The Morning Report — 4/19/24

—J.J. Sefton

Good morning, kids. Were it not for the fact that Israel evidently launched what it describes as "limited" yet by most reports pretty sharp retaliatory strikes on Iran – that is directly and overtly on Iranian territory by IDF assets, not merely suspected covert Mossad assassinations or sabotage – you would not know (if you weren't reading this editorial) that the braindead kohlrabi-in-chief, or his puppet-master(s) as James O'Keefe seems to have officially confirmed in his latest undercover exposé, has yet again abandoned American military personnel to their fate in yet another international hotspot that doubtless would not be so hot had the 2020 election not been stolen. This time, it's Niger. Wait, do I have to write that as Ni*er so I don't get sent to a gulag?

Ironically, when I think of Niger, I think of yellow cake. You might recall that that's a form of uranium-containing ore which supposedly the wizards of smart at Langley back during the Dubya years used as the proof that Saddam Hussein was intending to go nuclear, and thus a/the casus belli for Gulf War 2, Shock and Awe Boogaloo. Maybe if we told Joey Sponge-Brain Shits-Pants that Niger is holding Betty Crocker hostage, he'll launch a rescue mission for our trapped soldiers.

Be that as it may, the stumbling, shambling, stuttering clusterfuckery that is our foreign policy might well be shoving us down the slippery slope (sorry Xi) towards a major conflagration in the Middle East.

Israeli missiles hit at least one site in Iran, ABC News reported, citing US officials, and Iranian state media alerted citizens to explosions heard in the central part of the Islamic republic.

The attack comes after Iran rained down more than 300 drones and missiles toward the Jewish nation last Saturday — though nearly all were intercepted by Israel and its allies. Israel’s early morning retaliatory strike, however, appeared to be “limited,” a military source told Fox News. Israeli officials notified the US on Thursday that it had planned to strike Iran within 24 to 48 hours, according to Bloomberg News. 

The Biden [junta] “didn’t endorse” Israel’s response, a US official told CNN.T

he city of Isfahan – home of Iran’s Natanz nuclear research facility and a major air base – appears to have been Israel’s primary target. A scroll alerting viewers to a “loud noise” near Isfahan was displayed on Iranian state television, but provided no other information, according to the Associated Press. State television claimed that all nuclear sites in the region were “fully safe.”

Hossein Dalirian, a spokesman for Iran’s civilian space program, claimed that the explosions were the results of three quadcopter drones that had been shot down, dismissing the threat Israel’s apparent retaliation posed to Iran.  Iran’s air defense systems were activated in several provinces after the explosions first rang out, state news outlet IRNA reported, according to CNN. . .

. . . “Hearing [Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei] is having a blast today on his birthday,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) wrote on X, shortly after reports of the Israeli strike began to emerge. Khamenei, 84, was indeed born on April 19.

Maybe we can dress up a goat to resemble Marylin Monroe, replete with full burqa-witz, and get it to bleat "Happy Birthday" in a sultry manner. Or we can deliver Rashida Tlaib on a silver platter with an apple in her mouth. Same difference.

In all seriousness, the world has been destabilized, not only in the Middle East, but almost everywhere on the map as a result of the head-up-the-ass Ivy League/Kennedy School/Johns Hopkins-fueled delusions of the Foggy Bottom elites whose worldview is completely out of phase with reality and just plain old Jew-hatred that's also part and parcel of that worldview. As I implied, if elections indeed have consequences, take a good look around and consider the consequences of stolen elections.

The only thing that irks me from that report is that Israel supposedly informed the White House (boy, you talk about the term "Occupied Territories") that it was going to retaliate, and if that is true, likely the extent/nature of the retaliation. I imagine this was some sort of face-saving diplomatic gesture but the real-politik of who is a friend and enemy kind of blows this out of the water.

In any case, on the broader diplomatic front of this brewing war, the Sponge-Brain Shits-Pants banana-in-the-tailpipe junta might have totally screwed itself – and that means some good news for a change for Israel and all of us.

The United States used its veto on Thursday at the United Nations (UN) Security Council to block a Palestinian state from being declared unilaterally.

American policy has held for decades that a Palestinian state should emerge after negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Still, the Biden administration played coy until the last hours before the UN Security Council vote, with the White House dodging questions about a potential veto until the State Department announced the U.S. position earlier on Thursday. . .

. . . The U.S. tried to portray a Palestinian state as something that “Hamas and its Iranian backers” would oppose, though Hamas denounced the U.S. veto.

Israel welcomed the veto. The Israeli government had argued against Palestinian statehood, either at the UN or outside of it, arguing that recognizing a Palestinian state in the present context would reward Hamas for terror.

This comes a couple of weeks after the US stabbed Israel in the heart by not vetoing another General Assembly vote which paved the way for "Palestinian" statehood. There's either no one at the helm or Commodore Decker has sealed himself on the Enterprise bridge and is intent on ramming us down the throat of the planet killer; that cheapo model on strings that resembles a Biden ice cream cone on end.

At least, to paraphrase Gil Scot Heron, they might have "lost Detroit." But for sure, they've lost Dearborn and possibly Minneapolis. Will they have regained some (most, all) of the self-gassing idiot Jews who had initially distanced themselves in the wake of 10/7 to come back and open their checkbooks for the DNC? TBD.

So, let's take a quick gander at the state of play on the RISK board:

IRAN – is going to have to respond to this, and with the abject failure of its mass aerial assault last weekend, I would imagine there will be some sort of mass combined ground and artillery attack from Hezbollah coming from Lebanon.

ISRAEL – no doubt sees this and perhaps is preparing some sort of preemptive strike on Iranian assets up north to blunt that attack, or whatever command and control assets Iran has up there and possibly in Iran itself. Combined ops of Mossad and Sayeret Matkal, the IDF's equivalent of the SEALs/Delta Force.

The Biden-Junta-controlled USA – in order to salvage the Muslim-Marxist voting base might have to somehow intervene militarily or otherwise assist Iran to defend itself if they catch wind of what Israel is going to do. Oh boy! Talk about getting hair mussed.

In any case, this may be anecdotal but remember that there is a lot of pent up hatred of the mullahs in Iran itself:

The Iranian police reportedly arrested Iranian national volleyball team player Mobina Rostami for condemning the Iranian attack on Israel:

Iranian national volleyball team player Mobina Rostami posted on her Instagram account: “As an Iranian, I am truly ashamed of the authorities’ attack on Israel, but you need to know that the people in Iran love Israel and hate the Islamic Republic.”

She was reportedly arrested shortly afterwards. One of the comments on her post came from an account associated with Iranian security forces, stating: “We will shove you in a bag.”

“Only God knows what fate awaits her,” her friends posted on social media.

No one knows where she is right now.

Pray for her. Pray for all the truly innocent Iranian people who think like her. Pray for Israel, Judeo-Christian civilization as well as for our personnel abandoned in Ni*er.

And Joey should only choke on a big fat slice of yellow cake. How fucked is this world with Obama or whoever pulling his strings?

BIDEN: "I made it clear to the Israelis — don't move on Haifa!"

. . . Biden has tried to pressure Israel not to enter Rafah, a city in Gaza on the Egyptian border that is thought to be the location of the last Hamas battalions, and the remaining Israeli hostages.

Haifa is considered Israel’s third city, after Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. It features a large port in a natural harbor. It is also seen as an example of coexistence between Arabs and Jews, and is a headquarters for the Baha’i faith.

My latest essay is up at Taki's Magazine. Please read and comment.

Have a good weekend. And as Buck Turgidson said to Suge (not Knight) "Don't forget to say your prayers!"

