Some NeverTrumpers Giving Up The Old Grift, Starting Their New Grift
—Ace
Just before the election that made me proud to be an American for the first time since 2008, Politico wrote about NeverTrump.
They didn't talk about the existential threat facing NeverTrump grifters: Either Trump would lose and their grift would be over, or Trump would win and their grift would be over.
But Politico chose instead to play up all of the great things NeverTrump could do in the future.
NEVER TRUMP FACES THE EVER AFTER -- We're nine days away from the end of the presidential election (and potentially a few days more away from knowing the victor). But within one of the defining political factions of our era, the possibility of a Harris win is already prompting an existential question: Are we in the last gasps of the Never Trump movement?Never Trumpers are having probing conversations about that very question.
"I would trade anything for me to not have to beat the drum of a Trumpian threat anymore," TIM MILLER, host of The Bulwark Podcast and former adviser to Our Principles PAC, told Playbook.
One of the biggest bets of Harris' hundred-day campaign is that if she can capture even 5 to 10 percent of NIKKI HALEY's protest vote share...
That bet didn't pay out. Whoops.
CHARLIE SYKES, the Never Trump conservative and former talk radio host, has spent time with Harris for events on the campaign trail, and says he is taken with the "seriousness with which they're trying to create a big tent -- which is not the vibe we had from Democrats in the past.""Standing there with LIZ CHENEY, we're all really aware of how unusual this alliance is, and I think it just underlines the five-alarm emergency of the campaign," he told Playbook.
If it doesn't work, of course, there is certain to be significant second-guessing of the strategy -- and the time -- the Harris campaign invested into wooing disaffected Republicans.
But even if it does work, it's an open question just how durable this alliance is if Harris wins and Trump recedes from center stage.
....
Far from dissolving, Never Trump could "be more energized if it is responsible in some of these states for dealing a knockout blow to Trumpism in places like the Pennsylvania suburbs and Arizona," [Heath] Mayo said.
Whoops.
If that happens, would the movement have the power to extract policy concessions from a potential Harris administration?
It didn't happen and also "no," they could not have extracted policy concessions.
"This is the million-dollar question," Mayo said. "After she wins, how do we use this political leverage -- because we will have delivered her the White House -- how do we use that leverage to communicate what it looks like for a Harris administration to tack in our direction? What does that mean for NATO and our commitments to our allies abroad? What does the foreign policy look like? What does an economic policy look like?"
It's more like two-bit question.
OLIVIA TROYE, a former Trump administration national security official, said Harris has signaled she wants to foster the coalition on more than just a transactional level."She's been very receptive on domestic stuff, immigration, and in the homeland security space," Troye said. "I have no reason to believe that she won't fulfill the promises that she's made about commitments. She said she wants to establish a bipartisan advisory council. She's really been committed to this outreach."
Others are more skeptical.
From its earliest days, the Never Trump movement has been an odd duck in American politics, a hodgepodge coalition that exists to achieve a political outcome that would obviate the need for its own existence.
...
And that's one reason to think that this ad hoc coalition has permanently realigned with Democrats -- Cheney, after all, gave $2.5 million to American Bridge 21st Century, the Democratic research shop, as Trumpian Republicans revel in pointing out.
They have permanently realigned with Democrats, who they always agreed with except on the point of American militarism. And yet the media keeps insisting they're Republicans, outside of articles like this.
Even in a world where that happens, there would still be a conceivable use case for the coalition."I would like to think that we could kind of close up the stand, have a garage sale and go back to our lives," Sykes told Playbook while driving to Ripon, Wisconsin, the birthplace of the Republican Party. "Then the conservatives in the Never Trump movement would shift into the loyal opposition again. But I don't see that happening."
I can't find a cite now, but just a couple of days after the election, if my memory is correct, Rick Wilson of the National Man-Boy Lincoln Association announced a new grift: Pay him money and he will run ads against Elon Musk and conduct "investigations."
Wilson saw that the NeverTrump grift was hitting its expiration date and so he immediately started up a NeverMusk grift.
Bret Stephens, one of the OG NeverTrumpers who parlayed his party-flip into a well-paid gig writing anti-Trump opinion pieces for the NYT, tries to walk back his Trump derangement.
Eddie Scary for The Federalist:
The media don't get to bounce back into the conversation and be taken seriously just by suggesting they've learned something meaningful.In hopes of remaining relevant to the political discourse, some big-name people in the media are professing a change of heart or newfound enlightenment that, coincidentally, only arrived after the election, when it no longer matters.
After noting that Joe Scarborough and Steven Smith, the loudmouthed know-noting ESPN gasbag, are saying some supportive things about Trump and offering some criticisms to the Democrats, Scary discusses Bret Stephens' Strange New Respect for MAGA.
...
Of greater interest is someone like New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, the self-identified conservative who has rooted against Republicans in virtually every nationwide election since at least 2012. Stephens wrote on Tuesday as a once proud "Biden conservative" that it's "time to drop the heavy moralizing and incessant doomsaying that typified so much of the Never Trump movement." He wrote of a newfound understanding that Trump's voters are largely animated by resentment for a "self-satisfied elite that thinks it knows better but often doesn't, whether the subject is Covid restrictions, immigration policy or how to get our allies to pay more for their defense."
He's just getting this now?
That's why he works for the NYT and you don't -- the important thing isn't getting it right. The important thing is getting it right at just the right time, when the leftwing lunatics all media caters to finally starts to realize they've been hoodwinked.
The key is to jump out right in front of the parade after the parade has begun marching and pretend that you're leading the parade.
Stephens concluded by pledging to "enter the new year by wishing the new administration well, by giving some of Trump's cabinet picks the benefit of the doubt, by dropping the lurid historical comparisons to past dictators, by not sounding paranoid about the ever-looming end of democracy, by hoping for the best and knowing that we need to fight the wrongs that are real and not merely what we fear, that whatever happens, this too shall pass."That's a pleasant sentiment, but it also comes just a few days too late. Which is to say, weeks after a decisive election. Before that election would have been the opportune time for adopting a more charitable view of your fellow citizens who are concerned less with Jan. 6 and more with their dwindling savings and a southern border overrun by destitute foreigners requiring care courtesy of the rundown American taxpayer.
...
Their status is diminished. That's the price they have to pay. Their audiences should ensure they pay it for a long time to come.
Cenk Uguyr (or whatever) is a leftist who's suddenly courting MAGA:
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Left's Newest NPC PsyOp: Trying to Get Trump to Turn on His Most Persuasive Ally Elon Musk by Claiming That Elon Musk is the President Now
—Ace
Did you know that we had an election but Trump didn't win, MAGAts?
That's right, MAGAts -- Elon Musk is the real president, dummies!
