colonies that already produce the signature White House honey.
The new hive is expected to increase annual honey production by an estimated 30 pounds, allowing for even greater use in preparing White House culinary dishes, serving as official gifts from the President and the First Lady, and supporting charitable donations of healthy foods to local food kitchens.
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Public Service Announcement: by popular demand, next week's Hobby Thread will be car repair.
Think of it like our very own Car Talk (with Click and Clack), Under the Hood or Motor Medics. We can expand to anything with a motor - truck, RV, motorcycle, quad, etc. Bring your ills and mechanical gremlins. Ideally, the experts among the Horde can join to offer their wisdom and advice. If they don't, the rest of us can make wild and uninformed guesses.
Either way, the advice will be free. (That also means it may be worth exactly what you paid for it.)
Credit to RandomDave and ARiK for the suggestion.
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Did you miss the Hobby Thread last week? We did an castles theme. The comments may be closed, but you can re-live the content.
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Notable comments from last week:
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Words of wisdom:
"Because despite all our troubles, when things are grim out in that wide round world of ours, that's when it's really important to have a good hobby." Posted by: tankascribe at June 22, 2024 07:41 PM (HWxAD).
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If you have trouble finding something in the content or comments that resonates with you, contribute your own. Send thoughts, suggestions and photos of your hobbying to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com. Do mighty things.
The first strawberry ripened! After taking the picture I tried it, it is indeed as flavorful as advertised. They are very small, though. I'd say this one was maybe 5/8 inches, seems to be the typical size. It's continuing to flower, and there are more berries forming--as long as the squirrels don't find the bowl on my porch I might get a few more. It also looks like I probably should divide the plants, they're rather over filling the bowl!
There seems to be some confusion among various sources on line about this plant, Fragaria vesca. I've seen it called the wild strawberry, woodland strawberry, alpine strawberry. I've also seen pictures of the fruits varying from the cone shape of mine to almost round. Don't know, I'll just enjoy the plant I have.
I sent pics of our dog once before about a year ago for the pet thread.
Not much of a green thumb here, so we often go hiking to experience God's garden - particularly, starting this time of year.
Springtime is in full swing in East Tennessee - and if you're a hiker, you'll discover large patches of "Virginia Bluebells" (Mertensia virginica) on hillsides and in hollows at this time of year. We always pause when we come upon on them.
Thanks for all y'all do.
-SmokyMtvol
We love bluebells here. Thanks for the photos. Keep in touch.
The iris is "Bequest" from Schreiner's Gardens last summer. It's the first of them to pop. I've got 2 others, "Air Time" and "Ghost Train." Pics to follow later, as they flower.
This peony is now 3 years old and has bountiful buds. We're not expecting rain for the next week, so we'll be able to enjoy them for a long while. I've got some of those curved support posts for when it does rain and they want to flop over onto the ground. They look like the ones Mom-Mom had when I was a little girl.
Miley
What's happening in your garden?
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Hope everyone has a nice weekend.
If you would like to send photos, stories, links, etc. for the Saturday Gardening Thread, the address is:
ktinthegarden at g mail dot com
Remember to include the nic or name by which you wish to be known at AoSHQ, or let us know if you want to remain a lurker.
Old Boomers believe anything "the elites" tell them
because of the "Rockefeller education system"
Younger folks learn the truth from
20 second videos with commentary by "influencers"
There has been some recent concern about deaths and disappearances of scientists and others involved in the study of nuclear issues, UFOs and related matters. Yesterday's Daily Wire piece linked above the fold in JJ's Morning Report took the sensible position that some of these cases deserved more attention than others. There was one recent death, that of David Wilcock, that did not make their list of dead or missing scientists, but a People Magazine article about his death was linked. David Wilcock, Paranormal YouTuber and Writer, Dies by Suicide at 53.
This piece was not included in my conspiracy theorist influencer's information sources for his followers. Neither was a longer piece in the New York Post. Those pieces would expose his followers to the "Rockefeller education system", no doubt. Instead, he posted extremely short clips of Wilcock talking about life and his philosophy.
Boulder County Colorado posted a very careful update on the investigation of Wilcock's death which included a nice quasi-obituary. Due to "public interest". Police arrived before he shot himself, but took cover because he fired a random shot after their arrival.
Nevertheless, commenters at our influencer's site, rather than looking up the information, asked each other
"Where is the body cam footage?",
"Where is the 911 recording?" (included in the government release), and so forth.
Many commenters did not believe he was dead. He was in a witness protection program. He had been taken to another astral plane. Or he had been murdered before a staged suicide. All of these takes were more plausible than the government's report. Even if they contradicted each other.
Anyway, Wilcock had some reasons to be deeply depressed. According to one report I saw he was 500,000 dollars in debt due to the failure of an airplane company. There were other fall-outs with those he had counted on as friends. Never mind. He had spoken against suicide in the past.
In any case, more of us need to engage in "global meditation", as urged by Wilcock.
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This same influencer calls anyone who believes anything that NASA (or any other organization that sends something into space) says or writes a "believer".
Once you’re forced to hypothesize whole new technologies to keep your conspiracy possible, you’ve stepped over into the realm of magic. It demands a deep and abiding faith in things you can never know.
What’s dangerous about that is that it blinds you to the real conspiracies that authorities are perpetrating on you right now.
The "All Conspiracy" folks must ignore this kind of thinking.
Looks to be a race on to see whose assets shrink fastest: Ilhan Omar from “better accounting,” or the Southern Poverty Law Center from criminal prosecution, fines, and more lawsuits to come. (By the way, why hasn’t Omar or someone ever launched the Northern Poverty Law Center? Is there something extra special about southern poverty?) Move over turtles: It’s frauds all the way down. (Plus, did you know that pickleball is now one of the leading problems in America? See the headline section.)
Pope Leo claims that “hundreds of millions of people throughout the world are immersed in extreme poverty” because “disproportionate wealth remains in the hands of a few,” and this needs to be fixed by a “more equitable distribution of wealth.”
IN FACT, extreme poverty is concentrated in nations with high levels of government corruption, communistic policies, and low levels of human capital like useful skills and mutual trust. Although the root causes of poverty are varied and hard to objectively measure because association does not prove causation, the following facts suggest that wealth attainment didn’t cause it, and wealth redistribution won’t fix it:
See particulars at the link.
Comments are closed on last week's thread so you won't ban yourself by trying to comment on an old thread. But don't try it anyway.
Before we enter the Prayer Revival just a few housekeeping matters to go over (Rulz for those of you in Markesan)
1) This is an open thread. Feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate.
2) Be kind. Be nice. Keep your permanent record spotless.
3) No running with sharp objects.
4) Have a great weekend!!
Please submit any prayer requests to me, “Annie’s Stew” at apaslo at-sign hotmail dot com. Prayer requests are generally removed after four weeks unless we receive an update.
Prayer Requests:
3/5 – IrishEi has learned that she needs major surgery on 3/16, and she would really appreciate prayers.
4/4 Update – Irish Ei posted her health update. She quit smoking 8-10 years ago, after reading Alan Carr’s “Easy Way to Quit Smoking”, on Ace’s recommendation. Since then, she has gone for the annual low-dose CT scan of her lungs that is offered to smokers/former smokers. They were always negative, until this year. She had one very small spot, which was confirmed as Stage I CA. The spot was removed, and no chemo or radiation is needed. She has been home for a week and is feeling better and stronger every day. She did want to encourage everyone to take whatever screenings are offered. She had no symptoms at all, and her doctor had suggested that she could stop with the annual CT scans. But early detection is crucial.
3/10 – Update on Susan, who we have been praying for as she battles cancer. She is hospitalized again with an infection in her colon that quickly turned bad. The doctor says the signs are sepsis but they are running tests to make sure. The good news is that the pancreatic cancer was and is responding to the chemo and her cancer numbers are going down. God bless and thank you!
3/23 Update – Susan finally was able to come home. She is doing better than expected. Thanks to everyone for your prayers.
4/18 Update – Susan is doing outstanding. Her weight is better than expected. They have increased her dosage for chemo, and her cancer numbers are the lowest they have been since they started keeping track of them. They are so thankful for the mercy they have received. Thanks to everyone for the thoughts and prayers.
3/14 – Retired Buckeye Cop asks for prayers for Mrs. Cop’s cousin, “A.B”. He has been diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. He is a retired police officer who was hit by a car years ago. He attempted to deal with the pain by self-medicating with too much Tylenol, which ended up poisoning his liver. His only alternative is a liver transplant, but he is uncertain if he wants to have surgery.
4/11 Update – A.B. got a second opinion and testing determined his live score was 15. (21+ means transplant time.) That’s bad, but not as critical as initially thought. He went to the Cleveland Clinic for a third opinion, and testing found that his score had dropped to 9 and a liver transplant was not even something to consider. The doctor suspected a reaction to Ozempic and told him to stop taking it for 6 months.
3/21 – FenelonSpoke asked for prayers for her son, who is still looking for work. He has a horticulture major, and would ideally like something related to research, but he is certainly willing to labor outdoors.
4/10 Update – FenelonSpoke’s son got a job. She sends her thanks to everyone who prayed on this thread here and elsewhere.
3/28 – Cosda posted the happy news that a new grandson should be arriving on 3/28.
3/28 – Defenestratus asked for prayers for grief at the loss of a dear friend and boss of 20 years, who passed away unexpectedly on St. Patrick’s Day.
3/28 – San Franpsycho posted that Pnina bat Surel is not improving, sadly. She has had a third hospitalization, and this has taken a toll on her. She is not bouncing back like she has before.