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
• "In Musk’s case, the death cult resents his advances towards Mars. The cultists hate the idea that humanity might someday slip not merely the surly bonds of Earth, but the devouring bonds of their ideological control." (Hat tip to Buck Throckmorton - jjs)
  The Anti-Human Death Cult
  
• "Thank you, President Nixon, for reminding us what a strong and competent leader looks like." (The author goes to great lengths to put Nixon in the most positive light and glosses over the consequences of his major failings. You be the judge - jjs)
  Remembering Nixon’s Legacy 30 Years After His Death
  
• "Historically speaking, he’s even a bigger deal than you may think."
  The Remarkable Uniqueness of Donald Trump
  
• Fentanyl isn't the scourge. 60-plus years of the Leftist's intentional societal degeneracy that led to fentanyl is the real scourge - jjs
  Douglas Murray: Fentanyl-Laced Drugs Aren't "Someone Else's Problem" — They're a Scourge on America That's Killing Our Kids and Tearing Families Apart
  
• Daniel Greenfield: "How Marxist ‘relative rights’ usurped America’s absolute rights."
  You’re Only as Free as Your Oppression

Posted by J.J. Sefton at 07:38 AM Comments

Israel War

—CBD

No details, but Israel has launched strikes against targets in Iran and its proxy states.

I think this is a powerful indicator of the change in the mindset of the Israeli people. The entire world wanted them to be passive in the face of an Iranian attack on their homeland.

Israel said: "No."

Simultaneous Israeli strikes on Iran, Iraq and Syria - reports

Iranian outlets are reporting no damage, and in fact at least one is claiming that the attacks came from within the country. Why that is better is a question that should. Be asked of the mad Mullahs.

What happens next? An expansion of the simmering war? As Diogenes pointed out yesterday, it's a long supply line between Iran and Israel, and Iranian forces would be vulnerable the entire way. My guess is an increase in Hezbollah activity and a staunch Iranian denial of any damage.

But the stage is set for significant changes. Hopefully it will be regime change in Iran, with the pressure from within.

The strike is undoubtedly a message to the Mullahs that Israel can hit them wherever they are. It seems to be a limited strike, which suggests that it was political rather than military.

Daily Tech News 19 April 2024

—Pixy Misa

• Micron is receiving $6 billion under the CHIPS Act to build $100 billion in memory fabs in New York state. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Micron is at least an American company.

The ONT Is Coming! The ONT Is Coming!

—WeirdDave

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

It's likely that Revere would have shouted “The Regulars are coming out!” rather than “The British are coming”. The later makes no sense considering that the Colonies considered themselves British. It wasn't until the next day, at Lexington and Concord, that they became Americans.

This Is Bizarre

This may be the strangest story I've read in a while.

21-year-old student from Pune and the curious case of her changing hands

(right click, inspect, settings, disable javascript, refresh to bypass paywall)

Explaining the shift, Pune-based physiotherapist Ketaki Doke, who has been working with Shreya, says behind this could be the muscle reconditioning itself to the new host. “The nerve begins to send signals, it is called reinnervation, and the muscles function according to body needs. A man will have muscle function different from a woman. The muscles in her hand may have started adapting to a female body,” says Doke, adding, “It was still not anticipated that her hands will transform so much.”

In the last 3-4 months, Shreya’s mother Suma noticed that her fingers were becoming leaner, slightly longer. “I see her hand every day. The fingers have become like a woman’s, the wrist is smaller. These are remarkable changes,” she says.

Iyer, from Amrita Institute, says they never anticipated such changes. “This is our first case of male-to-female hand transplant. We can only guess that female hormones have led to the change but assessing the exact cause is difficult,” he says.

So the transplanted hands were beefier and more muscular, because the donor was male, and also had much darker skin. Over time, the skin tone lightened to match her natural color, and the hands themselves became more slender and feminine. That's just amazing.

Journalism By Bot

The best restaurant for Tex-Mex in Tyler, according to diners—plus, see the runners-up

The article is crap – 2 of the 12 restaurants are fast food and there's no mention of places that are actually good like El Norteno, Jalpita's or Ruby's, but if you read between the lines it becomes apparent what they did. They wrote an intro paragraph and then had a bot collect the 12 highest rated places in the Tex Mex category on Yelp. Boom! Instant content. Wish I could figure out how to automate the ONT like that.

Meet The Press

Tucker Carlson’s Turn

So what the hell happened to Tucker Carlson?

The skepticism that served him well in the Trump years when much of the fourth estate behaved like an opposition political party has led him all the way around the horseshoe. His opposition to the people he hates—liberals and neocons—has turned him into Noam Chomsky in a bow tie.

I'm of two minds here. Yes, Tucker can get out on the fringes sometimes. Some of his recent blatherings about how wonderful the Potempkin village the Russians showed him were just embarrassing. But the main beef the author of this piece seems to have with Tucker is that he has interviewed people he doesn't like. That should be the job of journalists. Interviewing Putin gives us a chance to see the man and hear what he has to say. That's information, and the job of the news should be to inform. Also, since in the article the author openly poo-poos the idea that the FBI influenced the Jan 6 demonstrators in any way or that the 2020 election was anything other than squeaky clean, I don't think he has much room to talk about people not being grounded in reality.

Just The Tax, Ma'am

Here are the massive tax increases coming your way in a second Biden term

Biden’s written plan calls for a small business tax hike, a corporate tax hike, a capital gains and dividends tax hike, income tax hikes, energy tax hikes and even a second Death Tax on top of the first one. Biden would increase the corporate income tax from today’s 21% to 28%. That’s a higher tax rate than communist China and France and the U.K., each at 25%.

Now add the average state corporate income tax at 4% and the average combined Biden rate would be 32%. That would be the second-highest corporate income tax in the developed world. Just below Colombia.

Biden promises to impose a tax on "unrealized gains." If your land or stock account has increased in value in the last year you would pay taxes on the unrealized gain. You have not sold the property; you do not have the income. It isn’t "real." Yet you will be taxed as if you had made the sale and received the income.

And to think our founders rebelled and founded this country in protest over a 2% tax on tea. How low we have fallen.

And Now For A Different Perspective

It's called the Ames Room, and it was invented by American ophthalmologist Adelbert Ames, Jr. in 1946 to screw with your brain

[? La casa De La Ciencia]pic.twitter.com/s4T4QaUBs4

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) April 13, 2024

What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing

America Is Now in the Business of Losing Wars

Obviously, America ought not involve itself in foreign conflicts in which we are unwilling to stay the course. American interests dictate pragmatism. But we've gone far beyond that. Now we're telling our allies that they can't win victories in conflicts in which they are willing to stay the course and in which they can win. 

We will actively step in to prevent victory.

And so our enemies grow stronger. They have no such Hamlet-like moral qualms. They push where there is mush. Should Israel accede to America's request to leave Hamas in place in Rafah, Hezbollah will challenge Israel in the north; Iranian proxies will challenge Israel in the West Bank; Iran will up the ante in Yemen and the Red Sea. Israel and Saudi Arabia will be forced to search for new allies and new weapons. The world will significantly become more dangerous.

It turns out that the alternative to an America confident in its own moral role -- and an America willing to stand with its allies -- is a world of chaos. We are now living in that world. And things will get much, much worse before the end of this era of moral vacillation and cowardice in the face of evil.

There's only one way to win a war and achieve a lasting peace. You have to kill the enemy, and keep killing them until they have had enough and say “No more”. Then and only then can you start defining a post-war world. If the enemy doesn't believe that they have been defeated, all you do is give them a chance to rearm and regroup, and sooner or later start fighting again. Not only is this endlessly bloody, it is ultimately immoral and in the long run far costlier.

The Face Of Evil

Texas gender clinic dubbed 'Frankenstein's lab' performs hundreds of experimental surgeries each year - including giving patients a penis AND vagina and 'Barbie-dolling' clients by removing both

No comment. But I pray there will come a reckoning. And that it will be unbelievably harsh.

Good Advice

For many Gen Z students, skipping college for a trade may be their best bet

The median pay for new construction hires was $48,089 last year, compared to $39,520 for new hires in professional services. According to payroll-services provider ADP, pay for new hires in construction increased 5.1% last year, nearly double the increase for professional services. 

Trade jobs are also less subject to replacement by AI and other technologies. Some tech exec might make good money before student loan payments, but he’ll pay some kid a fortune to unclog his toilet.

If there’s a dummy in that scenario, it ain’t the kid. 

We were extremely pleased when Little said he wanted to go into the trades. He's finishing his first year in the welding program at the local junior college, and doing quite well. All this and no student loans to worry about.

Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by radial power:

Close it up

Cliff-Racing Cafe

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Newark
by daisukephotography

This is why you stake down your tent.