Ha-ha! GOT YA!
Sounds like #ElectionDenialism to me, which I was told was the greatest disinformation threat to our precious Republic.
he corporate media and other Democrat advocacy groups have been desperately casting about for a way to create tension between President-elect Trump and Elon Musk. They know that much of the progressive agenda is in serious danger if the affinity that exists between these two men endures for very long. Beginning well before the election, numerous "news" stories alleged that Musk's support of Trump created horrendous conflicts of interest. No one outside the Beltway paid any attention. Then, the demise of the 1,547 page "continuing resolution" last week inspired a new narrative -- the senior partner in the alliance was Musk rather than Trump.What actually happened here is that the Dems rolled Speaker Johnson on the CR and counted on the media to conceal its worst provisions.
Wednesday evening, after Musk and countless other critics had denounced the bill as a legislative abomination jam-packed with pork, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) took to X and thundered, "Are Republicans beholden to the American people? Or President Musk?" Likewise, when it became obvious that the original CR was a goner, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) chimed in, "Welcome to the Elon Musk presidency." Not coincidentally, Democrat operative Julie Roginsky appeared on CNN and parroted the party line: "Elon Musk is puppeteering Donald Trump." Mike Allen at Axios absurdly claimed that Musk was "the most powerful person in politics" and that he had "single-handedly" put paid to the spending bill.
Never mind that Trump, J.D. Vance, Vivek Ramaswamy, and three dozen House Republicans collectively declared that a government shutdown was preferable to passing the monstrosity that House Speaker Mike Johnson presented for a vote. The legacy news media, however, was interested in only one facet of the CR story -- that Musk had the temerity to shine a spotlight on the scam and suggest that voters should contact their representatives in Congress and share their feelings about it. In other words, he did what a truly free press corps would have done itself had it not been co-opted by the Democratic National Committee. Thus, Bloomberg's Nia-Malika Henderson portrays Musk in the following portentous terms:
Musk, with his billions and his global reach via X, is unlike anyone else in Trumpworld. Casting off cabinet secretaries and the likes of "Sloppy Steve" Bannon was much easier. Those people didn't have Musk's reach or celebrity -- or his billions. They were sycophants who needed Trump more than he needed them. By contrast, Musk confers status on Trump by being by his side. He broadens Trump's reach and his power. Put simply, Musk makes Trump bigger. Some Republicans have suggested that Musk should be the next speaker of the House, yet this would be a major step down.The obvious strategy of such claims is to get under Donald Trump's skin and this subtext has permeated the news coverage of the CR, even after the original monstrosity was replaced with a 118-page bill that passed both houses of Congress and was signed into law by alleged President Joe Biden. It's an article of faith among the denizens of the corporate media and their Democrat partners that Trump is unable to share the spotlight with anyone who might outshine him in the eyes of the public. They believe Trump's narcissism will eventually cause him to banish Musk to outer darkness once he is ensconced in the White House. But they don't really get how Trump will utilize Musk to achieve his second term goals.
The Financial Times is celebrating the memes showing Trump bowing to Pope Elon.
The media are very serious people, and also, memes are terrible and stupid and brainwashing, except when leftist crank them out in a joint NPC psychological warfare operation.
The left has all the braindead NPCs attempting this weak trolling, including, of course, credibly accused gay sexual assaulter Don LeMon.
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Whoopie Goldberg: Liberals Shouldn't Tear Their Hair Out Over Trump During the Holidays
Ana Navaro: No! We Definitely Should Pull Our Hair Out
—Ace
Hello, friends. Happy Christmas Eve and also happy Hannukah Eve. (Hannakah starts on Christmas this year, I believe.)
A little early Christmas present:
Via David Strom, Newsbusters brings us this unfriendly fire incident.
Goldberg's lack of urgency to go nowhere triggered Navarro, who immediately started a shouting match and screeched about how people "need to prepare" for Trump and were "right to be in a panic."In addition to falsely suggesting women in the military had something to fear from a Trump administration, Navarro also invoked the iconic "winter is coming" line from HBO's Game of Thrones to paint a dark picture of the next four years and insisted "they can't be relaxing and enjoying Christmas":
NAVARRO: No! Because we have the luxury of saying that because we're legal, we are successful, we are --GOLDBERG: Listen --
NAVARRO: If you are an illegal immigrant in this country, you're not going to be not in panic! If you are a woman working for the Department of Defense, you have a right to be in a panic!
GOLDBERG: Ana, you tell people to say fraught and like this! That is not --
NAVARRO: No, I'm telling people to prepare, Whoopi! I'm telling people to prepare!
GOLDBERG: You think they aren't prepared? They are prepared. I'm saying to people --
NAVARRO: So, that means they can't be relaxing and enjoying Christmas when winter is coming!
GOLDBERG: No, it doesn't mean that! You know what? I'm sorry.
NAVARRO: I mean, I disagree!
GOLDBERG: Winter is -- Babe, winter is here! Winter has been with us!
"Yeah, but my point to you is we are in a privileged position that a lot of people are going to be under his attack are not!" Navarro shrieked. "I have a family who is going through the same thing! Ana, calm down!" Goldberg shot back.
The Greatest Mental Health Crisis in American History is, in fact, The Greatest.
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The Morning Rant: Minimalist Edition
—CBD
I am a dedicated believer in the concept of American Exceptionalism, and I will defend the idea that Americans are the finest people on the planet.
But nowhere in our culture is there as much of a disparity between those ideas, and their practice, than our government; specifically our representatives, though generally pretty much everyone.
Ace wrote about Matt Gaetz and the House ethics report that was released yesterday, saying:
Now do all 434 other members. As long as we're getting judgy.
And he is absolutely correct. The report was a political hit job, and the House should be embarrassed. But...we SHOULD be judgy when it comes to the people who represent us, because they also represent the country and its culture.
I am under no illusions about what power does.
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.-- John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
The current crop of reprobates (with none of the humor of that word) gleefully break their own rules, lots of laws, and then create carve-outs in those laws so that they can behave differently than the people they claim to represent. For instance, Congress may buy and sell stocks based on what is called "Material Non-Public Information" (MNPI). You can't. Nobody except Congress can. You will go to jail if you do it! The federal government's financial enforcement arm (the SEC) sends people to jail every year for that sort of stuff, and they fine a lot more. That's how a conniving mid-wit like Nancy Pelosi can be fabulously wealthy (net worth of more than $240,000,000) on a salary of $200k/year.
There is a secret slush fund used by Congress to pay off the people whom they sexually harass and sexually assault. Wouldn't you like to know where that money has gone, and for whom? My guess is that there are also plenty of auto accident injuries that were hushed up, and probably a bunch of DUIs in that mix.