3/28 – From about The Time posted that prayers would be appreciated after the last chemo treatment for Lymphoma. It went reasonably well - thanks for the prayers.
3/28 – Hrothgar asked for prayers for a dear and long time close friend and former neighbor, Daniel, who is scheduled for open heart surgery in mid-April. Prayers for his wife would be appreciated as well, as she will be carrying a heavy load for the next few months.
4/18 Update – Dad survived his complex open heart surgery. He is sitting up and it seems like it went well, but they are not going to release him as quickly as he would like, so he is not happy. Thanks to the Horde for the prayers and please keep praying for his dear wife, who now has even more to put up with.
3/28 – Jordan61 posted that Mr. Jordan61 is back in the hospital. His sepsis has returned and gotten into where his compression fracture is, and he has vertebral osteomyelitis. The doctor is supposed to come in today and let them know the plan.
4/9 Update – On 4/1 Mr. Jordan61 was released from the hospital with six weeks of IV antibiotics, which Jordan61 is administering every 8 hours. He’s in a lot of pain; they’ve given him oxy, fentanyl, and dilaudid, and nothing seems to touch it. From what they were told, the pain won’t subside until the infection is cleared up. For the time being, he is bed-bound and they are limiting his movement as much as possible to keep the pain to a minimum. Jordan61 will send updates with progress.
4/3 – Teresa in Fort Worth posted an update. Her chemo seems to be holding things steady for now. Unfortunately, as she is receiving a steroid, she has gained about 25 pounds. Her blood sugar has also jumped up about 40 points (which only happens when she is on steroids).
4/4 – Reforger posted that his wife’s father passed away on 4/3. After a 50 year battle with Hep C, he fell and broke his neck. He lasted about a month, in and out of induced comas, and now the pain is over. Reforger lost his father on Holy Saturday (years ago) and now his wife lost her father on Good Friday.
4/11 – Eromeros craves prayers for Mrs. E., as she has been diagnosed with lymphoma. She begins infusions on 4/23.
4/18 – Vmom deport deport deport asked for prayers for Captain Whitebread, who is back in ICU with a leg infection that sounds very serious. She also asked for prayers for her husband’s mental and emotional well-being as he faces transition of a possible forced retirement in 3 months.
4/18 – Warai-otoko offered a prayer of thanksgiving that he got a new job that he is really enjoying. Wifey also got an offer for a new job that sounds great, after a decade of putting up with her old job.
4/18 – fd posted that MIL went into the hospital with multiple issues. Then Dad went in. MIL is still there, and Dad is out. Both will be okay – as well as can be expected for 87 and 89 year olds. Also GSD Bruno started chemo for lymphoma and is responding well. Prayers from the Horde have helped.
4/18 – neverenoughcaffiene asked that Devyn be kept in prayers. She is a young mother of 2 with a mass on her esophagus. The Doc said it was scar tissue and hopefully the second opinion will agree.
4/18 – Smell the Glove could use some prayers as therapy and rehab occur after gout/sepsis.
4/18 – PA Dutchman asked for prayers for his family. His dad passed away on 4/9 after complications from a fall. He was 95 and a veteran of the Korean War, 34th Inf Rgt. Mostly prayers are need for PA Dutchman’s mom, who is absolutely heartbroken.
4/18 – PabloD has been having dizzy spells for the past few weeks. He is seeing a doctor soon, and is requesting prayers that figure it out and that it’s nothing too serious.
4/18 – Sam Adams requested prayers for a friend, Mary F, who was just sent to a long-term recovery facility after having a tracheostomy.
4/18 – Doof provided an update on his mother. She is doing better. She moved into her own room in an assisted living facility. It’s walking distance from Doof’s house, which is great. Her mental state has improved dramatically. She can no longer walk but she does stand with some assistance and can transfer between a wheelchair and bed or a lift/recliner chair. This facility is more of a home and less of a hospital, which hopefully will provide a good opportunity for her to enjoy life. He appreciates the Horde’s prayers and asks for prayers that she settles in comfortably and develops new friendships.
For submission guidelines and other relevant info, please contact Annie's Stew, who is managing the prayer list. You can contact her at apaslo at-sign hotmail dot com. If you see a prayer request posted in a thread comment, feel free to copy and paste it and e-mail it to Annie's Stew. She tries to keep up with the requests in the threads, but she's not here all of the time, so she may not see it unless you e-mail it to her. Please note: Prayer requests are generally removed after four weeks or so unless we receive an update.
2 Corinthians 4:8-9
We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.
Issues in the last month include Claude defaulting to a lower-effort mode - figuratively dumber; a cache optimisation error that constantly cleared saved data, making the tool slower, less effective, and more expensive all at the same time; and a rule that shortened responses to queries, making it literally dumber.
Manufacturers ran into a dead end with flash memory years ago: Shrinking the cells any further made them slower and less reliable; not shrinking them made progress impossible. The solution was to build up rather than out.
Manufacturers ran into a dead end with flash memory years ago: Shrinking the cells any further made them slower and less reliable; not shrinking them made progress impossible. The solution was to build up rather than out.
ZAM does the same thing but with memory.
When it's memory stacking time I guess you stack memory.
Do you know where the phrase "steal my thunder" comes from?
You might guess it has something to do with some mortal stealing Zeus' lightning bot.
It's more literal than that:
The idiom "to steal someone's thunder" originated in the early 18th century with English playwright and critic John Dennis.
The Origin Story
The Invention: In 1709, John Dennis created a new, realistic thunder-making machine (likely involving rolling sheets of tin) for his play Appius and Virginia.
The Failure: His play was not successful and closed quickly at the Drury Lane Theatre.
The Theft: Shortly after, Dennis attended a performance of Macbeth at the same theater and discovered the producers were using his thunder machine.
The Reaction: Outraged, Dennis allegedly exclaimed: "Damn them; they will not let my play run, but they steal my thunder!"
As several commetenters pointed out, the mother of the Next Innocent Ba-ba Babylamb Who Didn't Do Nuffin' says that the 4-foot-3 girl who tried to flee from the towering six foot black thug was "bullying" him. She said that in class, she "pushed" the six foot thug "down on the ground." (Not on camera, of course.) And this required him to bodyslam his "bully" and then stomp on her head as she lay on the ground in a daze.
The left is shrieking that Trump is deporting 300 DACA illegals for "no reason."
Like the NYT claiming it's "not clear" why he's denaturalizing terrorists -- the left is pretending they don't know the reason for the DACA deportations.
Say, it was an alleged requirement of DACA that you not commit crimes, wasn't it? I mean, I know Obama didn't really intend to deport criminals, but he pretended that was the requirement to Con the Normies.
Last year, on the 13th anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, an unconstitutional program he had conjured into existence by executive fiat, Barack Obama was singing its praises.
"DACA was an example of how we can be a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws," Obama said. "And it's an example worth remembering today, when families with similar backgrounds who just want to live, work, and support their communities, are being demonized and treated as enemies."
And it's all a lie.
Since President Donald Trump returned to office, his administration has arrested nearly 300 DACA recipients nationwide -- 75 of them in Texas alone, who were previously protected from deportation.
And here's the number the left doesn't want to talk about: of 270 DACA recipients arrested between Jan. 1, 2025, and Sept. 28, 2025, 250 -- that's 92% -- had criminal convictions or pending criminal charges.
Nine out of ten.
The breakdown is telling. Of those 270 arrests, 130 had criminal convictions, 120 had pending charges, and 14 were cited for immigration violations. Within the same window, 174 DACA recipients were removed from the country. According to the Department of Homeland Security, "Of those removed, 71 were convicted criminals, 66 had pending criminal charges, and 66 were in violation of immigration law. None of these applicants had been granted protected status at the time of their removal."
The article also reminds us that "DACA" has no actual legal force. It confers no status on illegals that they can claim shields them from deportation. It was just Obama's executive order declaring he would not enforce the law against "DACA" illegals.
But Trump can enforce the law as he sees fit. Obama's executive order does not bind him.
And anyway, 92% of the arrestees are criminals, and therefore not even covered by DACA.
Libs of TikTok
@libsoftiktok
1h
ICE just arrested multiple criminal illegal aliens with previous convictions for p*dophilia, r*pe, and drug trafficking.
Democrats want to defund DHS and prevent them from removing foreign pedos from our country.
Mug shots of these Brain Surgeons and Rocket Scientists here. Weird, I don't see any stethoscopes or slide-rules. Mostly just gang tats.
A failed Palestinian suicide bomber released as part of an October 7 massacre hostage ransom spoke remotely to University of California, Berkeley students on Monday at an event held in one of the university's classrooms, according to social media posts by the organizing student groups.
Israa Jaabis, who was convicted of an attempted car bombing in Jerusalem in 2015, spoke by video call to students in Berkeley Law School classroom 170 during a Palestinian Political Prisoners Day event organized by Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine and UC Berkeley Students for Justice in Palestine.
The video posted on Wednesday by UCB SJP, in which Jaabis addresses the students, shows a full classroom of students clapping for the failed terrorist.
Jaabis was released in November 2023 as part of a ransom for 26 hostages captured by Gazans during the October 7 massacre, according to the BBC.
On April 14, the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, together with Hillel -- a Jewish students' association -- hosted an event featuring Omer Shem Tov, a 23-year-old who was abducted by terrorists from the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023, and held captive by Hamas for 505 days.
One week later, the Undergraduate Students Association Council released a statement condemning the event on the grounds that it "advance[d] incomplete and harmful representations of ongoing violence."