Magical shenanigans exposed.

Joe Biden meeting with his brothers.

McDonald's in Italy is a very different experience.

Peek-a-boo parrot.

Mountain village in Madeira.

Fun but maybe just a touch dangerous.

Update your records: I'm not a Vespa Man any longer.I've found a scooter that is 50% gayer.

Quick track changing.

Huzzah! The sport of the future combines two terrible things, mini-bikes and soccer, into one single pastime that we can all ignore with 50% of the effort needed to ignore both individually.

Gojira!

Cycling at the very edge of a high cliff.

Supposedly, this guy is mimicking each sound that's presented to him. But what I'm most interested in is his Hype Squad going crazy after every show of mimickry.

Racing a car along a cliff's edge.

Rapid Strikes

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Leftists plan to disrupt the Chicago Democrat Convention, promising to Make America 1968 Again.

According to The Free Press, activists are planning to disrupt the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago, echoing the violent protests of 1968. The group, which opposes President Joe Biden, is preparing to flood the streets, regardless of whether they receive a permit to protest.

The activists are part of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization and have gathered 75 organizations to discuss their plans for the DNC.

The group opposes President Biden, whom they refer to as "Genocide Joe" for his support of Israel in its war against Hamas.

The activists are preparing to protest regardless of whether they receive a permit, with speakers instructing attendees on how to avoid arrest and identify Secret Service members.

The Freedom Road Socialist Organization, a far-left activist group, is planning to disrupt the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago. The group, which opposes President Joe Biden, is preparing to flood the streets, regardless of whether they receive a permit to protest. The activists have gathered 75 organizations to discuss their plans for the DNC, with speakers instructing attendees on how to avoid arrest and identify Secret Service members.

Days after an illegal alien murdered her aide, Democrat Senator Cortez-Mastro of Nevada calls the Mayorkas impeachment -- which is entirely about Americans being murdered by illegal aliens the Biden Administration illegally paroles into the country -- "a waste of time."

The killer was wavied into the country by Biden and Mayorkas:

DHS released a statement. As could be predicted, Rueda-Linares was caught entering the country illegally in 2021 and released.

<"blockquote>Rueda entered the United States March 12, 2021, at or near the Rio Grande City, Texas, Port of Entry without inspection by an immigration official," DHS told The Post in a statement.

"United States Customs and Border Protection arrested him, and he was later released on his own recognizance June 22, 2021."

Biden imposes the weakest possible sanctions on his political patron Iran as possible.

Biden said the United States and its allies had helped Israel beat back the April 13 missile and drone strike and were now holding Iran accountable with the new sanctions and export controls.

"The sanctions target leaders and entities connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran's Defense Ministry, and the Iranian government's missile and drone program that enabled this brazen assault," Biden said in a statement.

In other words, he won't sanction the country, just specific individuals and organizations.

In other words -- he's acting as an agent for Iran yet again.

Ed Morrissey comments:

This is very weak sauce, and it's not going to convince Israel that a direct response is unnecessary. The only sanctions that matter to the mullahs are on oil sales, but Biden won't pitch those because he's too afraid of China's response. As long as Iran gets its revenue stream from oil, sanctions on the drone program won't slow them down a whit.

Again: A transgender wrote up a 129 page manifesto explaining a plan to become famousby committing a school shooting.

An 18-year-old high school student who identifies as transgender was arrested and charged over alleged plans to shoot up a Montgomery County, Maryland school. The suspect had a 129-page manifesto in which the student strategized how to undertake the crime.

Andrea Ye, of Rockville, who goes by Alex Ye was arrested on Wednesday by local Montgomery County Police. This follows an investigation carried out by local police in association with the FBI field office out of Baltimore. The manifesto was discovered after a search warrant was carried out.

"Ye was taken into custody and charged with threats of mass violence. He is currently being held at the Montgomery County Central Processing Unit where he awaits a bond hearing," read the news release from the Montgomery County Department of Police, referring to the female student as "he."

Parts of the manifesto were reportedly included in the application for statement of charges. It read:

"I want to shoot up my school. I've been preparing for it for the past few months. As I sit in front of my dad's gun case and stare at the sleek, black gun inside, all I can think about is my finger on the trigger, taking aim, and killing people. The gun is an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle. It's the kind of gun with a long barrel and a stock you put up against your shoulder. The gun is going to change lives tomorrow."

Remember, transgender surgeries cure all of their mental illnesses, haters!

It's good that they are showing Respecc for "his" pronouns. Wouldn't want to insult the would-be mass child killer.

Washington Times: Laken Riley's Illegal Alien Murderer Was Set Free Due to a "Lack of Bedspace" In Illegal Alien Dention Centers;
Mayorkas Asked for a Cut In Money for Bedspaces Three Years in a Row

—Disinformation Expert Ace

They engineered this situation, deliberately.

They cut the funding to detain illegal alien criminals so that they can then release them and use "lack of funding for detention of illegal alien criminals" as their justification.

Steven Dinan:

Homeland Security released the illegal immigrant accused of killing Laken Riley into the U.S. because it lacked the detention space, according to his confidential immigration file.

Sen. Josh Hawley, Missouri Republican, read key parts of the file into the record at a Senate hearing Thursday.

Jose Ibarra, the man charged with the Feb. 22 slaying, was released under Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas' power of parole, which is supposed to be used in limited cases and only when there is an urgent humanitarian need or a significant benefit to the public.

Mr. Hawley said lack of detention space doesn't meet either of those standards and so Mr. Mayorkas broke the law in releasing the suspected killer.

"Now we all know that the reason he was paroled into this country is because of lack of detention capacity, which you and I both know is not a valid reason," the senator said.

Mr. Mayorkas declined to talk about the details of the case and wouldn't say whether he had read his department's file on Mr. Ibarra.

...

Mr. Hawley swatted Mr. Mayorkas for giving two different answers about Mr. Ibarra's case in testimony to other committees this month.

"Why did you change your story so often?" Mr. Hawley challenged.

...

Even as he's acknowledged a lack of ICE beds, Mr. Mayorkas has asked Congress to cut bed space further in every budget he's submitted.

They cut the bed space, then say the lack of bed space constitutes a "humanitarian emergency" which requires that illegal alien criminals be set free to murder Americans.

Mayorkas confessed last month that the Biden Regime policy is to free all illegal alien criminals unless they have committed a "serious offense."

But Laken Riley's killer put a child in danger and Biden took no action.

On Face the Nation on Sunday, host Margaret Brennan noted that the suspect not only was "an undocumented Venezuelan migrant" but also was arrested twice, once in New York City for driving without a license and once in Athens, Georgia, for shoplifting. Brennan asked Mayorkas, "Did those states and their law enforcement communicate to the federal government that this had happened? Should this man have been deported?"

Instead of accepting responsibility for allowing the suspect to walk free, Mayorkas tried to blame New York City and Athens. "Margaret, there are a number of cities around the country that have varying degrees of cooperation with the immigration authorities," Mayorkas said. "We firmly believe that if a city is aware of an individual who poses a threat to public safety, then we would request that they provide us with that information so that we can ensure that that individual is detained if the facts so warrant."

Mayorkas makes it sound like if only New York City and Athens had alerted Immigration and Customs Enforcement about the suspect's previous arrests, then ICE would have acted.

But that is not true. Under a Mayorkas memo issued on Sept. 30, 2021, ICE never would have wasted the effort to deport the suspect.

"A noncitizen who poses a current threat to public safety, typically because of serious criminal conduct, is a priority for apprehension and removal," the Mayorkas memo reads. "Whether a noncitizen poses a current threat to public safety is not to be determined according to bright lines or categories. It instead requires an assessment of the individual and the totality of the facts and circumstances."

Meanwhile, Speaker Johnson, Our Hero, is ramming through the Ukraininan funding bill while blocking any efforts to amend the funding bill with funding for the US border.

We have to keep our priorities in mind! And our highest priority as a country is to support and defend Joe Biden's foreign paymasters.

The Freedom Caucus calls this no-amendments-on-Ukraine-funding "the America Last Rule."

Mike Lee @BasedMikeLee

Tell your representative: TAKE DOWN THE "AMERICA LAST" RULE!