And even when our representatives aren't committing felonies, they are behaving like entitled asses. They park where they want. They behave abominably at public restaurants. They sneer at their constituents. They are contemptuous of the people who pay for their obscene junkets to fascinating places. Anyone want to bet against me when I suggest that there are probably a dozen members of Congress in London or Paris or Prague on "official business," conveniently scheduled to correspond with Christmas shopping?
Let's start holding our representatives to some minimum standard of conduct. Let us demand that they behave as if they are in our business, working for us. Because that is exactly what they are doing.
I am being optimistic in the extreme when I hope for a shift away from an imperial government. It won't happen absent a fundamental upheaval in our society. But we can demand some propriety from these people. Matt Gaetz probably didn't have sex with a 17-year old girl, but does anyone doubt that he boasted of his conquests, and behaved like a high school boy?
Term limits are problematic in a free society, but I see no other way to limit -- even slightly -- the sense of entitlement and the disconnect between our representatives and us. "Throw The Bums Out" should be reflexive! Make them prove that they deserve our trust by not behaving like they are royalty!
[Crossposted at CutJibNewsletter]
The Morning Report — 12/24/24
—J.J. Sefton
Good morning kids. Considering tomorrow is Christmas as well as Hanukkah, which are supposed to be, and indeed are joyous occasions, it pains me to have to bring you news items such as many of the ones below, which are not only not uplifting, but in the main, depressing and in some cases truly revolting. After yesterday's immolation of a NYC straphanger by a subhuman Guatemalan savage illegal alien in which the only thing people did was quite understandably quake in abject terror and horror, or worse, whip out their cellphones to film the barbarism.
No one helped.The bystanders were too busy filming. The cops? Well, instead of wrapping their jackets around a burning woman in an F train stopped at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue Station on Sunday morning, they walked by.
Then there was Sebastian Zapeta-Calil, the animal charged with lighting the match that set the innocent subway rider on fire — thus igniting a hellscape that feels like a metaphor for New York City’s decaying underground.
The footage itself is a dystopian horror show: a female figure standing like a zombie while her sadistic torturer sits on the platform and watches her body be eaten by flames.
Not merely a metaphor for New York City, sad to say. Given the nature of the anti-American, anti-Civilization Left, which have spent over 200 years attempting to utterly destroy the pinnacle of Western and human advancement – the American nation as envisioned and established by our founding fathers. from its epicenter in the Democrat Party, in its drive for absolute power and control.
That is why what happened on that subway train to that poor woman happened, and just as tragic why no one lifted a finger to try and stop it. And why someone like Daniel Penny had to be destroyed by the aforementioned political party and movement of Evil incarnate. The psychotic fiend he accidentally dispatched while merely trying to restrain him is their creation. via LBJ and the dissolute parents that gave birth to him and then abandoned him to his fate, and ours. That multiplied by how many million since the Great Society? If not before.
I mean it when I write that every disaster, all of the ills, all the misery, suffering, dislocation waste of blood, treasure and human potential is the fault of or has been made exponentially worse by the direct action of the Democrat Left compounded by their attempts at "correcting" the problems that they themselves caused in the first place. The historical record is quite clear.
Remember, Joe Biden is not merely demented. Before his brain accelerated its rapid degeneration in front of our eyes over the past four to 12 years as both VP and puppet of Obama and Obama's puppet masters, Joe Biden was a perverted, venal criminal who spent half a century in public life selling his office to the highest bidder, including some of America's greatest foreign rivals and outright enemies.
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said on Sunday that he is “aware of reports of children being trafficked,” but that stopping it is “outside the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security.”More than half a million illegal immigrant children have been knowingly let into the country in recent years — about 120,000 a year — under a policy shielding “unaccompanied alien children.” The New York Times found that one-third could not be located thirty days later.
Mayorkas shrugged aside the high numbers of children that disappear, saying some could just be illegal immigrants refusing to cooperate with the conditions they agreed to. “Individuals do not comply with the reporting obligations, or otherwise, I think it is inaccurate to say that all of them are trafficked or victimized,” he said on Face the Nation.
If it were merely ONE single solitary child that faced the monsters among us – the vast majority unleashed on us by Biden, Mayorkas and those who demand open borders and the dismantling of prisons, it would be a crime against humanity in my humble opinion. If only that Guatemalan savage set Mayorkas on fire, then we'd have justice because, speaking of one child left to fend for himself:
An illegal alien accused of causing the crash that killed 12-year-old Travis Wolfe in Hazelwood, Missouri, last year is now out of jail without paying any bail. Endrina Bracho, an illegal alien from Venezuela, was charged in March with one count of first-degree involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree assault, two counts of child endangerment, and one count of driving without a license after allegedly causing a December 2023 crash that left Wolfe dead and his parents, Timothy and Stephanie Wolfe, injured.
¡De huevos y tortillas! You xenophobic ingrates.
A gay Georgia couple convicted of sickening sexually abuse of their two adopted sons will spend the rest of the lives behind bars.William and Zachary Zulock, 34 and 36, were each sentenced last week to 100 years in prison without the possibility of parole, the Walton County District Attorney’s office announced.
“These two Defendants truly created a house of horrors and put their extremely dark desires above everything and everyone else,” said District Attorney Randy McGinley, according to WSB-TV. “However, the depth of the Defendants’ depravity, which is as deep as it gets, is not greater than the resolve of those that fought for justice and the strength of the victims in this case. The resolve I have seen from these two young victims over the last two years is truly inspiring,” he added.
You don't necessarily have to be homosexual to abuse children. But it sure does seem as if the overwhelming majority of horror stories like this feature homosexuals as the perpetrators. Of course, they are aided and abetted by deviants in and out of government who demand orphaned children be placed with homosexual couples.
As I have often stated,I don't care what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home, so long as children, animals or unwilling participants are not involved. The propaganda that 20 per cent to upwards of a third of the population are homosexuals is ridiculous. It's an evolutionary dead-end; Humanity would've buggered itself into extinction thousands of years ago. Can you say "grooming?" Sure, I knew you could.
That puts all those thousands of unaccounted for children Mayorkas refuses to acknowledge in a different and very chilling light.
But wait, there's more. A whole lot more!
As one of his final acts as president, Joe Biden is commuting the death sentences of 37 of the federal government’s 40 death row inmates, giving them life sentences instead. These 37 men include some of the most violent killers in the United States.