The student council did not condemn a government action. Or a political rally. Or a military campaign. It condemned an event featuring a young person, just like them, who had survived 505 days in the clutches of internationally recognized terrorists, only because the event did not also focus on Palestinian suffering.
The recognition of Israeli and Jewish suffering, on the one hand, does not mean ignoring Palestinian suffering, on the other. That zero-sum thinking is one of the great failures of campus discourse today.
I served as president of UCLA's Undergraduate Students Association Council from 2017-2018. I know that office. I know that gavel. I know what it means to represent a student body as diverse, passionate, and complicated as UCLA's.
And as an Iranian American Jew, I know, painfully, how often Jewish students on that campus have been asked to justify their identities, swallow their grief, or prove that their belonging does not come at someone else's expense.
During my four years at UCLA, I witnessed antisemitism in both overt and subtle forms.
Seems more overt than subtle these days.
Dirty leftists, many of whom seem to come from cultures with no tradition of civil political exchange, also shut down a speech by a DHS official. (Video.)
A chaotic situation unfolded on Tuesday night in Los Angeles as far-left activists and students disrupted and chastised a Department of Homeland Security attorney who was speaking to law students at a conservative group's event at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
They are "far-left," but the suggestion that they are not part of the Democrat mainstream is false. They are the Democrat mainstream -- and the Democrat mainstream is far-left.
The incident took place at a speech hosted by the Federalist Society's UCLA chapter, where James Percival, general counsel of the DHS, was speaking to law students. Over 150 protesters gathered outside the event chanting criticisms of the Trump administration, including "No ICE, No KKK, No Fascist U.S.A."
Inside the event, students booed Percival throughout his talk, and many held profane signs while he spoke. One sign read, "F--- you loser." The students also set off different sounds on their phones as part of the disruption, and at different points, yelled out the word "Nazi."
The event culminated in a question and answer session, when most of the disruptors walked out in protest.
"Yesterday, DHS General Counsel James Percival came to UCLA School of Law for a good-faith academic discussion and was met with personal attacks, repeated interruptions, and organized disruption that prevented him from speaking," UCLA FedSoc chapter president Matthew Weinberg told Fox News Digital.
"As President of the UCLA Law Federalist Society and the event organizer, I saw students who came to hear and question a senior federal official denied that opportunity. If this is what it looks like for conservative law students trying to host a speaker at an American law school in 2026, we are not staying silent about it."
After the event was announced, left-wing campus groups circulated posts and online petitions containing rhetoric described as "threatening." One of those radical leftist groups was By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), which on its website calls for a "militant new civil rights and immigrant rights movement," posted a flyer on Instagram promoting a picketing event outside the law school.
A "trans woman" murderer kept in a woman's prison has -- you'll never guess, even if I give you 1000 guesses -- sexually assaulted an actual woman.
SO CLOSE TO PRIDE MONTH? SO CLOSE TO PRIDE MONTH?!
The twist here is that the Scottish Supreme Court has ruled that "woman" means -- and see if you can follow this twisty logic -- "woman," so a woman's prison is therefore reserved for actual women. But a trans groups is suing the prison to keep it from obeying the law, and for some reason, the prison continues keeping violent male murderers (and now sexual assaulters) penned in with the women.
J.K. Rowling
@jk_rowling
The Scottish government is responsible for this sexual assault. The Supreme Court has confirmed women's right to single sex spaces, a ruling the SNP continues to flout. If the victim wishes to sue, https://jkrwf.org can assist with all costs.
This is Rose Inessa-Ethington (aka Eric Ethington), a man pretending to be a woman. He allegedly kidnapped his 10-year-old son in an attempt to get him g*nital mutilation surgery in Cuba.
Eric reportedly stole the child from his mother under the guise of a camping trip.
Interesting way to report on a Muslim terrorist charging into the Israeli embassy saying he is ready to blow them up for Allah: The BBC chooses to report on his complaints about the tough boat ride he had coming over to infiltrate the country. Poor man!
For context, Abdullah Albadri, armed with two knives and carrying a “martyrdom note,” tried to storm the Israeli embassy in London, told police he wanted to die “for the glory of God,” and was then charged with preparing a terrorist attack. pic.twitter.com/RkzhE6hQo1
0 AP stories on this attack in NYC 0 PBS stories on this attack in NYC 0 NYT stories on this attack in NYC 0 NPR stories on this attack in NYC 0 WSJ stories on this attack in NYC 0 BBC stories on this attack in NYC 0 CNN stories on this attack in NYC 0 WaPo stories on this attack… pic.twitter.com/8cJLtwn5kw
Reverse the races, of course, and you have a national story the Democrat Media Complex promotes for the next three election cycles, despite that being a relatively rare form of crime.
Louisiana Governor SLAMS failed parents and soft-on-crime progressive policies which allow for deranged violent criminals to freely roam our streets following a mass shooting at a mall which left one dead and multiple others injured pic.twitter.com/LAmI9p6OC9
Gavin McInnes: The Organizer of "United the (Fake) Right" Paid by the SPLC Would Not Stop Beggint Me to Attend His SPLC-Funded Anti-Right Op
—Disinformation Expert Ace
So it was all an op from the beginning: The guy paid by the SPLC -- who was also, get this, a CNN "reporter" (!!!) -- tried to draw in as many people on the right as possible so they would all get smeared as racists when the "They Will Not Replace Us!" tik-torch operatives made their surprise, but planned, appearance.
In the early 1990s, I was the opinion pages editor of the Oceanside Blade-Citizen in San Diego County. We were a 30,000 circulation daily serving Oceanside, Carlsbad, Vista and Encinitas. At that time, California and a few other states were pioneering new laws that required financial institutions to share with customers the files they kept on us - and to provide a process for challenging inaccurate information.
The editorial board - publisher Tom Missett, managing editor Rusty Harris, and myself - were in favor of this development, and wrote a series of editorials in support of it. Then we went a step further, and in another editorial argued that political and activist organizations that keep files on American citizens should also have to disclose those files on request, and have a process whereby inaccurate information could be challenged.
We had in mind everyone from the National Rifle Association to the ACLU - the sorts of nonprofit advocacy groups that tend to monitor what their perceived opponents write and say in public.
But it was only the Southern Poverty Law Center we heard from.
I have no idea how they knew a mid-size daily in Southern California had written an editorial in favor of transparency and accountability, but they weren't happy. Maybe a reader who disagreed with our position forwarded it to SPLC headquarters halfway across the country, maybe a newspaper near them picked it up off the wire and ran it - it didn't matter.
What mattered was that someone from the SPLC called Rusty and warned that this was a dangerous idea. That this would make it more difficult and expensive for them to track white supremacists and racists.
Rusty, in his quiet Texas drawl, pointed out that being falsely accused of espousing such views could be devastating to the person so accused - and that surely no reasonable person could oppose allowing people to clear their name?
Well, that never happens, they told him.
Rusty then suggested they submit a commentary in response to our editorial, and said he's make sure it ran.
No, he was told. That isn't good enough. They wanted a retraction of our editorial!
Rusty patiently explained that we'd already given this quite a bit of thought, and we stood by our position.
Then things turned ugly. It would be unfortunate, the SPLC rep told Rusty, if the SPLC had to add a newspaper of all things to their hate watch list! That they would name our editorial board members as well, let the world know that we supported hate!
It's a Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organization.
The SPLC deleted all reports of anti-white racist hate-crimes.
At least 2,000 educators around the country reported racist slurs and other derogatory language leveled against white students in the first days after Donald Trump was elected president. But the group that surveyed the teachers didn't publish the results in its report on Trump-related "hate crimes."
The Southern Poverty Law Center partnered with the American Federation of Teachers, which formally endorsed Hillary Clinton, to circulate the questionnaire among its 1.6 million mostly Democratic members. The survey was sent out to K-12 teachers and administrators who subscribe to its "Teaching Tolerance" newsletter.
The SPLC's widely cited report -- "The Trump Effect: The Impact of the 2016 Presidential Election on Our Nation's Schools" -- reported that 40 percent of the more than 10,000 educators who responded to the survey "have heard derogatory language directed at students of color, Muslims, immigrants and people based on gender or sexual orientation."
The takeaway was that Trump-supporting white kids have been harassing minorities at the nation's schools. And SPLC's schools report, along with a broader report on alleged Trump-inspired hate crimes -- "Ten Days After: Harassment and Intimidation in the Aftermath of the Election" -- sparked breathless coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post and other major media.
The reports also triggered a statement Friday from the US Commission on Civil Rights, which expressed "deep concern" that "prejudice has reared its ugly head in public elementary and secondary schools." The panel called for more federal funding to prosecute "hate crimes."
But the SPLC didn't present the whole story. The Montgomery, Ala.-based nonprofit self-censored results from a key question it asked educators -- whether they agree or disagree with the following statement: "I have heard derogatory language or slurs about white students."
Asked last week to provide the data, SPLC initially said it was having a hard time getting the information "from the researchers." Pressed, SPLC spokeswoman Kirsten Bokenkamp finally revealed that "about 20 percent answered affirmatively to that question."
Bokenkamp did not provide an explanation for the absence of such a substantial metric -- at least 2,000 bias-related incidents against white students -- from the report, which focuses instead on "anti-immigrant sentiment," "anti-Muslim sentiment" and "slurs about students of color" related to the election.
"They left that result out because it would not fit their ideological narrative," former Education Department civil rights attorney Hans Bader said. "It was deemed an inconvenient truth."