House Republicans can't transform leftist priorities into Republican wins simply by attaching their names.

And make no mistake, that's what The Firm (TM) is trying to get away with here.

I assume "The Firm (TM)" is his nickname for the establishment Stasi Uniparty.

MTG is angry about Speaker Johnson bringing the Ukraine funding bill to a vote -- which he doesn't have to do; he's in control of which bills get a vote and which are tabled forever -- and so she is proposing an amendment that anyone voting for Ukraine aid must sign up to fight for Ukraine.

Mike Lee @BasedMikeLee

Republican lawmakers universally campaign as conservatives.

Far too many of them vote to advance progressive priorities once in office.

Then they contort themselves into pretzels trying to claim they're still conservatives.

Watch carefully what happens over the next few days.

Mike Lee and Josh Hawley blasted the Secretary for Illegal Immigration Mayorkas.

In an impassioned speech, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) made one of the most important points in standing in opposition to Schumer's machinations, correctly noting that Mayorkas had indeed been accused of impeachable offenses including "knowingly making false statements."

"If this is not a high crime and misdemeanor, what is? If this is not impeachable, what is? What precedent will we be setting?" Lee rhetorically asked his colleagues as Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) attempted to shush him.

Polls, Schmolls: Trump Up by 3 Nationally; Biden Continues Loosing the Yute Vote

—Disinformation Expert Ace

A poll from left-tilting Emerson puts Trump up over Biden 46-43 nationally, and 51-48 with leaners included.

Trump consistently outperforms his polls. And he's almost never been shown to be ahead of his opponent in any poll from 2016 or 2020, despite winning handily in 2016 and nearly winning (it's complicated, fortification was involved) in 2020.

Now he's always ahead of Biden.

Biden keeps losing ground with absolute must-have constitutencies.

A recent Harvard IOP poll indicates a significant narrowing of President Biden's lead among young voters, with only an 8-point lead over Trump, down from 23 points in 2020, amidst controversial policies aimed at courting this demographic.

Biden's lead over Trump among 18-29-year-olds has plummeted from 23 points in spring 2020 to just 8 points in spring 2024.

In an apparent bid to regain favor, Biden proposes canceling student loan debt in contrast to his unpopular stance on banning TikTok, a platform beloved by the youth.

These moves suggest a strategy to buy youth support as the November election approaches, raising questions about the sincerity and effectiveness of such policies.

I mentioned this poll yesterday -- most Americans say that Trump isn't guilty of anything, and the Soros DA prosecution is a political hit-job.

A recent AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll reveals that the majority of Americans do not believe former President Donald Trump broke the law his hush money case. The poll also indicates a general skepticism about the fairness of the prosecutors, judge, and jurors involved in the case.

Key Details:

Only about one-third of U.S. adults believe Trump committed an illegal act in the hush money case. 35% think Trump acted illegally, 31% see his actions as unethical but not illegal, and 14% believe he did nothing wrong.

Only 31% are confident that Trump is being treated fairly by the prosecution, and about 20% trust the fairness of jurors and judges.

Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt described the trial as "political persecution" and claimed it is part of a strategy to undermine Trump politically.

Leftwing Activist Lies to Get on the Trump Jury

—Disinformation Expert Ace

They're so biased that the incredibly biased judge, who refuses to recuse himself, is forced to exclude them from the jury.

Second Trump juror dismissed after failing to disclose arrest for vandalizing right-leaning political ads

A juror in former President Trump's criminal trial was dismissed after it was revealed he had been previously arrested for tearing down right-leaning political ads. This comes shortly after another juror was excused for expressing concerns about her ability to remain fair and impartial.

More on that later.

The dismissed juror, known as Juror #4, was arrested in Westchester, N.Y. at an undisclosed time for tearing down right-leaning political advertisements.

Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass also revealed that the juror's wife had been involved in a "corruption inquiry" requiring a "deferred prosecution agreement with the district attorney's office."

Following the dismissal of Juror #4 and Juror #2, only five jurors remain sworn in, with thirteen more needed before opening arguments can commence.

...

The dismissal of Juror #4 comes on the heels of the excusal of Juror #2, a nurse from Manhattan's Upper East Side. She expressed concerns about her ability to remain fair and impartial in the trial, citing potential outside influence and pressure from family and friends. Judge Merchan expressed regret at her departure, stating, "We lost what would have been a good juror."

Leftwingers see this trial not only as a way to attack Trump, but to cash in with the inevitable book deal.

The first juror was excused because the media posted so many details about her that members of her family guessed she was on the jury. This isn't intimidation by Trump; it's intimidation by the media, which once again wants to tell jurors "We are watching you and will punish you for voting 'wrong.'"

A female juror, "Juror #2," who works as an oncology nurse and had biographical details -- including her occupation and other information from her responses to the juror questionnaire and its 42 multi-part questions -- made public told the judge that she had "friends, colleagues, and family push things to my phone questioning my identity as a juror."

"After sleeping on it overnight," Juror #2 told the court she "has concerns about her ability to be fair and impartial."

As a result, Judge Juan Merchan excused Juror #2, meaning there are just now just six impaneled jurors and 12 more must still be settled.

Contrary to claims that Trump and his allies are trying to intimidate jurors, mainstream media outlets hostile to Trump reported details about jurors' identities -- apparently enough details to allow at least one juror to have her presence on the panel suspected.

Surprise: Ilhan "Omar" Nur's "Psycho" Daughter Suspended from Barnard College Over, Get This, Anti-Semitic Protests

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Via Twitchy, this is just such an unexpected plot twist.

I've been Sixth Sensed. Bruce Willis was The Invisible Man the whole time.

Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar's daughter, Isra Hirsi, revealed Thursday she has been suspended from Barnard College over her involvement in anti-Israel protests on Columbia University's campus.

"I'm an organizer with CU Apartheid Divest @ColumbiaSJP, in my 3 years at @BarnardCollege I have never been reprimanded or received any disciplinary warnings," the 21-year-old wrote on X.

"I just received notice that I am 1 of 3 students suspended for standing in solidarity with Palestinians facing a genocide."

Hirsi and the two other students -- identified as Maryam Iqbal and Soph Dinu -- received notice of their suspension from Barnard Dean, Leslie Grinage, first thing Thursday morning, the Apartheid Divest said in a statement.

"This decision is based on information received from Columbia University Public Safety that you have been involved in an unauthorized encampment on the Columbia University campus and you have not ceased participation in this unauthorized encampment despite repeated requests from Barnard and Columbia on April 17, 2024 that you do so," the dean's email read, according to the student group.

Hirsi's suspension comes after at least three people were arrested overnight in connection with the ongoing tent protest on the Ivy League school's Morningside campus.

...

In a follow up tweet revealing her suspension, a defiant Hirsi said protestors "will not be intimidated."

Clare Shipman, formerly some NBC reporterette and wife of Obama press secretary (and former fake "journalist") James Carney, reports that the anti-semitism at Columbia -- of which Barnard is a sister school -- is "shocking."

I'm shocked that you're shocked.

The co-chair of Columbia University's Board of Trustees, Claire Shipman, told a congressional panel on Wednesday that the proliferation of anti-Semitism on the school's Manhattan campus is "shocking."

Shipman's husband, Jay Carney, served as press secretary under former president Barack Obama, a Columbia alumnus whose longtime friendship with one of the school's notorious anti-Semitic professors became a central issue in his 2008 campaign.

During Wednesday's House Education Committee hearing featuring testimony from Columbia president Minouche Shafik and other school leaders, Shipman was asked to respond to what one lawmaker described as "pro-terrorist expressions on campus on a significant scale."

"I think it says we have a lot of work to do. It's shocking," Shipman said. "I think it says that we have lost our way in terms of what we expect from each other in a learning community and in our society. I think we have to ... commit to speech that isn't laced with hate and isn't just meant to provoke."

Carney is probably more familiar with the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric that has percolated for decades on the Columbia campus, having accepted a job in the Obama administration in 2008, when Obama's friendship with one of Columbia's most prominent anti-Semitic professors was a recurring theme.