Given that the decarceration movement, the defund the police movement and the blood-libeling of America as founded as an illegitimate, racist, white-supremacist society built on the blood and bones of oppressed blacks and indigenous natives where only the dismantling of a criminal justice system that evolved from the savagery and carnage of human history into Magna Carta and its precepts that came to our shores with the Brits can redress those dangerous, mythological lies. I am shocked that infamous cop killer Mumia Abu Jamal was not pardoned by Biden. Meh, there's still three weeks or so to go before he departs. Given he barely knows who he is, let alone where he is at any given moment, He'll sign anything that whoever his puppet-master du jour is tells him to sign. As I had suggested in a previous column, How great would it be if Trump or Kash Patel, or whoever winds up at the top in Foggy Bottom and Langley can engineer the capture and/or repatriation of Joanne Chesimard (aka Assata Shakur)
where she can stand trial for murder and then hold a publicly televised execution. While I say to hell with this "restorative justice" claptrap, what I suggest above would indeed be both restorative for our collective American soul and Justice! Too long delayed though it may be. Give bipedal vermin Jamaal Bowman a front row seat, since he publicly hailed this scum cop-killer a hero.
On a separate note, even if a fraction of what Matt Gaetz is alleged to have done is true – and given the nature of the forces arrayed against him, and and us, and from past experience vis a vis the persecution and kangaroo court charges against Donald Trump, it's likely 100% of it is either total bullshit or exaggerated and distorted beyond all recognition to the truth. In comparison to any Democrat or Leftist, Matt Gaetz is as pure as the wind-driven snow.
All of that said, that this is both Christmas and Hanukkah, it is a season that celebrates great joy and of hope. Of deliverance into the light from a protracted epoch of darkness and uncertainty. Have faith, dear friends. Because together we shall indeed overcome!!!
Lastly, a shout-out and thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know. Have a great day! See you tomorrow on Christmas Morning and the remainder of the week.
God bless us, everyone!!!
- ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
- Self-government is utterly impossible under the sustained, government-led censorship campaign that has distorted public life for the last 15 years and which we are only now beginning to understand.
The Return of Free Speech - William and Zachary Zulock, 34 and 36, were each sentenced last week to 100 years in prison without the possibility of parole, the Walton County District Attorney’s office announced.
Gay couple who showed off picture-perfect family get 100 years in prison for horrific rape of adopted sons (You don't have to be a homosexual to do this, but this kind of "Abomination" seems to involve homosexuals more often than not, right? - jjs)
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Daily Tech News 24 December 2024
—Pixy Misa
Top Story- Elon Musk's xAI company has secured $6 billion in investment. (Tech Crunch)
If you're paying attention, this may be old news. xAI raised $6 billion in May.
If you're really paying attention, though, this is new news. This is a different $6 billion, filed with the SEC last Thursday.
That's a total of $12 billion, or as ChatGPT would put it, the same as the number of Rs in "strawberry".
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Festivus Monday Overnight Open Thread - December 23, 2024 [Doof]
—Open Blogger
Happy Festivus, Hordelings. The ONT has got a lot of problems with you people, and now you're gonna hear about it.
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I Can't Believe It's Not Christmas Yet Cafe
—Ace
I can't believe it's not Gary, Indiana
More of Gary, Indiana going all-out for Christmas in this thread.
Though I think it's a joke.
Santa's missing some of his deer.
The best little cashier.
Making ice cream right in the udder.
Bunny-thugs vandalize snowman.
ICYMI: Sled dog.
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Bill Clinton In Hospital After Coming Down with Fever
Update: Illness Diagnosed as Thicc White Girl Fever
—Ace
Must be a high fever to warrant a stay in the hospital.
Meanwhile: As people wonder if Joe Biden is really even making decisions in the White House -- and Senator Tom Cotton wonders if his pardons of multiple murderers can be reversed on grounds of presidential incapacity -- Kamala Harris returned from her Hawaiian vacation to Washington DC.
House Ethics Report Places Matt Gaetz on "Naughty" List
—Ace
The House released its ethics report, and it's not great.
Gaetz may have plenty of defenses for these charges, but they're not all blow-offs:
In sum, the Committee found substantial evidence of the following:* From at least 2017 to 2020, Representative Gaetz regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him.
* In 2017, Representative Gaetz engaged in sexual activity with a 17-year-old girl.
* During the period 2017 to 2019, Representative Gaetz used or possessed illegal drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy, on multiple occasions.
* Representative Gaetz accepted gifts, including transportation and lodging in connection with a 2018 trip to the Bahamas, in excess of permissible amounts.
* In 2018, Representative Gaetz arranged for his Chief of Staff to assist a woman with whom he engaged in sexual activity in obtaining a passport, falsely indicating to the U.S. Department of State that she was a constituent.
* Representative Gaetz knowingly and willfully sought to impede and obstruct the Committee's investigation of his conduct.
* Representative Gaetz has acted in a manner that reflects discreditably upon the House.
Now do all 434 other members. As long as we're getting judgy.
It shouldn't be forgotten that no prosecutor thought these claims were strong enough to bring charges. And it can't be forgotten that other Congressmen hate Gaetz -- including, most of all, establishment Republicans -- and would generally say that almost any charge against him has "substantial evidence" behind it.
Not a great idea for him to put his name forward for AG, though. There's a myth about a father and son making wings out of feathers and wax that comes to mind.
Daily Mail: "Depressed" Joe Biden is Being Encouraged by "Vengeful" Doktor Jill Biden to "Burn the Whole Thing Down" as Payback for Coup
—Ace
As you know, Biden is particularly enraged at Nancy Pelosi for ringleading the coup against him. Well, her and Obama, of course.
It is no coincidence that Biden is considering proposing banning congressmen trading in individual stocks -- far too late, of course, but he's considering that to embarrass Nancy Pelosi, who is infamous for somehow being the most astute individual sock-picker in the world.
She's just that smart. Like Hillary Clinton making a fortune trading cattle futures -- all of their successes are due to their own research and sky-high IQs. Getting passed insider information, and having advanced knowledge of what market-altering bills are about to be proposed, has nothing to do with it. Not a thing, Woman-Hating Bigots! Damn your mouths for even whispering it!
-- In a call with news media last week, U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville characterized President Joe Biden's recent call to ban congressional stock trading as a retaliation against U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, for her alleged role in pressuring the president to step out of the 2024 race."I don't think (Biden) and Nancy Pelosi are getting along very well right now after Pelosi fired him from being president," Tuberville told Alabama Daily News. "I don't know how she was able to do that, but she convinced him to get out of the race, which he should have, but it was her."
Pelosi, along with her husband, Paul Pelosi, have seen among the highest returns in the stock market among members of Congress, with her stock trades yielding returns of more than 720% over the past decade. As of August, the Pelosis have an estimated net worth of more than $230 million.
This is probable cause for arrest right here.
Pelosi has been reluctant to support legislation that would outright ban members of Congress from trading stocks, telling reporters in 2021 that "we are a free market economy," and that members of Congress "should be able to participate in that."