Flashback: Biden partnered with the SPLC to "enforce civil rights law." You know, anyone acting as an agent of the state is restricted by all the laws and rules that cops are bound by, right? Did you remember that, Biden and SPLC? I bet that slipped your mind.
— Tired_of_all_the_bullcrap_99 (@DontBeStupid999) April 23, 2026
It’s very strange to be that after all these years of doxxing J6 protesters, we still don’t know the identities of these guys. pic.twitter.com/c2Hb932fku
As you know, most of the media is lying about what the indictment charges, and then omitting a link to the indictment so that readers can't check up on them:
Robby Soave
@robbysoave
I'm always flummoxed when mainstream news sources describe a lawsuit, indictment, or pertinent document without actually linking to it. The SPLC indictment isn't linked in New York Times, AP, BBC, The Guardian, or any of first 10 sources I checked. Just have to take their word for it.
But CBS, at least, delivered an accurate statement of the charges. Though they then did spend much more time airing the spin from the SPLC and a liberal "expert" poo-pooing it.
Baby steps, though.
Bombshell CBS News segment on the Southern Poverty Law Center indictment where the SPLC lied to donors, paid violent extremists millions, and “manufactured racism” for its own purposes
“The SPLC was not dismantling these groups. It was instead manufacturing the extremism it… pic.twitter.com/KpQFzWdvzN
Buzzfeed: "Secret" Signs (and Stuff We Just Imagined In Our SSRI-Drenched Pea-Brains) That a Woman Might be a Far Right Extremist
—Disinformation Expert Ace
I think the most obvious indicators are that her hair is a natural color, that she doesn't have a 56-year-old male news editor's busted hairline from being high to the gills on SSRIs, and doesn't have more metal in her face than Pinhead -- excuse me, "The Hell Priest."
But Buzzfeed asked its experts -- its underemployed ill-educated idiot readers, I mean -- to provide less subtle clues and here's what the Damaged Brain Trust came up with.
We recently asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to share subtle signs that a woman is right-wing (because a lot of people had thoughts about how to tell if men are secretly Republicans). Here's what they shared:
1. "Women who are conservative tend to be cagey about answering how they voted, or say they are 'not very political' and feign being moderate. (Honestly, all conservative folks can have a tendency to do this if they think their honest answer won't be well received.)"
--Anonymous, 40, Non-binary, Texas
I mean yes, because all conservatives, male and female, know that you are psychotic basket-cases who will have possibly-violent meltdowns in public if you hear that someone doesn't support your Manson Cult Satanic Religion.
Well-spotted. One point to Slytherin for successfully noticing the most obvious thing in the world.
2. "One sign is when women make excuses for bad male behavior or still support public figures who have allegations of abuse or right-wing ideals. I think right-wing women are really just pick-mes that grew up in and still live around a predominantly right-wing community. I think of it more like Stockholm Syndrome when a woman is really hardcore MAGA. They are more likely to choose not to see or acknowledge negative traits in the men in their lives because narratives of 'women are crazy' or 'make things up' are just the norm."
--Anonymous, 29, Woman, Salt Lake City, Utah
Yes, only a small number of drug-addicted lesbians are Republican.
3. "If a woman doesn't like the Barbie movie or Taylor Swift, ask why. Usually, that will give you your answer. It's OK to have different tastes, but if the reason you don't like them is specifically that they are overtly feminist or for women and girls, then we have a problem."
--Anonymous, 29, Woman, Salt Lake City Utah
Glad to see that left-wing women continue focusing on what really matters, Taylor Swift, the Barbie movie, and other Regime-approved celebrity twaddle to fill their empty heads with.
4. "A sign a woman is right-wing is when you joke about or even just mention some current internet claim about a falsity propounded by hardline far-righters, and she goes quiet or says, 'I don't want to talk about that now.' Evading a potentially unpleasant conversation to keep fake social propriety is a society-supported female role, and she might not want to shift the current balance to defend far-right opinions and escalate."
--Anonymous, 70s, Female, Midwest
Yes, this has already been covered, but when a stranger begins babbling about her Cult Doctrine and daring us to dispute the Wisdom of Satan, many of us don't feel like dealing with you insane bitches so we say "Yeah, listen, we'd love to stand around and chat, but we've gotta... sit down in the lobby and wait for the limo". (Know the reference?)
5. "One indicator is what's on her dating profile. If she lists her religion but not political views, or makes an apathetic 'not political' nonsense claim, that's usually a sign."
--Anonymous, 41, Male, United States
Yes again, you have successfully noticed that given that media and social media (and government bureaucracies) are all captured by leftwing lunatics, we are forced to hide like... well, I won't say like who. Let's just say we know better than to publicly identify ourselves.
A couple of ones saying that you can tell a Republican woman because she knows that women aren't men and men aren't women:
6. "I think one subtle sign of a Republican woman is hyper-criticism of nontraditional gender roles. I was watching a show with a woman, and she immediately started going off about a person we saw on TV at a bar. The person on the TV show had short hair but feminine facial features and a masculine clothing style. The woman I was sitting next to started saying, 'I don't know what 'that' is.' I did not find out this person's political stance, but I think criticizing someone's appearance because they do not fit into binary categories is a red flag. The woman felt the need to declare this even though no one asked for her opinion."
--Anonymous, 33, Female, DC
7. "Sometimes a sign is if she says she loves 'masculine men.'"
--Anonymous, 48, Male, Texas
I don't think this Anonymous Male has been accused of being a masculine man.
8. "An indicator is if they have strong feelings of support for Johnny Depp during and after the Amber Heard trial."
--Anonymous, 35, Female, Australia
Yes because he was innocent and the victim of defamation and a jury found this to be the case. Republican women do, in fact, believe in facts, not just ideological communist imperatives that they bend reality to comport with.
9. "When they refuse to see gender as part of any experience of harm that you recount to them, that's a clue."
--Anonymous, 32, Colorado
No comment. Because I don't really know what this means, except that I suspect it's a "gender"-obsessive transgender who gets mad when perfect strangers don't want to hear hour-long screeds about them's thoughts about what "gender" is and isn't.
10. "Women who say, 'I don't follow politics, I just vote for whoever my husband (or father) tells me to vote for' are probably voting Republican."
--Anonymous, 67, Female, Arkansas, USA
Yes this didn't happen. This is what your ideological conditioning tells you happens, and then you get outraged by these Phantoms you have made up.
11. "If she uses the terms 'both sides' or 'meeting in the middle' or 'reaching across the aisle,' then she might be right-wing."
--Anonymous, 55, Female, Minnesota
Yes, Republican women tend to even-handed and view the specific facts and parties in a controversy rather than just Going Tribal and insisting that one side is 100% right because of Race Gender and Sexuaiity.
14. "One sign is if she judges another woman for how many relationships she's been in or if she has casual sex. Just mind your own business."
--Anonymous, 24, Female, Chicago
Yes, Republican women are less likely to be Scabcrotch Dirthookers and, in cases where a Republican woman has accumulated a bodycount larger than she's comfortable with, she has the good sense to keep that detail quiet and not tell the world what a filthy degenerate slambeast she used to be.
And by the way: You also judge women by their whorishness, or else this wouldn't be a concern to you.
15. "Women who put 'moderate' on their dating profiles are a red flag. I think anyone who labels themselves moderate in these times is doing that because they're aware of how being a conservative can be perceived these days."
--Anonymous, 26, Male, Chicago, Illinois
Once again: Anyone who isn't a rabid and shrieking Gay Race Communist must be a Republican. Anyone who doesn't fully embrace the Great Gay Race Communist Cause is a subversive and traitor and wrecker. Not giving a shit about your stupid cult makes them an enemy of your stupid cult.
18. "One indicator is if she pressures other women into motherhood."
--Anonymous, 30, Female, NYC
How does that happen, exactly? You don't mean she "pressures" you into motherhood, you mean merely that she talks about her own children and that makes you feel bad for having a womb filled with the ghosts of aborted babies.
It's a "microaggression" for a mother to speak of her children. Meanwhile, if you come within 100 yards of the, you have to hear all about their designer sexuality and bespoke pronouns.
19. "One clue is if she says she's independent and won't tell you who she voted for."
--Anonymous, 64, Female, Atlanta, GA, United States
This is the sixth repetition of the exact same point. Does Buzzfeed have editors?
I retract the question. Of course Buzzfeed has no editors. Fucking NBC and CNN and the NYT don't have editors, why would Buzzfeed?
20. "If she calls non-straight sexual orientations a 'lifestyle,' that's a big sign."
--Anonymous, 69, Female, Lancaster, PA
Is this now some kind of slur now too, dummy? What should it be called? A "life-fact"?
Here are some more signs. Republican women don't do this:
Also, because Republican women tend to have families, friend-groups, and support networks, they are not forced to live the entirety of their empty lives on social media, constantly posting pictures to assure the world -- and themselves -- of how fabulously they're doing:
This is from Sheryl’s farewell post on LinkedIn. All these employees were living in a fantasy world, thriving on taxpayer money with no accountability. https://t.co/4w3PRc2fVnpic.twitter.com/S0bWdlATBz
Also, Republican women tend to have real jobs, from motherhood to labor that produces value in the economy, and do not have (nor need) fake "email jobs" created by the Democrat Party to provide them with an unearned salary and false sense of "independence:"
Not just nonprofits. Every large corporation contains multiple departments that exist, functionally, as adult daycare centers for young single women to pretend they’re working. Much of this phenomenon is downstream from the Civil Rights Act & the HR+DEI superstructure it spawned. https://t.co/LJIQgNyt1e
Tucker Carlson Is Scraping and Clawing and Suing His Sister to Claim a $2,414 Monthly Payment from the Swanson Family Fortune His Sister Says He's Not Even Entitled To?