Though Obama professed support for Israel, the Los Angeles Times reported in the spring of 2008 that, in fact, Obama was a "friend and frequent dinner companion" of Rashid Khalidi, an anti-Israel scholar who has taught in Columbia's history department since 2003. Obama lauded Khalidi at a going away party before the professor joined Columbia, saying Khalidi gave "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases."

In the wake of Hamas's Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel, Khalidi argued the attack required "context," telling Democracy Now! that Israel's "settler colonialism" and "apartheid" regime was to blame.

National Guard Whistleblower Accuses Government of Lying About Millitary's January 6th Response

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Via Twitchy, a National Guard captain who served as aide-de-camp to the general commanding the DC National Guard says that the Guard was ready to deploy on January 6th, but the Secretary of the Army told him to stand down -- and then lied about it.

He also says he's been a confidential informer on this matter -- a whistleblower -- but of course his anonymity was breached, presumably by someone he's implicating.

Kyle Becker
@kylenabecker

National Guard Captain Blows Up J6 Narrative, Accuses U.S. Govt of Lying to the American People

"I'm here today to aid the subcommittee in resolving factual errors in the official record of what happened on January 6th, 2021, specifically regarding the alleged District of Columbia National Guard delayed response caused by a critical presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed Pentagon senior officials," Captain Timothy Nick testified under oath on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. [...]

"First, I want to explain my role on January 6th. I was assigned as aid to camp the personal assistant to Major General William Walker, the commanding General of DC National Guard. It was my only second day on the job (!). Please focus on alleged facts found in the November 16th, 2021 Department of Defense Inspector General's multidisciplinary review into the DC National Guard response and Department of Defense's role that day."

"I can say unequivocally that the Inspector General's Review is riddled with inaccuracies, misstatements, and perhaps false flags and narratives regarding how critical Pentagon senior officials responded when our republic was under great stress (!!)."

"For instance, during a conference call at 2:31 PM with members of United States Army, US Capitol Police, Metropolitan Police Department, District of Columbia Government, and US Secret Service Uniform Division, the US Army's Lieutenant General Walter Piatt, Director of Army staff and the Army's Lieutenant General Charles Flynn, Director of Chief of Staff of Operations were on the call." Also was Colonel John Lubas, executive officer to the Secretary of the Army."

"The Army FALSELEY DENIED that General Flynn was ever on the call. This is false and material on its face. Lieutenant Flynn was on the call and even participated in discussions. The defense inspector's review also rounds language papering over the fact that Lieutenant General Piatt, Lieutenant General Flynn, while on the call discussed how they did not like the OPTICS."

"That is a direct quote, and they stated it would be in their best military advice to recommend to the Secretary of the Army, Ryan McCarthy, to deny the request from Command General William Walker to deploy the DC National Guard and aid US Capitol Police in restoring restoration of Order Liberty on Capitol Hill."

He also alleges Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy is lying about having been on the call. See the tweet for that.

"We arrived too late. One American laid dead with other sisters and brothers injured, including federal and local law enforcement officers. We were ready and standing by. I know if we were able to deploy immediately, when General Walker made the request, the National Guard could have helped and civil disturbance and restored public order quickly."

"The Army National Guard motto was always ready, always there. The DC National Guard was ready to help and assist Capitol Police, but we were NOT ALLOWED to do our job due to paralyzed decision-making by acting Secretary of Defense,Chris Miller and Secretary of the Army, Ryan McCarthy..."

"This led to a crisis in federal leadership at the Pentagon and delayed the DC response by 3 hours and 19 minutes."

.

28 Google Layabouts Stage a Sit-In in the Company's NY and California Offices to Pressure It Into Dropping a Contract With Israel; Google Actually Fires the Radicals

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Has even Google had its bellyfull of 24/7/365 woke?

Google has fired 28 employees over their participation in a 10-hour sit-in at the search giant's offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California, to protest the company's business ties with the Israel government, The Post has learned.

The pro-Palestinian staffers -- who wore traditional Arab headscarves as they stormed and occupied the office of a top executive in California on Tuesday -- were terminated late Wednesday after an internal investigation, Google vice president of global security Chris Rackow said in a companywide memo.

"They took over office spaces, defaced our property, and physically impeded the work of other Googlers," Rackow wrote in the memo obtained by The Post. "Their behavior was unacceptable, extremely disruptive, and made co-workers feel threatened."

Uh-oh, they're using the Wokies' power word against them.

In New York, protesters had occupied the 10th floor of Google's offices in the Chelsea section of Manhattan as part of a protest that also extended to the company's offices in Seattle for what it called "No Tech for Genocide Day of Action."

"Behavior like this has no place in our workplace and we will not tolerate it," Rackow wrote. "It clearly violates multiple policies that all employees must adhere to -- including our code of conduct and policy on harassment, discrimination, retaliation, standards of conduct, and workplace concerns."

Rackow added that the company "takes this extremely seriously, and we will continue to apply our longstanding policies to take action against disruptive behavior -- up to and including termination."

The fired staffers are affiliated with a group called No Tech For Apartheid, which has been critical of Google's response to the Israel-Hamas war.

...

The protesters have demanded that Google pull out of a $1.2 billion "Project Nimbus" contract -- in which Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services provide cloud-computing and artificial intelligence services for the Israeli government and military.

Google only did this because of the $1.2 billion contract being threatened.

"This evening, Google indiscriminately fired 28 workers, including those among us who did not directly participate in yesterday's historic, bicoastal 10-hour sit-in protests," the workers said in the statement.

"This flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers -- the ones who create real value for executives and shareholders."

LOL. Anyone want to bet that these 28 employees are all loss-leader DEI hires?

"Sundar Pichai and Thomas Kurian are genocide profiteers," the statement added, referring to Google's CEO and the CEO of its cloud unit, respectively.

"We cannot comprehend how these men are able to sleep at night while their tech has enabled 100,000 Palestinians killed, reported missing, or wounded in the last six months of Israel's genocide -- and counting."

They got the fake numbers up to 100,000 already? Well done, Hamas propaganda unit.

Google's email took a hard line:

We are a place of business and every Googler is expected to read our policies and apply them to how they conduct themselves and communicate in our workplace. The overwhelming majority of our employees do the right thing. If you're one of the few who are tempted to think we're going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again. The company takes this extremely seriously, and we will continue to apply our longstanding policies to take action against disruptive behavior -- up to and including termination.

That's saying, in so many words, "Don't expect your skin color or sexual identity to save you, Wokies."

Israel vs. Iran [Diogenes]

—Open Blogger

There was an interesting story in the news the other day following the Iranian attack on Israel, discussing how "surprised and disappointed" the Iranians, Syrians, Yemenis, and their assorted allies in Hamas and Houthis and Hezbollah were. The attack failed and failed spectacularly. And this is being studied in places such as Washington DC, Moscow, Seoul, Tokyo, Beijing, etc., Just how did Israel pull off such an incredible defense? All know of the Iron Dome over Jerusalem and much of Israel. During the attack on Oct 7, when thousands of missiles and artillery rounds were fired, the Dome mostly did its job and while people were surprised, and pleased, it wasn't exactly unexpected. It has worked before. But the Iranian attack was a three-pronged event using slower drones, faster cruise missiles, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles. This was different, not just in who was attacking, but the methodology. The success of the defense has got a lot of people thinking and planning and, frankly, worried.

Being over 29, I can recall back in my youth the days of East vs West...The Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact vs the United States and NATO. Berlin and Europe were divided. Each side had enough nukes to destroy each other several times over. Fortunately, to date the nukes have not been used. There are a lot of reasons for this, but a primary one is called Mutually Assured Destruction, commonly known as MAD. This was the subject of jokes and derision by comics and lefties for years, and yet MAD works. MAD says that you cannot achieve a successful first strike because one side cannot kill enough of the other before they strike back. Simple. So, in a the bi-polar global war scenario, this was stabilizing, and accepted by each side.