The famously pro-free-market Nancy Pelosi wants you to know she's so pro-free-market that it would be a deprivation of her rights to block her from making trades in individual stocks.
Note this ban is just about picking individual stocks -- congressmen could still do what 90% of the public does, which is just invest in a broad money-market type pool of stocks.
Via andycanuck, nasty whore "doctor" Jill Biden is urging Biden to "burn it all down" on their way out.
At least according to the Daily Mail:
Tis the season for revenge! For President Joe Biden is spending the remaining weeks of his presidency settling scores.Between organizing this year's White House Christmas decorations, staff holiday parties and a string of final goodbyes, the president and First Lady Jill Biden have been quietly sharpening the metaphorical carving knives, with their sights set firmly on the one-time allies they perceive as having wronged them.
Biden infuriated many senior members of the Democratic Party with his shocking U-turn and pardon of his son Hunter a fortnight ago, after months of publicly vowing he wouldn't make such a move.
The pardon came alongside the quiet commuting of around 1,500 sentences, including for the relative of a member of the Chinese Communist Party who had been caught with child porn on his computer.
Now, sources say, the first lady has been egging her husband on to further inflame fury among his colleagues.
'Jill views Democrats on Capitol Hill, the [wider] party, the Obamas, staff inside and outside the White House, the media, and all of Washington DC with such misguided resentment that I can't imagine she [isn't] encouraging [Joe] to burn the whole thing down, despite his better judgment,' an insider said.
A particular target for the First Couple is said to be former house speaker Nancy Pelosi, who led the effort to push Biden out of the 2024 election race -- personally calling him and demanding he quit in the hours before he withdrew on June 21.
The pair had been friends for some 50 years, but a wounded Biden has since been giving her the silent treatment. Any repair in relations is thought to be unlikely.
At the annual Kennedy Center Honors held earlier this month in DC, it was noted that Pelosi was seated far away and out of the Bidens' eye-line.
She and her husband Paul Pelosi had been guests of honor in the presidential box in previous years. Now they had been relegated to the orchestra section on the floor.
Also in attendance at the awards ceremony were vice president and recent election-loser Kamala Harris, alongside her husband Doug Emhoff. As is correct for a VP, they were in the presidential box, placed next to the Bidens. Though keen observers were quick to point out that, as the crowd stood to welcome the president and his wife, neither so much as glanced at Harris or Emhoff.
Why? One Democratic mega-donor, Floridian attorney John Morgan, is now wondering aloud whether Biden deliberately forced Kamala Harris onto the ticket -- throwing his endorsement behind her within minutes of pulling out -- to spite Pelosi and Barack Obama, who had also worked behind the scenes to push Biden out, and who both held serious reservations about Harris's capabilities.
'[Biden] basically had the palace coup from all directions, from George Clooney to Pelosi. I think he got pissed off [and] said, "F*** you", and gave us Harris,' said Morgan, who has known Biden for decades and attended a 'thank you' dinner for donors at the White House last month.
'Pelosi had told her delegation that there would be a convention and a nominating process. And Barack Obama did not endorse [Harris] for five days,' Morgan pointed out.
What next for this pair of diseased grifters?
Publicly at least, the Biden administration has been keen to reassure Americans that the president remains hard at work.
Obviously, Mr. 40/40 (40% of days on vacation, working "40%" of the hours in the few working days he's in the office) is "hard at work."
...
Biden is now eying his next steps, which means planning for a future outside official life. He's expected by many to establish his presidential library in Delaware.
For her part, Jill Biden is retiring. She announced this week that she has taught her last semester at Northern Virigina Community College, where she has been an English professor.
Biden will be dead in six months, due to age and the post-Christmas season's notoriously high death rates.
Which is too bad, because I want him to live longer to feel the pain of his failure and infamy.
Congresswoman With Advanced Dementia Has Been Living in a Memory Care Home For Six Months and Hasn't Attended Congress or Cast a Vote In All That Time;
Corrupt DC Media and Political Class Knew All About This, But Hid It From Citizens
—Ace
Now the Republicans have their own Joe Biden.
Texas Rep. Kay Granger has been living in an independent living facility for six months, her family confirmed after speculation about her absence from Washington. Reports of her health struggles, including signs of dementia, have fueled controversy over her decision not to retire earlier.Key Details:
Granger, 81, has not cast a vote since July and stepped down as House Appropriations Committee Chair in March.
Her son confirmed she resides in an independent living facility, denying claims she's in memory care, despite acknowledging her "very rapid" cognitive decline.
Critics argue her absence from Congress has left her district underrepresented, while her family defends her decision to remain in her role until retirement.Diving Deeper:
Rep. Kay Granger, the 81-year-old Republican from Texas, has spent the last six months in an independent living facility as she faces health challenges, including signs of dementia, her family revealed this weekend. Granger, who has represented Texas's 12th District since 1997, has not voted in the House since July, raising questions about her ability to fulfill her duties.
Her absence became public after The Dallas Express reported she was living in a memory care unit. However, her son, Brandon Granger, refuted the claims, stating she resides in a "nice condo" in the independent living section of the facility. He added that the decision to move was hers, made in anticipation of her retirement.
"She's not in memory care," Brandon Granger told the New York Post. "It's been a very rapid and difficult decline, but she's still enjoying her life."
Well that's the important thing, that she's enjoying her life. Her constituents obviously don't matter.
Granger's spokesperson, Valerie Nelson, confirmed the congresswoman has faced "unforeseen health challenges" that make frequent travel to Washington difficult. Critics, however, argue her prolonged absence left her constituents without representation during critical legislative debates, including a recent spending showdown.The Dallas Express, run by Granger's former primary challenger Chris Putnam, faced scrutiny for breaking the story. Putnam denied any personal bias, stating, "The right thing for her to have done was quietly and gracefully resign."
Below, a DC reporter says that it was an open secret that she had advanced senility, and would wander through Congress asking people where she worked.
And that was when she was even bothering to be physically present in DC.
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Focus Group Says That Democrats Are Weak and Overly Focused on "Diversity" and Other "Elite" Luxury Concerns Like Endless Gender Transitions for Children
—Ace
Obviously, all of this was already obvious, and obvious for the past 10 years.
Trump didn't get elected in 2016 because the public supported in the Democrat "elite" agenda, after all.
New research shows the massive hole Dems are inEven voters who previously backed Democrats cast the party as weak and overly focused on diversity and elites.
That massive hole? Doctor Jill Biden.
Democrats conducting post-mortems on their sweeping losses in 2024 are finding more reason for alarm. And the problem isn't just Kamala Harris or Joe Biden.In a trio of focus groups, even voters who previously backed Democrats cast the party as weak and overly focused on diversity and elites, according to research by the progressive group Navigator Research.