—Disinformation Expert Ace
I've linked Malcolm and Simone from Based Camp before. Commenters said "who are those lefties with the huge Power Spectacles" and yeah, they do look like total lefties, but they are deeply #Based.
Anyway, discussing Tucker Carlson, Malcolm said that he didn't really believe the take that "Tucker is independently wealthy due to his family fortune and hence is not bribable by Qatar" because he's not actually an heir to that fortune. One can be part of a family without being an heir to the rich members of that family.
Not that he was saying Tucker Carlson was being bribed by Qatar -- just that he doesn't have the big pile of money people assume he does, which would make him un-bribable.
Based on this article from the Daily Mail sent by beckster: Tucker is only getting $2,144 per month, and he has to lodge lawsuits just to get that much. So he doesn't seem to even have enough Podcast Money to just tell his sister, "Take the $2,144 per month, I need it not."
Chances are Tucker Carlson didn't eat many TV dinners growing up.
He's also not missing many meals now. He's a Hungry Man Sirloin Steak Dinner with Brownie 4.
Yeah I'm rating dudes now too, who cares, half of you say I'm gay despite me being so straight I singe quim at 40 paces.
But according to the sister he barely acknowledges, he now wants more than his share.
The multi-millionaire former Fox News host is embroiled in a bitter he-says-she-says battle with his heiress stepsister Dr Roberta 'Bo' Hunt, over the Swanson TV dinner family fortune she claims he is not entitled to, the Daily Mail can exclusively reveal.
Tucker insists he doesn't want the money, yet his name appears in court documents demanding $2,414 a month.
Is it that bad, Tuq'r? You have to fight a woman for rent money?
Hunt is the only biological child of Patricia Swanson Carlson, heiress to the Swanson frozen food firm famed for its iconic foil-wrapped dinners of the 1950s. Patricia adopted Tucker and his brother Buckley in 1979.
When the Daily Mail asked him about the stepsister he grew up with, Tucker claimed: 'I don't know who this person is really.'
But we clearly touched a nerve. 'She's bonkers,' claimed the 56-year-old former Fox News host, denying any knowledge of the legal wrangling.
For her part, Hunt, 61, a Georgia-based college professor, decided to step out of the shadows armed with a trove of family photos, financial records, and a legal complaint stating Tucker has been wrongfully receiving their late mother's inheritance.
'I'm not saying I hate him or that he's a bad person,' Hunt told the Daily Mail in an exclusive interview. 'I just want him to do what he knows is the right thing.'
Hunt's lawsuit against the TV star boils down to a sibling squabble over less than $2,500 per month, marking an ignominious decline for the Swanson family, once revered in Nebraska for their success and philanthropy.
Hunt claimed in a 2024 legal complaint that Tucker and his brother Buckley have improperly received a total of $21,727 each from her mother's trust since she died in 2023, arguing that the document written by her grandfather says the money should only go to blood descendants of the Swanson line, not adoptees.
It's possible that Tucker signed the documents because his ne'er-do-well, ne're-employed idiot Nazi brother needs the money.
Tuq'r keeps saying the doesn't talk to this woman, which is odd, because the questions seem to be whether he filed a legal motion to take $2,414 per month from her, not whether he talks to her or not.
...
The Swansons' holdings were estimated to be in excess of $100 million at the time, almost a billion dollars in today's money, after the sale of their food business to Campbell's Soup Company.
...
So when 18-year-old daughter Patricia announced to her father that she had secretly married beau Howard Feldman, Gilbert felt the need to scramble to protect the family legacy.
He demanded his daughter sign over control of her inheritance to the family lawyers, then set up a trust that stipulated Swanson riches could only pass to grandchildren 'born in lawful wedlock', according to Hunt's 2024 lawsuit.
The Carlson brothers' entry to the Swanson family was a little more turbulent than 'lawful wedlock'.
After majoring in architecture at UC Berkeley, Lombardi met and married Tucker's father, TV newsman Dick Carlson, and moved to Los Angeles, where she had the two boys.
...
According to Dick's divorce filings, Lombardi also fell into 'alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine abuse' that 'left her incapable of properly caring' for the children.
Tucker put it succinctly in his father's obituary: 'His wife departed for Europe and didn't return.'
So, Tuq'r's mom was a bohemian pot-head who fucked off to Europe, abandoning them, and then, long story short, Tuq'r's father had an affair Patricia Swanson, then married to another man. Later they married and Patricia adopted the Nepo Babies Tuq'r and Buckley, but the grandfather apparently didn't want them included in the family's trust.
Once ensconced in La Jolla, the Carlson pad became the venue for high society dinner parties where future California Governor Pete Wilson and author Theodore Geisel -- aka Dr Seuss -- were regulars.
Two streets away lived Patricia, married by then to architect George Hunt, and their teenage daughter, Roberta.
...
But Hunt says her father left her mother after she and Tucker's dad began an affair.
Dick moved in with his two sons around 1977, leaving Hunt feeling like 'an afterthought' in the family throughout her teenage years. Patricia adopted the Carlson boys in 1979.
'It was all about Dick Carlson and his boys,' Hunt, a Georgia Military College professor, said. 'Whenever anything would go wrong, I was always the one who got in trouble.'
...
Asked by the Daily Mail whether he grew up living in the same home as Hunt, Tucker took on an indignant tone, characteristic of his expressive on-screen persona, and replied: 'No!'
'I've had no contact with this person in more than 30 years,' he added, claiming he last saw her 'in the 1980s', and that 'I don't know who this person is really.'
Yeah but are you filling motions to grab that $2,414 or not? That's the question. No one cares whether you're friendly with your adopted half-sister. That's not the story here.
This is just Tuq'r's usual dishonesty and evasiveness.
And evidence does shoe them together sixteen years ago:
[R]ecent pictures show Hunt and her children dining with Tucker and his family at an Easter brunch in Washington, DC, around 2008 and hanging out with Tucker's wife at his home around 2010....
'I don't know why he would lie about it,' Hunt said.
Because lying is a drug that Tuq'r got addicted to long ago. Like he got addicted to booze and, I'll warrant, drugs.
...
Hunt claimed that on one occasion in the years before her mother's death, Patricia and Buckley asked her and her cousins to sign papers that would confirm the inclusion of the Carlsons in the Swanson grandchildren's trusts.
She alleges a trust established by her grandfather specifically bans inheritance by anyone other than blood relatives, excluding adopted family members.
And she makes it clear the lawsuit is personal, pointing out that the Carlsons never knew her grandfather, the source of the disputed legacy, while to her, he was 'Big Poppa'.
...
Tucker claims he has had nothing to do with the trust or the court case.
'I have never taken a dollar of the money,' he said. 'I'm not involved in any way. I have never responded to anything.'
But filings from 2025, submitted on his behalf without a lawyer, acknowledged it is 'true' he received thousands a month from the trust.
Later filings say he and his brother hired attorneys who are taking the case to trial in August.
So again, this doesn't prove he's being paid off -- but it does disprove the claim that he is so rich due to his dad marrying into the Swanson fortune that he would never be tempted to take money from a foreign power or play to the algorithm to boost his ratings.
Below: Tuq'r is angry at Trump for focusing all of his attention on Israel.
Oh and look who just woke up: Longtime defender of the Woke Reich, who has repeatedly chastised people for "dividing the right" by counterattacking the nasty leftwing cunts who have been attacking us for years, finally admits that maybe, just maybe, some of the extremists of the Fake Right are actually operatives for the left sent (and maybe paid) to divide us.
So NOW Matt Walsh is admitting some "conservatives" on "the right" may not have actually been on "The Right" at all and might have been a part of an op?
Interesting. Because when many of us tried to point this out to him, we were told "NO ENEMIES TO THE RIGHT" from Walsh.… pic.twitter.com/FfwaFM1hJp
Nick Fuentes just happened to be at the SPLC organized "Unite the (Fed) Right" rally in Charlotesville --but say it's a fed op to suggest that maybe he was in on the op.
Nicholas J. Fuentes
@NickJFuentes
Apr 23
The new line that I worked with the SPLC is the laziest fed-jacketing narrative yet.
I was 18 when I went to Charlottesville.
The SPLC doxed my house in 2022 which led to me almost getting murdered, got me censored, doxed my interns and got friends of mine fired from their jobs
Bonus: The left is suddenly very, very worried that a small number of partisans controlling the media could -- if you can believe this -- use their media power to influence public opinion.
It’s fascinating to watch Democrats like Cory Booker suddenly become very concerned about who controls the media and the influence that it can have on the public.
"If you can control the news that people can see, you can control the opinions that people form."
Sickening: "Teen" Demands Girl Date Him, Then Bodyslams Her and Stomps Her Head Into the Concrete When She Refuses
—Disinformation Expert Ace
There was a guy who used to appear on Ethan Van Sciver's livestreams, a British guy named "Captain Chokeout." Not his real name, I don't think.
Captain Chokeout said that he had been sent to prison for a serious charge, either attempted murder or assault with a deadly weapon. Because he had been a bit of a soccer hooligan, if I remember right, and had gotten into a fight and kicked a guy in the head when he was on the ground.
And in the UK, he explained, a kick to the head of a downed opponent was considered attempted murder. (Or maybe "assault with a deadly weapon," the kick being the deadly weapon in this situation.)