Mid-Morning Art Thread

—CBD

Allegory of the Catholic Faith
Johannes Vermeer

The Morning Report — 4/18/24

—J.J. Sefton

Good morning, kids. Let me just get this off my chest. Me calling Malig-Nancy Pelosi a warped, venal C-U-Next-Tuesday is, to swipe part of Martin Sheen's dialogue from Apocalypse Now! "like handing out speeding tickets at the Indianapolis 500." Her nakedly prevaricated words in supposed defense of Israel slid off one side of her halitosis-tinged forked tongue while off the other she declared Benjamin Netanyahu to be a bloodthirsty war monger who had to be deposed.

For anyone who considers himself/herself/they-self to be a Jew, a classic liberal or even a Democrat a la JFK or Harry Truman (and let's face it, that concept was and is pure mythology given the actual bloody history of that party since Burr murdered Hamilton in cold blood), and continue to vote for and support that party is insanity. It's living a lie, unconsciously or worse, with one's eyes wide open.

So desperate are they to cling to power, because they truly are on the verge of seizing absolute power forever, that they are doing everything they can to court a voting bloc comprised of those who excused and/or orgasmically cheered on the greatest mass-slaughter of Jews since Birkenau and Babi Yar (words and concepts now ignored in our schools or if uttered can be cited as "hate speech"), that they actually green-lit Iran's mass drone attack on Israel which, depending on how Israel responds (and they must and will) could lead to a regional war that could go global. If not nuclear.

Insanity. Incompetence. Ideology. Put those three words in any combination you want, with or without hyphens to construct one or more adverbs or adjectives, and it adds up to the same thing.

That's Pelosi. That's the Democrat-Left. But that said, what the actual hell is the GOP? The former will obviously get a complete pass from a media that shamelessly and openly serves as their cheerleaders and disseminators of agitprop. Yet, someone like Marjorie Taylor-Greene gets ripped to shreds, not just from the Left but from the Right. Or to be more specific, from the pseudo-right.

She was among those who led the charge to dump Frank Luntz's useless cabana boy Kevin McCarthy from the speakership for his actions and inactions in either blocking Junta policy or advancing conservatism. That is, the will of the most put upon minority-majority in history: American-Americans. Well, she and others managed to replace him. Yet in the end, all they did was swap deck chairs on the Titanic.

With most Americans absolutely opposed to any further wastage of money we do not have on Ukraine, and screaming for our slimmest of slim majorities in the House to block the Sponge-Brain Shits-Pants Junta as it continues to erase our border and flood us with millions of foreign peasants, criminals and terrorists, what does he do? Call for billions more to Ukraine as well as some lesser sum to Israel, ostensibly as a shrewd move to get the Dems to vote "no" and lay the blame on them while getting absolutely nothing in return to seal the damned border and halt the invasion.

So MTG is out to oust Johnson. Is this the right thing to do so close to an election, and with only a one-vote majority in the House? Say what you will about that, but the reason we have only a one-vote majority is because Ronna Romney McDaniel and the Grifting Oleaginous Parasites sabotaged what should have been a red wave '22 midterm election and worse, a wave of sudden GOP resignations that stink of a preemptive strike at Donald Trump and the MAGA movement in anticipation of his return to the Oval Office.

Note, the funding bill for Ukraine and Israel is being lauded by Biden and the Junta and his cue cards indicate that he's eager to sign off on it ASAP, pending the selection/sharpening of whatever color he chooses from his Crayola 64-pack.

If that's not enough, insult meet injury:

The inside story of how House Speaker Mike Johnson was flip-flopped on Ukraine aid starts with his top policy adviser, a former lobbyist whose clients include a number of major companies who have issued corporate statements indicating some kind of interest in the war.

Johnson’s policy director, Dan Ziegler, was–until he joined the Speaker’s office as his top policy aide when Johnson won the Speakership last year–a lobbyist with the firm Williams & Jensen. He had previously worked for Johnson in other capacities, but left Johnson to become a lobbyist and accumulated a client list that included several top companies–some of which seem to have a financial interest in seeing Congress pass Ukraine aid. The lobbying firm for which he worked represents a number of top companies. Lobbying disclosures reveal Ziegler represented many of these companies, including several that have made corporate statements about the war in Ukraine or issued press statements or other public guidance saying it could affect their business operations.

What’s more, Ziegler also represented the highly controversial News Media Alliance, which was lobbying Congress when he worked for Williams & Jensen to push a dangerous proposal that would have severely hurt conservative media. That proposal, called the Journalism Competition & Preservation Act (JCPA), has died several times in Congress but has kept coming back to life thanks to lobbyist pressure.

Ziegler is not the only one in Johnson’s inner circle who has issues. Several other staffers working for Johnson  have a series of troubling developments in their backgrounds, and as of now it is unclear if the Speaker himself is aware of all of this or not. Either way, this raises serious questions about his management of the conference and his handling of major legislative proposals like the foreign aid plan before Congress this week–and it undercuts the explanation several Johnson apologists have offered up that he is just having a tough time managing a one-seat majority and things would not be different if he resigned and Republicans picked a new Speaker. . .

. . .The Speaker intends to set up a Saturday evening vote in the House of Representatives on the plan that completely abandons border security and instead pushes to funnel tens of billions more U.S. tax dollars to foreign countries like Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. In a string of recent betrayals by the Speaker–the recent government funding plan and last week’s reauthorization of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) without a requirement for warrants for surveillance on American citizens–this one stings America First conservatives even more.

Despite calls for his resignation from top conservative Republicans like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY)–who say they are prepared to vote to remove Johnson by force if necessary–Johnson has tripled down in moving forward on the matter, not just completely ignoring conservatives aligned with former President Donald Trump who are openly criticizing the effort, but authorizing staff and allies like House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) to attack them in order to achieve congressional passage of this radical agenda.

But Marjorie Taylor-Greene is an unprincipled, undisciplined, loose cannon wackadoo that needs to shut up, sit down and behave or else, or else . . . or else what?

Meh, what do these bills mean anyway when Joey's puppet masters pull shit like decreeing student loan debt forgiveness – for the second or third time already (I've lost count) – despite a Supreme Court decision declaring it unconstitutional and illegal?

How is that EO even carried out in practical terms? And doesn't the House of Representatives control the purse strings? I'm sure Mike Johnson will be all over this, right? Pfft. Well, at least he's tight with . . . Jake Tapper.

Speaking of the border and the GOP stepping on a rake, the vote to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas was effectively shut down in the Senate by Chuck Schemer. Even if it succeeded, Mayorkas would've been replaced with someone equally ideological and incompetent and nothing would have effectively changed. The Deep State bench is indeed dark and very, very deep.

That said, considering that the open border and all the concomitant disasters that have happened with the massive invasion of foreigners as a result has made it the #1 issue that will decide the election. Dao-Min Yen, martial law and/or assassination by the courts or otherwise of Trump notwithstanding, did the Dems blow it?

Here's something to consider. Maybe this time, the Dems stepped on a rake by not making Mayorkas the scapegoat, declaring the problem solved and screaming "Roe Roe Roe the Vote!" nonstop for the next seven months, or however long it will take to find the counterfeit ballots to put Biden over the top.

C'mon, now! I need something, anything, to cling to!

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
• Richard Fernandez: ". . . the risk from authority can frequently outweigh the risk from disunity and innovation. Among the Global Risks in 2024 must be counted the threat posed by those who in their zeal, would ruthlessly save the world from dissent."
  The 'Disinformation' Game
  
• ". . . as is obvious to everyone watching, the people who are really determined to obstruct an official proceeding are the very legal operatives like Prelogar who are doing their damnedest to obstruct the most sacred official proceeding in the United States: the right of Americans to choose their own president. And that, even if it will never be prosecuted, is the real crime at issue."
  SCOTUS Asks the Right Questions in the Case That Determines the Fate of Hundreds of J-6ers—and Donald Trump
  
• "The Abraham Accords, centered on regional peace and prosperity, brought the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and Kosovo into normalized relations with Israel."
  The American Peace Initiative: Lessons Learned from the Abraham Accords
  
• Lloyd Billingsley: "Leftist Democrats recast a murderous gang as heroic agents of empowerment."
  Fundamentally Transforming the Black Panther Party

Israel War

—CBD

Lebanon and Hezbollah will most likely be Israel's second front in this war, and it will be even nastier than Gaza. Luckily southern Lebanon doesn't have Gaza's population density, but Hezbollah has more rockets, and has had even more time to prepare the battle space. They claim to have 100,000 terrorist fighters, although saner estimates suggest that it is more like 20,000-40,000. They have been trained and supplied by Iran's IRGC, with more than 150,000 rockets, drones, and missiles of various sophistication, and significant numbers of anti-tank weapons. They also have some air defense capability, which complicates Israel's planning.