When asked to compare the Democratic Party to an animal, one participant compared the party to an ostrich because "they've got their heads in the sand and are absolutely committed to their own ideas, even when they're failing." Another likened them to koalas, who "are complacent and lazy about getting policy wins that we really need." Democrats, another said, are "not a friend of the working class anymore."
[W]hile some Democrats blame Biden, others blame inflation and still others blame "losing hold of culture," the feedback from the focus groups found Democrats' problems are even more widespread and potentially long-lasting than a single election cycle....
"This weakness they see, [Democrats] not getting things done, not being able to actually fight for people -- is something that needs to be figured out," Russell said. "It might not be the message, it might be the policy. It might be something a little bit deeper that has to be addressed by the party."
The focus groups, um, focused on Democrats who had either jumped to Trump or had just stayed home.
...
"I think what the Democratic elites and their politicians believe is often very different from what the average Democratic voter is," said a Georgia man who voted for Biden in 2020 but Trump in 2024. "The elites that run the Democratic Party -- I think they're way too obsessed with appealing to these very far-left social progressivism that's very popular on college campuses."...
Even though the focus group voters did not solely blame Harris for their distaste of the Democratic Party, they also weren't happy about her candidacy. Participants described her as "inauthentic," "very dishonest" and "did not seem competent."...
Democrats disagree on the potency of the [Trump ad about transgenderism, sauing "Trump is for you, Kamala Harris is for they/them"], but several participants raised it unprompted in the focus groups.Lagging turnout was a major problem for Democrats in November. One woman from Georgia who didn't vote in 2024 said that she didn't agree with Harris' "thinking that it's okay for children to change their body parts."
"I think that there needs to be some parameters on what's accepted in society and what isn't. Some of the societal norms, and I think that the Democrats have tried to open that up a little too much," said a woman from Wisconsin who also didn't vote in 2024.
When asked by the moderator if she was referring to the "trans issue," the woman said, "primarily that."
I can't imagine what Democrats can do about this. The problem is that they have made all of these bizarre policies categorical imperatives, as Kant would call them -- questions of pure good vs. pure evil. There is no possibility of compromise when you've defined something as a categorical imperative, one of the atheists' Ten Commandments. Their weird dark pagan gods have pronounced that transgenderism is a perfect good not just for everyone but children in particular -- who is mere politician to gainsay what Satan has decreed?
Democrats found themselves in a similar position post Jimmy Carter, and were not willing to moderate -- or appear to moderate -- until weak-kneed pussy George Bush (senior) embarrassed them in 1988. Only after that third electoral drubbing did the supposedly "centrist" Democratic Leadership Conference, an organization of alleged moderates including a lot of governors whose experience was more practical and less ideological, wrest control of the party from the effete pansy leftist academic/government lifer faction.
I know I've already said this and in fact said it already just today, but I can't see how Democrats can throw off their (Satanic) religious dogmas based on one lost election.
It will take multiple losses before a rebel "centrist" movement can take control of the Democrat Cult again. A group like the DLC doesn't even exist right now. There's not even a group of Democrats banded together to make the case that academic/tech bro leftist progressivism is an electoral dead end.
Before a (fake) moderate can win the Democrat presidential nomination, there first has to be a serious movement within the party to make such a thing happen. There isn't one. Basically there's John Fetterman criticizing some of the more loopy open borders/pro-crime stuff and Bernie Sanders knocking identity politics (while still making a case for a more colorblind socialism).
And who else is there? Manchin retired, Krysten Sinema was voted out.
All that's left is Pelosi, AOC, Hakeem Jeffries, and a ton of Democrats united only by anti-white, anti-male, anti-straight, anti-Christian hatred.
Update:
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Drunk, Insane Illegal Alien Sets Woman On Fire in NYC Subway, Burning Her to Death
—Ace
Just another Fiery But Mostly Peaceful Migrant Murder in NYC.
A Guatemalan migrant has been arrested for allegedly lighting a sleeping subway rider on fire in Brooklyn on Sunday morning -- then watching as his innocent victim burned to death in what the police commissioner called "one of the most depraved crimes one person could possibly commit."The savage killing -- which happened at about 7:30 a.m. on an idling F train at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station -- shocked commuters, MTA workers and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who said Sunday that the heinous crime "took the life of an innocent New Yorker."
"As the train pulled into the station, the suspect calmly walked up to the victim, who was in a seated position at the end of a subway car ... and used what we believe to be a lighter to ignite the victim's clothing, which became fully engulfed in a matter of seconds," Tisch said at a press conference.
Patrolling cops smelled and saw the smoke, then followed it to the flame-covered woman, the commissioner said.
They extinguished the blaze, but the victim died at the scene.
Officials said the 33-year-old suspect came to the US in 2018 from Guatemala. He was detained by border patrol agents in Arizona in June of that year, sources said. His legal status wasn't immediately clear Sunday night.
He received a transit summons in May 2023, but his criminal record in New York City was largely clean otherwise, sources said. He was living at a shelter on Randall's Island at the time of the infraction.
Horrifying video obtained by The Post showed the suspect calmly looking on as flames consumed the still-unidentified woman, who stood inside the open subway car door.
A transit cop walked by, and seemed to pull out a radio and say something as they continued down the platform.
After the cop passed, the suspect got up as if to walk away -- then the clip cut off.
In another video, cops yelled to the gathered crowd, "Did anybody see anything? Did anybody see anything?" as smoke poured from inside the subway car.
The suspect brazenly sat on a nearby bench as cops huddled around, pulling his hood up at one point just before an officer spoke to him.
"Do me a favor? Walk down there," the cop said, motioning down the platform with his radio. "I need this space cleared up."
The man stood up, then left the scene.
"Unbeknownst to the officers who responded, the suspect had stayed on the scene and was seated on a bench on the platform just outside the train car," Tisch said.
"The body-worn cameras on the responding officers produced a very clear, detailed look at the killer."
...
Cops called ahead and halted the train at Herald Square. Then, they went from car to car until they found the suspect and arrested him, police officials said.
Tisch said the suspect had a lighter in his pocket when he was picked up.
This link has video of the woman standing in a stupor as her body burns. It's graphic. I don't know why she isn't running and screaming. Maybe she was high or too in shock to do anything.
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Biden Commutes the Sentences of Almost All Federal Convicts on Death Row
—Ace
President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates, including child killers and mass murderers, two days before Christmas. The clemency move, part of Biden's opposition to the death penalty, reduces their sentences to life in prison without parole.Key Details:
Among those spared execution are Thomas Sanders, who brutally killed a 12-year-old girl and her mother, and Iouri Mikhel, responsible for the ransom killings of five immigrants.