I say that just to emphasize that a kick to the head of an opponent on the ground. We don't have this rule in the US, I don't think, but other countries do consider it attempted murder. It's a serious attack that can kill someone.
Meanwhile, in the US, since George Floyd killed himself by being 320 pounds and a drug addict, blue cities have created a de facto rule that black thugs are allowed to take "Street Reparations" on whites who "disrespect" them with no consequences or minimal consequences. By "Street Reparations," I mean an unconstitiution and incivil scheme permitting some favored members of the Democrat coalition of criminals and pirates to attack and beat someone from an unfavored group according to how much he believes he's entitled to fist-and-kick unofficial-but-approved "reparations" against another race at that moment.
Remember Trayvon Martin, repeatedly smashing George Zimmerman's head into the concrete --- attempted murder -- because Zimmerman dared to exercise the usual, lawful functions of a neighborhood watch? And the entire left insisted he was justified in this attempted murder, and that George Zimmerman should have allowed himself to be killed rather than shooting the young thug?
Sickening video shows NYC teen stomp on girl's head-- after she refused to give him her number
The post doesn't specify the races of the perp and victim. I will: It's a black thug demanding a white girl give him her phone number (and give him "respect" as a thug-harasser) and then violently attacking her when she attempts to flee.
Disgusting video shows a teen slamming a girl to the ground and stomping on her head after she refused to give him her phone number, according to police and sources.
"According to police?" It's on video.
Video circulating on social media shows the 14-year-old brute confronting the 15-year-old girl on the corner of East 107th Street and 3rd Avenue in East Harlem around 3:30 p.m. Monday after school got out.
The 14-year-old Gentle Giant is a full head taller than the little girl he bodyslammed and attempted to kill.
And why did he think he was entitled to do this? Because the Gay Race Communist left told him he was entitled to do this.
But I hear he's really been "trying to turn his live around" since the attempted murder two days ago. He's thinking about becoming a rapper and applying to CUNY.
"I'll knock the s--t out of you right now," the bully says as he blocks the girl's path in the crosswalk, while one of his pals eggs him on to "Do it!"
It's just terrific that this wasn't a single lunatic, but a pack of murderers all cheering on the head-stomping of an innocent girl they never met.
"You stand right here," he orders her, pointing at the ground at his feet.
She tries to go around him but he puts an arm out and pushes her back, the tense clip shows.
"Get the f--k away from me, p--y," she tells him, turning around and walking away.
The masked goon then grabs her from behind, picks her up in the air and slams her into the pavement, according to the video.
While she lies on the ground helplessly in pain, he stomps on her head and walks away.
The girl suffered a concussion and was taken by EMS to Harlem Hospital in stable condition, police and sources said.
He was arrested. By the way, he was wearing a mask, of course, a pernicious thing the left has allowed precisely to allow criminals to kill people and then get away with it.
This occurred in Soros DA Alvin Bragg's Manhattan-- do you think he's going to throw the book at this thug and the monsters who cheered on the murder of an innocent white girl because she wouldn't fuck them?
Whoops -- Twitter seems to be censoring this video. I wonder why.
If you click through to the NY Post article, you can still see, I trust, the original TikTok video of the attempted murder of a little girl.
Update: The X video plays and the NYPost does play the video (after an ad). They didn't work for me for a minute -- it might just be that I have 100 tabs open and my computer is glitching.
Woke judge sentences man who throttled toddler to just six months in jail because he is of indigenous heritage and suffered 'negative consequences of COLONIZATION'
A Canadian man was sentenced to just six months in prison after being caught on camera throttling his stepson, after a judge ruled his indigenous heritage was a mitigating factor.
British Columbia Provincial Judge Tamera Golinsky made her decision on April 7 after the man, who was listed under the initials KJM, pleaded guilty to one count of assault by choking and one count of assault.
The defendant's name was not listed due to a publication ban to protect the victim's identity, reported CP24.
The 33-year-old choked and kicked his girlfriend's child on two occasions while on a 'cocaine come down' on two days in June 2025.
In the sentencing document, Golinsky referred to KJM's indigenous heritage multiple times, despite noting that the violence could have 'an inevitable and long-term impact' on the child, reported CTV News.
However, Golinsky took into consideration that while KJM was not raised in a 'traditional upbringing,' he is of First Nations descent through his mother.
Oh, he's half First Nations. That must explain why he's spending any time in jail at all.
The judge has no evidence whatsoever that he has been discriminated against -- and admits it.
But he asserts it's just and right to assume "oppression."
'While I acknowledge that there is no evidence that he or his immediate family were impacted by state actions such as residential schools, even the disassociation with one's past and cultural heritage is a negative consequence of colonization,' Golinsky wrote in her decision.
A cohort of resistance-minded House Democrats is pushing their colleagues to begin building the case against President Trump now in anticipation of a Day 1 impeachment vote if they retake the House.
Why it matters: The mere existence of this movement demonstrates just how much pressure lawmakers who have not yet gotten on board with impeachment will face in January of 2027.
"This is something that I keep saying to our leadership ... we need to have a very concrete, coordinated strategy," Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) told Axios.
The Illinois Democrat said the party should "build up the case so that when we are in power in January, we've created the conditions ... we've done the fact-checking, we've done the shadow hearings, everything we need to be able to to impeach [Trump]."
Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) told Axios that if Democrats recapture the House "the push for impeachment is going to be overwhelming."
Driving the news: A Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll released Tuesday found that 55% of U.S. adults surveyed said the House should vote to impeach Trump, while just 37% oppose it.
"That net +18 verdict," Strength In Numbers author G. Elliott Morris wrote, "puts Trump in the neighborhood of the numbers Richard Nixon saw at the peak of the Watergate scandal in August 1974."
Sure. Axios, of course, which covers up for Democrats like Joe Biden and Eric Swalwell, fails to note that this polling outfit has a strong Democrat bias. Google AI:
Political Context: The poll often finds results where Democrats lead on generic ballots (e.g., +6 to +8 in mid-2025/2026) and where President Trump's approval is relatively low (often in the mid-30s to low-40s).
...
Independent, But Not Necessarily "Neutral": While aiming for objective data, the analysis often highlights areas where public opinion diverges from conservative policies (e.g., high support for ACA subsidies, raising taxes on corporations). It also notes that independent voters are heavily skewed away from Republicans (-30 net rating in some reports), which informs its findings
Again: Sure.
Morris cited Axios' reporting that more than 85 House and Senate Democrats called for Trump to be impeached or removed via the 25th Amendment to the Constitution following his threat to destroy Iran's civilization earlier this month.
The big picture: In the immediate aftermath of the 2024 election, Democrats didn't even want to hear the word impeachment.
"People ridiculed me," said Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.), who was the first Democrat to introduce articles of impeachment against Trump last year.
When Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) forced a vote on impeaching Trump last June, 128 Democrats voted with Republicans to quash the effort while just 78 voted to advance it.
Things have changed drastically. When Green forced another vote to impeach Trump last December, his support went from 78 Democrats to 140.
...
Said Thanedar: "We have a case -- a very strong case -- so we should really work on it now."
Yes, but: Just because a member supports impeachment when asked -- or when forced to go on the record in a House vote -- doesn't mean they think it should be a policy priority for their party.
Yeah, this is just other Democrats attempting to tamp down talk of impeachment for fear of energizing Trump supporters. It's a lie. They will in fact impeach Trump on day one, or at the latest, by the end of month one.
This will probably benefit us. Trump's voters don't vote unless Trump himself is on the ballot, which is why we either lose or gas out in the midterms.
But Democrats just put Trump on the ballot for the midterms.
Oh Dear! NYT Cries That the DOJ Is Increasing the Rate of Denaturalizations of Dirty Terrorist and Piratical Foreigners Who Lied During Their Naturalization Process
Justice Dept. Targets Hundreds of Citizens in New Push for Denaturalization
The Trump administration is assigning denaturalization cases to regular prosecutors, which could lead to a surge of people stripped of U.S. citizenship.
The Justice Department has identified 384 foreign-born Americans whose citizenship it wants to revoke, part of a push to increase the pace of denaturalizations by assigning the cases to prosecutors in dozens of U.S. attorney's offices across the country.
Senior Justice Department officials in Washington told colleagues during a meeting last week that civil litigators in 39 regional offices would soon be assigned to file denaturalization cases against the individuals, according to an official familiar with the announcement who was not authorized to describe it on the record. Two people familiar with the plans confirmed the broader effort to ramp up denaturalizations. It was not clear what led the department to target the 384 individuals.
Is it really not clear? I notice this is a favorite tactic of the communist propaganda media, claiming they don't know what would possibly cause people to suspect Jihadi Mohammad might not be a great American citizen.
By the way, saying it's "not clear" is a very deceptive weasley construction. They know why these people are being targeted for naturalization, but say it's "not clear," which means that if it's proved later they knew the reasons, they can just say "well we didn't know all the details, which meets the requirements to say it's 'not clear.'"
Under federal law, the government may ask a court to strip the citizenship of people who obtained it fraudulently -- for instance, by entering into a sham marriage or by withholding information about their past that would have made them ineligible. Some who commit crimes may also be denaturalized. The government must present evidence to a federal judge through a civil or criminal proceeding, making the process challenging and time-consuming.
Well that seems pretty clear doesn't it?
Traditionally, experts in the department's office of immigration litigation have handled denaturalization cases. But the effort to enlist regular prosecutors to pursue these cases could lead to a surge in denaturalizations, which have been rare in recent decades. It also comes just months after Trump administration officials ordered Department of Homeland Security staffers to refer upward of 200 denaturalization cases a month to the DOJ.