Drone and missile attack in northern Israel: 14 soldiers wounded, 4 civilians

Hezbollah is Iran's attack dog in the north, and has kept the Lebanese border simmering. Whether they launch significant attacks is going to be the big question, especially if Israel responds to Iran's recent missile attacks.

But Israel cannot allow a huge terrorist presence to remain on its borders if they are serious about "Never Again." Hezbollah should be next.

US approves Rafah op. in exchange for no Israeli counterstrikes on Iran - report

Yeah..."report" is usually nonsense, but who knows. Rafah is a vital target. Without it being controlled by the IDF, Hamas will regroup and return to their savage ways.

As galling as it is for the Biden junta to attempt to control Israel's military response to both the October 7th pogrom and the Iranian attack, it might be politically advantageous...for the time being...to refrain from any overt attacks on Iran. Covert is another story, and as I have said before; Israel should ramp that up.

Except...Israel unlikely to retaliate against Iran until after Passover - report

Left-wing journalist: If the Right wins, we won't accept the results of the elections

In an interview with Galei Israel radio, the host asked Edelist, "Let's say we hold elections today, the Right wins and forms a government. Will you accept the decision of the public, or will you go out again to burn the streets?"

Edelist responded, "No, we certainly won't accept [that]. We will certainly continue with the same protest, as we are doing now. There's no argument about that now."

The left in Israel is every bit as evil as the left anywhere else. They care not a whit about the security of the state of Israel, and are willing to embrace any ally of convenience in their naked pursuit of power.

Sound familiar?

Daily Tech News 18 April 2024

—Pixy Misa

• Turns out I was wrong: Google had nine of yesterday's pro-Nazi protesters arrested, then fired all of them. (CNBC)
  
  I still wouldn't trust Google with anything sharper than a rubber spoon, but this is a rare positive sign.
  
  
  

Wednesday Overnight Open Thread (4/17/24)

—Misanthropic Humanitarian

A Portion Of George Washington's Farewell Speech

The unity of government which constitutes you
one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for
it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real
independence, the support of your tranquility at
home, your peace abroad, of your safety, of your
prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly
prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different
causes and from different quarters, much pains will
be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your
minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point
in your political fortress against which the batteries
of internal and external enemies will be most
constantly and actively (though often covertly and
insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you
should properly estimate the immense value of your
national Union to your collective and individual
happiness; that you should cherish a cordial,
habitual, and immovable attachment to it;
accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of
the palladium of your political safety and prosperity;
watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety;
discountenancing whatever may suggest even a
suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned, and
indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every
attempt to alienate any portion of our country from
the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link
together the various parts.

*****

Whatever drugs MushHead was on during the State of The Union Speech, he might have wanted to be that doped up, again.

WATCH: Biden Claims His Uncle Was Eaten By Cannibals.
Joe Biden — while speaking to the press in Scranton, Pennsylvania earlier on Wednesday — delved into a strange tangent about his late uncle, Ambrose Finnegan, possibly having been eaten by cannibals. The 81-year-old Biden described how Finnegan — whom he referred to as “Uncle Bosie” — was a U.S. airman during World War II who crashed near the Melanesian island of New Guinea in the Pacific Ocean.

*****

Some fluidity asexual non-binary us/we pronouns got shafted attempting to get concert tickets. No tickets, so of course the DOJ is going to get involved.

Biden might actually do something about ludicrously expensive concert tickets
The government is slated to sue Ticketmaster’s parent company.

*****

This story just doesn't pass the smell test. Amirite?

MONTGOMERY COUNTY — A local high school student will miss out on her senior prom after getting suspended over bringing a bag of corn chips to school.

As reported on News Center 7 at 5:00, Miami Valley Career Technology Center prohibits bringing this kind of snack to school because a teacher is severely allergic to an ingredient.

*****

So what you are saying that my 80/20 ground beef burger on the grill is better than your veggie burger? Go figure.

That's Impossible! Vegan 'Meat' Not So Good for You After All

There's a "health halo" surrounding manufactured vegan "meat" products even though they provide no "clear benefit" — and might even be bad for your heart health, according to a new study reported on in the Daily Mail.

*****

A religion that calls us The Great Satan and chants for our death, I take seriously. Unlike the following expert.

“The Islamic republic thrives on a state of conflict, not war,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank. “Tehran accomplished the lion’s share of its goals against Israel in the week before it launched missiles. Literally, the world was watching and waiting on Iran, forced to take their threats seriously due to their increasing drone and missile use in the region. This was a status boon and a security boon.”

*****

Constitutional? We know what Constitutional is and you serfs are lucky to count your given blessings.

When it comes to precedents, Democrats sure do love to break them to protect their own.

After impeachment articles against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas were delivered to the Senate this week, both impeachment articles were quashed by the Democrat-controlled upper chamber before a trial was even held.

*****

Sometimes the stuff I run across as your ONT Cob makes me shake my head. 'Jealousy, time constraints and broken boundaries can complicate what otherwise appears to be a frisky freewheeling faction who are happily throwing convention out the window.'

Inside a ‘radical’ 20-person polyamorous relationship where wild sex is always on tap

Think three’s a crowd? Try 20.

Members of a 20-plus-person polyamorous relationship are speaking out about their unconventional lifestyle, saying “the structure of the nuclear family needs to shift.”

The group of lovers, based outside of Boston, consists of couples and individuals including “heteroflexible” men, queer women and nonbinary individuals.

*****

The ONT Musical Interlude & Fireplace Emporium

Born on this day: April 17, 1934 - Don Kirshner
American music publisher, talent manager, and songwriter Don Kirshner who helped launch the careers of Neil Diamond, Bobby Darin, Carole King, Neil Sedaka and The Archies. Kirshner was hired by the producers of The Monkees to provide hit-worthy songs to accompany the television program and also served as a music consultant for almost two dozen TV series between 1966 and 1977. He died on January 17, 2011.

*****

Failure? The thought never crossed her mind. Genius Award Winner.

HE DOESN’T LOOK WELL’ Horror moment woman wheels her dead uncle into bank in shameless scam as she tried to take out a loan in his name
Watch the shocking clip to see the Brazilian woman urging her dead uncle to sign the loan papers

*****

Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by Short Term Memory Loss.

Notice: Posted with permission by the Ace Media Empire & AceCorp, LLC. The white zone is for loading and unloading only.

Close it up

Humpday Cafe

—Disinformation Expert Ace

The weather report from Hell.

Happy farm.

Take your daughter to work day.

There are two kinds of dogs.

Pouncus interruptus.

You better watch who you point that finger at, Sister.

Some kind of weasel.

Another turtle on a skateboard.

Fifth period at dog school, time for P.E.

Dog: What the **ck is this thing?

Sexy panda.

Sexy racoon.

Quith Sick

—Disinformation Expert Ace

LOL: Harvard has tapped an "expert" to help it pick its next president.

The expert? A McKinsey-trained DEI grifter.

(McKinsey is the leftwing woke consulting group that preaches diversity to corporations. Pete Bootyjudge is one of its disgraceful alums.)

Harvard University on Monday tapped an ex-McKinsey consultant who has criticized meritocracy and published controversial research on the benefits of diversity in business to help select the university's next president. FreeBeacon

Vivian Hunt, who in 2015 co-authored McKinsey's influential paper, "Why diversity matters," has been appointed to lead the Harvard Board of Overseers, the head of which has historically sat on Harvard's presidential search committees along with all 12 members of the Harvard Corporation, the university's top governing body, according to the Harvard Crimson. The overseers can also veto presidential appointments with a majority vote.

The system means that Hunt--who has argued that meritocracy "isn't good enough" and urged companies to adopt explicit diversity targets--will likely play a major role in picking former Harvard president Claudine Gay's successor. Her appointment comes amid plummeting donations and a major drop in applications to the Ivy League school, which has been at the center of a debate about diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in higher education.