Three high-profile inmates, including Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, did not receive clemency.
Biden defended the decision as necessary to ensure justice but provided no specifics on why these cases warranted commutations.
Diving Deeper:
President Joe Biden ignited a firestorm of controversy on Monday by commuting the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates. The move spares the lives of individuals convicted of some of the most heinous crimes, including the murder of children, mass killings, and acts of extreme violence while in custody. Biden cited his long-standing opposition to the death penalty as justification, framing the decision as an effort to establish a "fair and effective justice system."
"Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims... and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss," Biden said in a statement. He added that he could not, in good conscience, allow a future administration to resume executions.
The list of spared inmates includes Thomas Sanders, who killed a mother and her 12-year-old daughter, and Anthony Battle, who murdered a prison guard with a hammer while already serving a life sentence for raping and killing his wife. Others, like drug kingpins Kaboni Savage and James Roane, Jr., were responsible for the deaths of multiple victims, including children, in violent drug-related crimes.
However, Biden excluded three infamous individuals: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber; Robert Bowers, the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter; and Dylann Roof, who killed nine worshippers at a Charleston church.
So either he actually does believe in the death penalty, or he's just a weak cowardly leftist virtue-signaler who's too afraid of the consequences for commuting the sentences of these people.
...The president's decision has reignited debates over the death penalty and his broader approach to criminal justice. Some see his actions as aligning with progressive goals, while others view them as an affront to justice and accountability. With just weeks left in his presidency, Biden's clemency spree cements his legacy as a divisive figure in the criminal justice reform debate.
I'll say.
Some few of you might actually be almost 29 years old and may forget the presidency of Jimmy Carter.
He was the worst. Carter's humiliating failure of the presidency set up three consecutive conservative presidential terms. Well, two Reagan terms and one liberalish Bush term. But the country was ready to vote for a conservative three times.
For fifteen years the humiliation and misery of the Carter years was a powerful memory that animated voters to vote Republican.
Joe Biden is now a worse president than Carter, and his corruption, fecklessness, failure and lying will set up at least two more Republican presidential terms.
THE MORNING RANT: America’s Gerontocracy – AWOL Texas Congresswoman Found Living in Memory Care Facility
—Buck Throckmorton
A local online media outlet that serves as competition to the legacy newspapers in Dallas and Ft. Worth just broke a huge scandal that was hiding in plain sight.
Representative Kay Granger (R – TX) has not cast a vote in Congress since last July. Her extended absence would seem newsworthy, and with Republicans holding a very narrow House majority, you’d also think that the Republican leadership would be concerned about her vote, especially considering the high-profile votes in the past week regarding the federal debt limit. As it turns out, Ms. Granger is living in a memory care facility. But it’s even worse, her entire staff appears to have shut down all constituent services, along with any pretense of there being Congressional representation for Texas’ 12 Congressional District.
The Dallas Express received a tip that “the Congresswoman has been residing at a local memory care and assisted living home for some time after having been found wandering lost and confused in her former Cultural District/West 7th neighborhood.”
As detailed in its exclusive story titled “Where is Congresswoman Kay Granger?” the Dallas Express first called Rep. Granger’s local and D.C. offices but only got voice mails. They then visited her local office only to find the door locked and its windows covered. Other occupants of the building advised that Rep. Granger’s staff all departed the office before Thanksgiving.
The journalists at the Dallas Express then paid a visit to the memory care facility, where several employees confirmed that Rep. Granger was indeed a resident.
The Express quoted Tarrant County (Ft. Worth) GOP Chairman Bo French as saying, ”The lack of representation for CD-12 is troubling to say the least. At a time when extraordinarily important votes are happening, including debt ceiling, disaster relief, farm bills and border issues, Kay Granger is nowhere to be found. The margin in Congress is razor thin and the lack of a Republican vote representing CD-12 disenfranchises 2 million people. We deserve better.”
In addition to noting that Ms. Granger and her absent staff are all still being paid by taxpayers through the end of her term in January, the Express posed these questions:
• Why have the public and Ms. Granger’s constituents been left in the dark about her whereabouts and the nature of her absence?
• Why has Congressional District 12 gone without representation for more than five months? And how has no one in Fort Worth or her larger district, particularly the Fort Worth establishment media, seemed to notice or care?
• If Ms. Granger is mentally incapacitated, why didn’t she simply retire early and allow Congressman-elect Craig Goldman to be appointed in the interim so the district could be represented during this critical vote and transition period?
Kay Granger is almost 82 years old, and was elected to Congress 28 years ago. To her credit (?), she did not seek re-election this year, and she’ll be replaced by a new Congressman when the next Congress is sworn into office in January. But she should have already stepped down, and she was almost certainly not fit for re-election in 2022, so why did she return then?
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The Morning Report — 12/23/24
—J.J. Sefton
Good morning kids. For those of a certain age, you'll recognize the name of singer Petula Clark and might be able to hum or sing a few bars of her smash 1967 hit "Don't Sleep in the Subway." As I once heard ad-libbed by famed DJ Harry Harrison on the now defunct NYC oldies station WCBS-FM after playing the tune, "You might miss your own mugging!"
Or in this case, your own immolation. Dear Lord!
A Guatemalan migrant has been arrested for allegedly lighting a sleeping subway rider on fire in Brooklyn on Sunday morning — then watching as his innocent victim burned to death in what the police commissioner called “one of the most depraved crimes one person could possibly commit.”The savage killing — which happened at about 7:30 a.m. on an idling F train at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station — shocked commuters, MTA workers and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who said Sunday that the heinous crime “took the life of an innocent New Yorker.” “As the train pulled into the station, the suspect calmly walked up to the victim, who was in a seated position at the end of a subway car … and used what we believe to be a lighter to ignite the victim’s clothing, which became fully engulfed in a matter of seconds,” Tisch said at a press conference. Patrolling cops smelled and saw the smoke, then followed it to the flame-covered woman, the commissioner said. They extinguished the blaze, but the victim died at the scene.
Officials said the 33-year-old suspect came to the US in 2018 from Guatemala. He was detained by border patrol agents in Arizona in June of that year, sources said. His legal status wasn’t immediately clear Sunday night.
He received a transit summons in May 2023, but his criminal record in New York City was largely clean otherwise, sources said. He was living at a shelter on Randall’s Island at the time of the infraction.
Horrifying video obtained by The Post showed the suspect calmly looking on as flames consumed the still-unidentified woman, who stood inside the open subway car door.
He lit her on fire, he knew he could light her on fire, and no Daniel Penny appeared to save her.A message was sent with the prosecution of Penny that anyone trying to save people on a subway from psychopaths with fiery murder on their minds would go through the prosecution he did, acquitted or not. That horse has left the barn.