Matthew Tragesser, a Justice Department spokesman, said that officials were "pursuing the highest volume of denaturalization referrals in history" from the Department of Homeland Security.
"The Department of Justice is laser focused on rooting out criminal aliens defrauding the naturalization process," he added.
Again, this all seems pretty clear to me.
So what the NYT is saying is that they don't know the exact charges for all 384 of the people being denaturalized. Hence, it's "not clear."
"Citizenship fraud is a serious crime; anyone who has broken the law and obtained citizenship through fraud and deceit will be held accountable," said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman.
The push indicates that the Trump administration aims to make good on its plan to increase the pace of denaturalizations as part of its crackdown on immigration. The move will likely scare many naturalized immigrants as the Trump administration has sought to curtail immigration across the board and spoken disdainfully about migrants from certain countries.
"The message it sends is that naturalized citizens don't have the same rights and stability as native-born citizens," said Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia. "The government has used this power in the past to target people it views as political opponents."
They don't, because foreigners granted citizenship through naturalization can be denaturalized if they have been found to lie in their paperwork. Natural born American citizens cannot be so denaturalized (though if they could be, I've got a little list). Hence they do not have the "same rights and stability."
And these are not "political opponents," these are fraudsters, pirates, plunderers, and terrorists. They are enemies of the vast majority of Americans -- which makes them, naturally, key allies of the communist, civilization-razing left.
Let me repeat a joke from yesterday: The New York Times is like Freddy Mercury came all over Richard Gere's gerbil and they pumped Rod Stewart's stomach and found the lining was made up 100% of cum-cells.
Eric Schmitt
@Eric_Schmitt
We must be unapologetic about this: denaturalization is a constitutional, long-established tool for stripping citizenship from people who should've never received it
Citizenship is more than paperwork
We should expand denaturalizations. It's why I've filed the SCAM Act
MORNING RANT: The Virginia Redistricting Vote, Arlington & Alexandria Retrocession, and DC Statehood
—Buck Throckmorton
As anyone who reads political blogs knows, voters in Virginia just approved* a redistricting plan that is designed to change its 11-person congressional delegation from a 6/5 Democrat/Republican split to a new map with a 10/1 split. This is being done by carving up the very blue Washington DC suburbs and attaching those hard-left voters to rural red counties. Fairfax County alone will be part of five different congressional districts. (*As Ace has documented, the redistricting election is facing challenges in Virginia courts.)
There has been much chatter since the election about having President Trump punch back by contesting the 19th century retrocession of Arlington and Alexandria from Washington DC to Virginia. The District was established in 1790 from land ceded by Maryland and Virginia, and was originally square in shape, straddling both shores of the Potomac River. But as Matt Margolis explains in this Townhall piece, the District had abolished slavery, so in 1847 the Virginia portion was retroceded back to Virginia to protect the slaveholders in Alexandria and Arlington. Several presidents since then have challenged the constitutionality of that action, and the U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled on it.
Since Alexandria and Arlington are populated by people who are dependent on Washington, returning those counties to DC would be an overdue homecoming.
In the 2024 presidential election, Arlington and Alexandria voted for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump at a ratio of 78% to 19%, with a margin of 121,000 votes. Although that number exceeds the margin of vote difference in this week’s redistricting vote, it would not have been enough in 2024. Kamala won Virginia by 259,000 votes, receiving 52% of the ballots castcounted.
Fairfax County is the great blue whale in Virginia. Fairfax voted 66% for Kamala in 2024, and provided her a massive 209,000 vote margin. Fairfax needs to be given to DC too.
DC statehood is a generally awful idea that won’t go away, and the next time Democrats control all levers of government, they plan to stuff it down our throats, with the intention of getting two more senators. But – DC statehood could be a politically helpful thing if we could just include Arlington, Alexandria, and Fairfax in the new state, which I’ll call “WaNoVa DC” for simplicity. Throwing Loudon County and Prince William County into the new state would leave Virginia beet red.
Here is what would really be great – the two current Democrat senators from Virginia actually represent metro DC, and they could continue to do so if they run for Senate from the new state. Virginia meanwhile would suddenly get two new Republican senators. The net result of WaNoVa DC statehood in the US Senate would be two new Senators, but they’d both be Republicans, not Democrats! Virginia would also then be free to elect an overwhelmingly Republican congressional delegation too, rather than being shut out as was voted for this past week.
At a bare minimum, simply returning Alexandria and Arlington to DC would make Virginia a purplish state rather than a blue state. Retrocession is a legitimate option that Republicans need to push. It also needs to be a poison pill inserted into any discussion of DC statehood.
The media will not stop trying to spin economic news as being bad for President Trump, but the simple fact is that his effort to re-shore American industry is proving wildly successful. The explosive industrial growth in the U.S. and the cheap natural gas to fuel it have put us in a position for a period of remarkable economic growth and job creation.
This piece is not behind a paywall. I’d be honored if you’d give it a read.
My latest piece at The American Spectator has been published, “Under the Radar of the ‘Doomcasting’ Media, There Is Massive Industrial Investment Occurring in the U.S.”https://t.co/TA9JRhuQL3
Good morning kids, In yesterday's editorial, I took the good people of Virginia to task for allowing the abject abomination of Abigail Spanberger's and her coven of Democrats' naked power grab gerrymandering bill to pass. I perhaps wrongly stated that their apathy or absence at the polls was a primary reason that this happened. Commenter "Washington Nearsider" who I assume used on his handle is more in tune with the goings on in Virginia than I am, and objected to my assessment by pointing out:
Rural Virginians voted in higher numbers than in the 2024 presidential election. We all knew what was at stake.
And so with that, I apologize to the good folk of the Old Dominion for doing their part. So if turnout, or my presumed lack thereof, wasn't the reason this passed, then how did it happen? Yes, the state and national GOP were and are useless both before and during election season as well as once in office in advancing the American agenda. So what happened here? Did the Democrats steal this one? and/or is there something else that accounts for this abomination that we're missing? Given what's at stake going forward to the midterms and beyond, we better get a handle on this, not that the aforementioned Grifting Oleaginous Parasite party will or even has the desire to, so there it is.
As noted yesterday, this insanity is already in the courts and no doubt will ultimately wind up at the SCOTUS, which given the unpredictability of the court, that is the unpredictability primarily of non-overtly Marxist fraud hacks in black, allegedly conservative justices, the superstar Clarence Thomas for sure notwithstanding and maybe Samuel Alito as well. Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Coney Barrett and Roberts are reliably unreliable at best.
During the national debates of 1788, the great Virginian James Madison worried that mere “parchment barriers,” or constitutions, wouldn’t be enough to stop an “overbearing majority” from seeking power and stripping minorities of their voice and rights.
What he envisioned, in other words, was someone like Abigail Spanberger.
Virginia’s current governor recently signed a bill making her state the 18th to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a scheme to circumvent the Constitution and award all electoral votes to the presidential ticket with the highest national vote total — rather than to the candidate who won the state’s election. . .
. . . Democrats have also convinced half the country that the Electoral College’s undercutting of the popular vote is an antiquated quirk of the Constitution. . .
. . . Anyway, we are inching closer to a true constitutional crisis. The member states of the compact don’t have to send their votes to the “popular vote” winner until the coalition reaches an Electoral College majority of 270. . .
. . . Then again, in the end, the Constitution is only as good as the people.
And that doesn’t bode well for its survival these days.
Basta cosi. UPDATE: a few commenters have reminded me that Virginia allows MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and so that explains everything. I should've known as much, And so it goes!
Hasan Piker sparked backlash on Wednesday when he argued that Luigi Mangione allegedly killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson because he committed “social murder.”
...Piker, a Twitch streamer, said Americans “understand” why Luigi Mangione allegedly killed Thompson due to the CEO’s alleged role in “social murder.” “Friedrich Engels wrote about the concept of social murder. And Brian Thompson, as the UnitedHealthcare CEO, was engaging in a tremendous amount of social murder,” Piker claimed in an interview with the New York Times podcast The Opinions.
...On the NYT podcast Piker and a writer from the New Yorker were asked to mull on such complex questions as whether it is OK to steal and whether it is OK to murder. . .
. . .The answer to both of these questions appears to be “Yes.”
On the first question it turns out that there are certain stores which it is more moral to steal from than others. Piker and his fellow guest agreed that Whole Foods is especially OK to steal from. A small business is less OK to steal from. But listeners were never treated to an explanation of which shops might be on the borderline between being a place where you could help yourself to a five-finger-discount and those where you couldn’t.
That is because neither Piker nor the other people in the studio seemed to have a very stable set of ethics.
Well at least we've seen the last of the SPLC... Meh, I'm not holding my breath. The Berlin Wall might have fallen, but the communists are alive and well and metastasizing right here at home!
Have a great weekend!
And lastly, a quick shout-out and a huge thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.