Critics of those programs say Hunt's selection is a red flag as Harvard gears up to find a permanent replacement for Gay--a major champion of DEI--who resigned in January amid allegations of plagiarism.

"Vivian Hunt leading the search for the next president of Harvard perfectly encapsulates the rot in higher education and corporate America," said Will Hild, the executive director of Consumers' Research, a nonprofit that has led a campaign against ESG initiatives, including diversity programs, in the business world. "If Harvard was serious about rebuilding their floundering reputation, Hunt would be the last person chosen to lead this search."

She wrote a paper, which McKinsey used to preach the economic benefits of woke diversity hiring to corporations, which claimed (as they always claim) that adopting leftwing political aims would lead to bigger profits.

The conclusions in this paper are "non-replicable." Other researchers could not replicate her results. That's a nice way of saying that her results were fraudulent, with the evidence tweaked and mutilated to support the conclusion she wanted.

And now she'll be bringing that kind of academic integrity to Harvard's presidential search.

Hunt has been a driving force behind the proliferation of DEI initiatives. Her 2015 paper has been cited by countless companies and institutions, including the Pentagon, to justify their diversity programs, even as more recent research has challenged her findings.

A study in Econ Journal Watch this March found that diversity has no effect on company returns and that Hunt's results don't replicate. The findings were a major rebuke of Hunt, now the CEO of Optum Health, who has spent nearly a decade making the business case for diversity--and against meritocracy.

I love it -- the meritless all oppose the meritocracy. What are the odds?!?!

Biden's dying demented brain confabulated another bit of Biden Crime Family Lore, this time claiming an uncle died in WWII due to being eaten by "cannibals."

His plane was lost at sea. Few cannibals in the sea, although some shipwrecked men might go that way eventually.

President Biden twice implied Wednesday that his uncle Ambrose Finnegan was eaten by cannibals in New Guinea after his plane crashed during World War II -- even though military records show that the aircraft plunged into the Pacific.

"He got shot down in an area where there were a lot of cannibals at the time," Biden initially told reporters after visiting a war memorial that bears his uncle's name in Scranton, Pa.

"They never recovered his body, but the government went back when I went down there and they checked and found some parts of the plane."

After arriving in Pittsburgh for a speech on steel tariffs, the 81-year-old president told the same story.

"He got shot down in New Guinea and they never found the body because there used to be -- there were a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea," Biden told United Steelworkers union members.

The Pentagon's Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency says that Finnegan's plane actually was lost over the open ocean on May 14, 1944.

"For unknown reasons, this plane was forced to ditch in the ocean off the north coast of New Guinea. Both engines failed at low altitude, and the aircraft's nose hit the water hard," the military's account says.

Every single time this blowhard opens his lying mouth and vomits up some new anti-Blarney, I curse my Irish heritage.

Only 34% of the public thinks Trump acted illegally in the "hush money" political prosecution, and only 31% expect him to receive a fair trial.

That doesn't sound like the public will be swayed by a (short-lived) "guilty" verdict.

George Soros bailed the pro-terrorist bridge-barricaders out of jail.

Scores of "Free Palestine" protesters across the United States took to the streets Monday to block major airports, highways, and bridges. Those who are arrested will receive bail money and legal support from a left-wing dark money behemoth funded by George Soros, an online fundraising page shows.

The protests, which took place in dozens of U.S. cities including San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, and Philadelphia, were organized by A15 Action, a newly formed group that worked to "coordinate a multi-city economic blockade on April 15 in solidarity with Palestine." The group's website directs users to a "bail and legal defense fund" hosted through ActBlue, the Democratic Party's online fundraising juggernaut.

Those who donate to the fund, the ActBlue page says, are sending money to the Community Justice Exchange, which provides "money bail, court fees and fines" and other legal services to "community-based organizations ... that contest the current operation and function of the criminal legal and immigration detention systems." The exchange is a project of the Tides Center, a left-wing dark money network funded by Soros and other liberal billionaires.

The protesters, who organized the global event under the title A15, targeted economic "choke points" with the express purpose of causing as much financial disruption as possible, according to their website.

Ahead of the protests, A15 said it identified "major choke points in the economy" that it would "blockade" to "cause pain." The group listed more than 50 participating cities, including Chicago, where dozens of protesters shut down access to the O'Hare International Airport for nearly an hour, forcing some travelers to walk with their luggage to the airport.

...

Police across the country made dozens of arrests in connection with the protests, with defendants set to receive support from Community Justice Exchange.

"On April 15th, people from over 30 cities around the world will take action to demand a free Palestine," A15's fundraising page reads. "Donate here to support community members who are criminalized in the U.S. for their solidarity with Palestine."

"Should the actions of the state result in the need for it, these funds will be used for bail, legal defense, and support for defendants."

The Tides Center houses a variety of left-wing groups, including the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. It funnels millions of dollars from wealthy donors to those groups.

The center acts as a "fiscal sponsor" to a number of liberal nonprofits, allowing the groups under its umbrella to avoid registering with the IRS. Some of those groups are known for their anti-Israel activism.

The Tides Center, for example, fiscally sponsors the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, which last year organized a "direct action" protest that attempted to block a U.S. military ship bound for Israel from leaving a port in Washington. It also sponsors the Adalah Justice Project, one of America's most vocal Hamas apologists.

Soros and fellow liberal billionaire Pierre Omidyar are among the Tides Center's major donors.

Attempting to "cause pain" to a nation through blockading its bridges, roads, ports, and airports? And all of this coordinated and financially backed by communist revolutionaries...?

I dunno, sounds kind of Insurrectioney to me.

Boeing whistleblower: the entire 787 fleet should be grounded as too dangerous to fly.

Boeing engineer Sam Salehpour said in a Tuesday interview that he thinks all 787 jets should be grounded to allow for proper safety checks of the plane, which has come under fire in recent months following a slew of incidents.

The new interview -- which will air in full Tuesday on "NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt" -- comes one day before Salehpour's scheduled testimony before Congress about the safety concerns at Boeing that he laid out in a complaint filed with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) earlier this year.

"The entire fleet worldwide, as far as I'm concerned right now, needs attention," Salehpour said in a preview of the interview NBC News released Tuesday, when asked about the 787 plane model specifically.

"And the attention is, you need to check your gaps and make sure that you don't have potential for premature failure," he added.

In a letter addressed to FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker in January, attorneys for Salehpour said the Boeing engineer "repeatedly reported to Boeing management serious concerns about Boeing's current production and quality control processes, which he believes are creating potentially catastrophic safety risks."

The letter outlined problems with the production of the company's 787 and 777 jets, saying specifically that sections of the fuselage of the 787 Dreamliner are improperly fastened together and could break after thousands of trips. Salehpour told the agency these issues were the result of changes to the fitting and fastening of sections in the assembly line and alleged that the concerns were brushed off.

"I have come forward, and I have extended my neck," Salehpour said in the interview. "But you know, I'm at peace with myself. Because this is going to save a lot of people's lives."

New York resident Hillary Clinton also failed to disclose in contributions in 2016 -- specifically, she claimed her payment for the fake Steele Dossier was for "legal service" and was fined by the Federal Elections Committee for that lie -- but New York State declined to prosecute her for it.

In his Monday analysis, [Greg] Jarrett shredded Bragg and other Democratic officials involved in the case for prosecuting Trump even though he says 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Clinton essentially did the same thing during her unsuccessful campaign, though she, of course, was never prosecuted.

"Hillary Clinton did pretty much the same thing," Jarrett said. "She, too, used a lawyer to secretly pay for the phony Steele Dossier and booking it as legal expenses. She was fined by the [Federal Election Commission], but she wasn't prosecuted, and neither was Barack Obama, even though he was fined a whopping $375,000 for hiding donors and keeping illegal contributions."

The Daily Caller added:

Jarrett pointed out similarities between the case and the lack of prosecution towards Clinton, whose campaign financed a since-discredited dossier assembled by Christopher Steele alleging Trump colluded with Russia during the 2016 election.

"But, if your last name is Trump, the standard of justice is completely different and turned on its head," Jarrett added.