What's more, as the cops slouched by, no one stepped in to try to put out the fire or rescue the victim. One cop bumblingly told the accused murderer, sitting on the subway station bench in order to gloatingly watch the crime, to move along, rather than collar him. He should have known better but didn't, so the alleged perp got away, until a couple of alert high schoolers called in that they saw him on another train. That was much less risk than stopping him, and with all the massive media coverage, the cops got serious about apprehending him, so he was finally picked up. He easily could have gotten away otherwise.
But at the same time this horrific drama was taking place, New York's Gov. Kathy Hochul was out crowing and gaslighting about how much safer she made the subways of New York:
In March, I took action to make our subways safer for the millions of people who take the trains each day. Since deploying the @NationalGuardNY to support @NYPDnews and @MTA safety efforts and adding cameras to all subway cars, crime is going down, and ridership is going up.
Meanwhile, just across the East River at almost the same time. . .
The audience at NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” cheered upon hearing the name of Luigi Mangione, the man who is charged with murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City earlier this month.It happened when “Weekend Update” anchor Colin Jost began to talk about Mangione being transported back to New York City by authorities after he was captured in Pennsylvania. Jost barely managed to mention Mangione’s name before the audience cheered and he stopped mid-joke to acknowledge the elation in the room.
Ignore the context, that is the disease-ridden sewer from which these words emanate:
“I think the whole country has what I call a low-grade fever,” Warnock said. “You know some mornings you wake up and you just don’t feel really well. You can’t even put your finger on it. We’ve been through four years of COVID. And people — you know, the early years of that, the early months of that, having to shelter in, all the trauma around that. Twenty years of what felt like an endless war, and then demagogues who make — you know, who exploit this moment through exacerbating the fault lines, the cultural fault lines of division in our country. And I think people just feel the full weight and the trauma of all of that.”
The unmitigated gall of this degenerate, savage, criminal vampire to dare state this when it is he, his political party and those who installed him in office (via actual legal votes or in his case, fraudulent ballots) that have utterly trashed this nation for over 200 years in an unslakeable lust for absolute power and control that at its core is the perverted vision of absolute moral superiority and belief not just that God is on your side but indeed that you and yours are Gods and that we are an evil to be eradicated.
And yet, how right he is, only not in the way perhaps he thinks. Cheering cold-blooded murder as well as what the majority of headlines in the links state, indicate how low we as a society and how much of the west has degenerated along with it.
In sum, for the last four years, the world has watched aghast as the United States lost its collective mind and became a radical Jacobin revolutionary society.So why is there not a sense of almost ecstatic relief, not just among conservatives but even among Democrats, that the years of darkness and madness are ending?
. . . Summed up, the welcomed counterrevolution is one of restoration—to dream again that nothing is impossible, and the dreary age of stasis, envy, cynicism, and nihilism is ending, replaced again by a world without limits. No one knows quite what is ahead, but all know that it is at least better already than the current nightmare.
I wish I could share the good Dr. Hanson's optimism, if indeed he is being optimistic. It's because I know as my dear mother of blessed memory taught me that evil never rests. Sadly, it is part of the human condition. It must be resisted by each of us in our own hearts and minds, and taught to the children lest we allow ourselves to be immolated on a subway car, or after a nightmarish trip in a cattle car in a gas chamber and ultimately to be turned into ashes in the crematoria.
This is where it eventually leads unless we not only pay attention but are willing to risk our own comfort and perhaps security to preserve this little slice of paradise that still in many ways is the last greatest hope for humanity. We, and the relative condition of living in peace and prosperity, faltering as it had in decades past is indeed not the norm. The notion of American exceptionalism is not that we are an exceptional people, but that the nation and society our founders created was intended to be the "exception" to history, which since the beginning of human history, in one form or another were tyrannies that placed the individual citizen at the bottom of a hierarchy that more often than not ground said citizen into the earth for the benefit of kings, tyrants, dictators and czars.
Well, for the first time in many many years both Christmas and Hanukkah fall on the same day. On that happy note, it is indeed a season and a time to celebrate holidays of salvation and of miracles.
Lastly, a shout-out and thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know. Have a great day! See you tomorrow for Christmas eve and the remainder of the week.
God bless us, everyone!!!
- ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
- Thad McCotter: Populism’s focus on domestic concerns may be flawed, but history proves globalist ideologies have wrought far greater destruction.
A Distinction Between Populist Movements and Globalist Ideologies
- Roger Kimball: Elon Musk’s push for transparency and fiscal responsibility has reshaped the debate over government spending, exposing inefficiency and forcing Congress to answer to the public.
Musk Derangement Syndrome
- “He is a politician,” Putin said of Biden. “And it is always important what is more in you — a politician or a human being. It turned out that Biden is more of a human being. I would not condemn him for this.” He’s not saying that as a complement! He’s saying that Biden is corrupt!
Putin: Joe Biden Is Corrupt, Unpresidential… and Less Honorable than Stalin!
- Victor Davis Hanson: Eagerness to get rid of the current nightmare is pervasive.
Are the Years of Madness Ending?
- They break everything on their way out.
Democrats Don’t Transfer Power Peacefully
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Daily Tech News 23 December 2024
—Pixy Misa
Top Story- OpenAI's next generation model, GPT-5, is ahead of schedule and coming in under budget. (WSJ / MSN)
Sorry, just kidding. GPT-5 is not working, may never work as planned, and each training run takes six months and costs half a billion dollars.OpenAI has conducted at least two large training runs, each of which entails months of crunching huge amounts of data, with the goal of making Orion smarter. Each time, new problems arose and the software fell short of the results researchers were hoping for, people close to the project say.
Also there's the tiny problem that with GPT-4, OpenAI already looted the entire public internet. GPT-5 needs a lot more data for its training, and there isn't more data.OpenAI's solution was to create data from scratch.
But, you say, the internet contains all human knowledge. Won't trying to expand that significantly take a long time? Won't it cost a huge amount of money?It is hiring people to write fresh software code or solve math problems for Orion to learn from. The workers, some of whom are software engineers and mathematicians, also share explanations for their work with Orion.
Yes.The process is painfully slow. GPT-4 was trained on an estimated 13 trillion tokens. A thousand people writing 5,000 words a day would take months to produce a billion tokens.
What about using AI to train your new AI?OpenAI also started developing what is called synthetic data, or data created by AI, to help train Orion. The feedback loop of AI creating data for AI can often cause malfunctions or result in nonsensical answers, research has shown.
Scientists at OpenAI are paid to think that. They are paid a lot to think that.
Scientists at OpenAI think they can avoid those problems by using data generated by another of its AI models, called o1, people familiar with the matter said.
In short, your job is safe for now.
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