A global hydra of tyrannies—from Caracas to Tehran to Beijing—spreads violence and narcotics abroad while its most dangerous head persists within America itself. Grappling with Hydras
The commentary followed the initial conclusion, and then extension of, a two-week ceasefire initiated by the United States against Iran to create space for talks to end the current conflict. The conflict began on February 28, when President Donald Trump announced that the Pentagon had launched Operation Epic Fury to degrade Iran’s ability to use its missile and drone arsenal against America and its allies. The operation, alongside joint Israeli attacks, resulted in the killing of dozens of senior Iranian officials, most prominently Ali Khamenei, the “supreme leader.” Iran Says Opening Strait of Hormuz Impossible, Claims to Reject Talks
“I have ordered the United States Navy to shoot and kill any boat, small boats though they may be (Their naval ships are ALL, 159 of them, at the bottom of the sea!), that is putting mines in the waters of the Strait of Hormuz. There is to be no hesitation,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. ‘Shoot And Kill’: Trump Tells Military To Target Iranian Ships Mining Strait Of Hormuz
Although President Trump is doing his best to avoid a “boots on the ground” war, it may be inevitable—but it’s also eminently winnable. The Hard Math Of War
Douglas Murray: At the height of the 2020 riots, a book was published entitled “In Defense of Looting.” At the time I asked a bookshop in New York, which was prominently displaying the work, whether I could walk out with the book without paying. I was told not. Dems’ favorite podcaster, Hasan Piker, says stealing and murder are OK
Democrats on Capitol Hill have been quick to run to the defense of the SPLC over the last decade, even while concerns regarding the leftist group’s finances mounted, ultimately culminating in an 11-count federal indictment for wire fraud, conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering, and making false statements to a financial institution. Democrats Heaped Praise On SPLC Despite Long History Of Shady Financial Dealings
Did you live a self-reliant, constructive life? Did you play by the rules, work hard, raise your kids to be productive members of society, save up, and arrive in seniority well-provisioned for your well-earned golden years? Sucker! Leftists Excited to Begin Cannibalizing the Elderly
"DACA was an example of how we can be a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws," Obama said. "And it's an example worth remembering today, when families with similar backgrounds who just want to live, work, and support their communities, are being demonized and treated as enemies." And it’s all a lie. Obama’s 'Dreamer' Fairy Tale Just Just Got Torched
This initiative could lead to a significant increase in denaturalizations, potentially stripping citizenship of many who were able to acquire citizenship by fraudulent means. The move is part of President Donald J. Trump’s promises to crack down on both illegal immigration and immigration fraud. Notably, Vice President J.D. Vance said in March that the administration thinks Somalia-born Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) “definitely committed immigration fraud” and that an investigation into possible remedies is underway. Trump DOJ Moves to Revoke Citizenship of Hundreds of Naturalized Immigrants.
NYC’s population decline underscores the city’s high cost of living. The exodus also indicates a growing intolerance towards social problems such as crime, homelessness, and drug use. Similar trends have been observed in other major cities, such as San Francisco, where rising costs of living and declining quality of life drive even longtime residents elsewhere. Almost 115,000 Residents Fled New York City in 2025.
So, how did the leftist, legacy media report on this? Reuters, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and The Guardian all make it sound like the DOJ is going after the SPLC for the simple use of paid informants...CBS found a way to frame the story as the DOJ making charges over “investigations.” That’s like saying you’re being charged with a crime because you were arrested. The investigations were not the cause or the reason for the charges. The charges are over something the SPLC did, not what law enforcement did. . . Timing wise, this is excellent. It's still early enough in the Trump administration's second term that the DOJ under Trump will likely be able to see this one through to its inevitable conclusion. One we can only hope will involve the demise of a hate-mongering, propaganda-generating, money-wielding Southern Poverty Law Center. Southern Poverty Law Center Story Sends the Legacy Media Into a Schizophrenic Fit
THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Pence said, “I give Republicans in Congress and the president a great credit for extending those tax cuts in full. I think had they not done that, had those taxes gone up while tariffs were going up, I think our economy would be would be struggling even more than it is today.” Pence: Trump’s Broad-Based Tariffs Contributing to ‘Struggling’ Economy
RED-GREENS, CLIMATE CHANGE HOAX, DEMOCRAT-LEFT WAR ON FOSSIL FUELS,
David Harsanyi: During the national debates of 1788, the great Virginian James Madison worried that mere “parchment barriers,” or constitutions, wouldn’t be enough to stop an “overbearing majority” from seeking power and stripping minorities of their voice and rights. What he envisioned, in other words, was someone like Abigail Spanberger. The Founding Fathers tried to save us from Abigail Spanberger’s greedy Virginia power grab
“The agreement requires Regeneron to repatriate increased foreign revenue on existing products that Regeneron realizes as a result of the President’s strong America First U.S. trade policies for the benefit of American patients,” the White House adds. Trump Strikes Deal with Regeneron Marking 17th Major Pharmaceutical Deal Since Fall
ACTUAL SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY
Overall, this hearing reaffirms my earlier conclusion that Isaacman’s political skills are far better than anyone expected. He is forcing Congress to shift its focus from funding pork to funding a real American space effort, and to do so in a way that will in quickly foster a vibrant American space industry, outside government. Isaacman before Congress: Speaking the truth to power
FEMINAZISM, TRANSGENDER PSYCHOSIS, HOMOSEXUALIZATION, WAR ON MASCULINITY/NORMALCY
While Pope Leo XIV affirmed the 2023 decision enacted by Pope Francis during his flight back to Rome on Thursday, he emphasized that no further changes will be made. As noted by Reuters, Pope Francis “allowed pastors to give blessings to same-sex couples informally outside of a ritual service, and on a case-by-case basis.” Pope Leo Says Church Will Not ‘Go Beyond’ Blessing of Same-Sex Couples
Julian Casablancas, the frontman of the iconic band The Strokes, ignited a firestorm on social media this week after claiming that “American Zionists” act like “they are Black people during slavery” in a controversial interview that’s now blowing up online. “Well it’s been nice having a career,” Casablancas quipped before dropping the remark during an appearance on the YouTube series “SubwayTakes,” hosted by Kareem Rahma.Coachella star targets American Jews in most outrageous comment yet: ‘Black people during slavery’
I sincerely hope that America's most dependable men's clothing company isn't about to go the way of Bud Light or Jaguar, but judging by the ad that just hit my inbox, the prognosis isn't great. Bud Light... Jaguar... Brooks Brothers?
Fewer people doesn’t mean fewer ideas—richer, better-educated workers can sustain growth, while the real data shows depopulation raises wages, eases scarcity, and defies the panic. Depopulation Fears Are Overblown
ALSO: The Morning Report cross-posts at CutJibNewsletter.com usually within an hour or so of posting here, if you want to continue the conversation all day.
You can't paint a bigger target on your back than that, really.
ANTS - the agency is really called that - wouldn't say how many people were affected by the breach, but a hacker is suddenly offering an ANTS database with 19 million records for sale, so at a guess, around 19 million.
Agents help to some degree. If you trust them with your credentials they will do a great job driving the AWS API for you (though occasionally it will delete your production DB).
I wish him luck. He is at least not a complete idiot.
Forgotten 70s Mystery Click You made me cry when you said good-bye 70s, not 50s Now that is a motherflipping intro
Podcast: Sefton and CBD wonder about the Chaos that Trump is creating in the minds of the Iranian junta, Virginia redistricting is pure power grab, Ilhan Omar is many things ...and stupid too! Amazon censoring conservative thought again, and the UK...put a fork in it!
The people in charge [Jews, of course -- ace] don't want you to know this, but Muslims love Jesus.
Islam reveres Him as a major prophet and messenger of the Lord, believes He performed miracles, and states that He will return to Earth to defeat the Antichrist. That's why Donald Trump's painting depicting himself as the Son of God offended the president of Iran. It was an attack on his religion as well as Christianity.
Trump's trolling tweet was ill-advised, but Tucker is just lying when he claims the Christianity-hating President of Iran was "offended" by this. He's one step away from announcing his official conversion to Islam. He literally never stops praising Islam. Well, he suddenly became Christian two years ago, there's not much stopping him from converting again.
You can track Tuq'r's official conversion to Islam with this Bingo card.
Podcast: CBD and Sefton talk Orban losing, but is it the end of Hungary? The Irish start a brawl, but is it enough, Pope Leo wades into politics, Trump calls Iran's bluff and blockades Hormuz, Artemis II! Swallwell is scum, and more!
People say that the bearded man in the video of Fartwell molesting a hooker looks like Democrat Arizona Senator Rueben Gallego, said to be Swalwell's "best friend" and known to take vacations with him.
Politico is reporting that multiple people have abruptly resigned from Eric Swalwell's gubernatorial campaign: "Members of senior leadership have departed the campaign, including Courtni Pugh, a strategic adviser who served as Swalwell's top liaison to organized labor groups."
So the campaign is collapsing due to the truth of the sexual harassment allegations.
That hissing sound you hear is the air going out of the Swalwell campaign. UPDATE: No it wasn't, it was just Swalwell one-cheek-sneaking out a fart on camera
Eric Swalwell more like Eric Farewell amirite
thanks to weft-cut loop.
This is the dumbest AI bullslop I've seen in a while: the CIA can use "quantum magnetometry" to track an individual man's heartbeat from twelve miles away I wouldn't click on it, it's not interesting, it's just stupid clickslop. I just want to share my annoyance with you.
Classic Rock Mystery Click This is super-obscure and I only barely remember it. Given that, I'll give you the hint that it's by the Red Rocker. And I guess you think you've got it made
Oh, but then, you never were afraid
Of anything that you've left behind
Oh, but it's alright with me now
'Cause I'll get back up somehow
And with a little luck, yes, I'm bound to win Now twenty people will tell me it's not obscure, it was huge in their hometown and played at their prom. That's how it usually goes. When I linked Donnie Iris's "Love is Like a Rock," everyone said they knew that one and that his other song (which I didn't know at all) Ah Leah! was huge in their area.
