Ace of Spades HQ

October 03, 2026

Hobby Thread - October 3, 2026 [TRex]

—Open Blogger

Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the Horde in this little corner of the interweb. This is the mighty, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread. For this week, the Wheel of Hobbies (TM) is feeling spooky and decided on a Halloween hobbying theme for this Hobby Thread.

Halloween hobbying?! Yes! Tell me more!

[Top photo: Dallas Arboretum Pumpkin Village]

Posted by Open Blogger at 05:30 PM Comments

Ace of Spades Pet Thread, October 3

—K.T.

* * *

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

Would you like a treat?

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

Posted by K.T. at 03:23 PM Comments

Gardening, Home and Nature Thread, Oct. 3

—K.T.

Hi, KT, here's a butterfly (I think it's a "Cloudless Sulfur"). I saw it feeding on some of the flowers in an outside flower exhibit at the local Lowes here in East Tennessee. I wonder, is this the equivalent of going to the food court at the mall?
Thanks for the weekend threads!

BeckoningChasm

A tiny food court for butterflies!

*

Posted by K.T. at 10:35 AM Comments

Barbarians gonna barbarian

—K.T.

Ancient and Modern Barbarians

Growing up, it was a common trope that cultures that we now associate with poverty, violence, and oppression were once world-leading in promoting prosperity and moral progress as well as the quintessentially human act of inventing. This popular belief was ultimately not driven by an earnest desire to promote awareness of empirically true but neglected facts. Instead, it was supported by anecdotes and quotations of dubious reliability and relevance, by scholarship that has turned out to be exaggerated or fraudulent, and by the promotion of these things in popular media.
My favorite example of this has to do with the invention of many of the inventions credited to the so-called Islamic Golden Age by a rogue Wikipedia editor.

My latest article is about how a rogue Wikipedia editor confabulated and misattributed thousands of inventions and concepts to Muslims

This trolling made its way into blogs, articles, books, and TV programs. You might even believe some of his lies!

Link: https://t.co/4wYDCYPMm3 pic.twitter.com/yFOIaXqrSs
— Crémieux (@cremieuxrecueil) October 1, 2026

The article is enlightening and the comments on the X thread are fun:

This post was literally predicted and originally written by Al-Deeznutz in 1431.

- TRUE.

A Saudi tried to convince me today that Arabs predate Jews in Judaea.
- So a Saudi who couldn't read his own "holy book" . . not even a little bit shocked.

I still think an American kid who didn't speak Scots writing most of the Scots-language Wikipedia articles was the funnier scandal
- There are so many hilarious Wikipedia scandals. I thought about mentioning that one, but I'd mentioned it too recently.

*

The top responses to this by Muslims so far are:
- Illiterate-tier misreadings of clear sentences

- Claiming the article says things it doesn't

- Doxxing with false information

There are barbarians everywhere!

* * * * *

Oct. 7 coming up

Don't fall for "Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender"!

This poster should go in virtually every psychology textbook in the section where they explain the abusive strategy of DARVO. https://t.co/pOsna10iJE
— James Lindsay, anti-Communist (@ConceptualJames) October 1, 2026

*

VDH provides examples of DARVO starting immediately after October 7, 2023 in Genocide Hypocrites. You may be able to think of others.

* * * * *

The Campus Sex Management Industry

The Cornell drama makes me want to shut down all the elite universities. Where are the sensible people in this story? This guy is not sensible. But I wonder if he realizes he is advocating the destruction of his place of employment?

The latest details in "the case" which have caught my attention are that Jane Doe thought that Males #1 and 2 might be gay because of their group sex proposal and she was excited about that; she is suing her sorority for allowing her to get drunk and she is also suing a bar where she stopped for a drink on the way to the frat house. Because she was 20 rather than 21?

Heather MacDonald has written a piece on the campus rape industry and its mythology which is painful to read. Are college campuses really many times more dangerous than downtown Detroit?

Here are a few salient points:

Students in the sixties demanded that college administrators stop setting rules for fraternization. “We’re adults,” the students shouted. “We can manage our own lives. If we want to have members of the opposite sex in our rooms at any hour of the day or night, that’s our right.” The colleges meekly complied and opened a Pandora’s box of boorish, sluttish behavior that gets cruder each year. Do the boys, riding the testosterone wave, act thuggishly toward the girls? You bet! Do the girls try to match their insensitivity? Indisputably.
College girls drink themselves into near or actual oblivion before and during parties. That drinking is often goal-oriented, suggests University of Virginia graduate Karin Agness: it frees the drinker from responsibility and “provides an excuse for engaging in behavior that she ordinarily wouldn’t.” A Columbia University security official marvels at the scene at homecomings: “The women are shit-faced, saying, ‘Let’s get as drunk as we can,’ while the men are hovering over them.” As anticipated, the night can include a meaningless sexual encounter with a guy whom the girl may not even know. This less-than-romantic denouement produces the “roll and scream: you roll over the next morning so horrified at what you find next to you that you scream,” a Duke coed reports in Laura Sessions Stepp’s recent book Unhooked. To the extent that they’re remembered at all, these are the couplings that are occasionally transformed into “rape”—though far less often than the campus rape industry wishes.

Risk-management consultants travel the country to help colleges craft legal rules for student sexual congress. These rules presume that an activity originating in inchoate desire, whose nuances have taxed the expressive powers of poets, artists, and philosophers for centuries, can be reduced to a species of commercial code. The process of crafting these rules combines a voyeuristic prurience and a seeming cluelessness about sex. “It is fun,” writes Alan D. Berkowitz, a popular campus rape lecturer and consultant, “to ask students how they know if someone is sexually interested in them.” (Fun for whom? one must ask.) Continues Berkowitz: “Many of the responses rely on guesswork and inference to determine sexual intent.” Such signaling mechanisms, dating from the dawn of the human race, are no longer acceptable on the rape-sensitized campus. “In fact,” explains our consultant, “sexual intent can only be determined by clear and unambiguous communication about what is desired.” So much for seduction and romance; bring in the MBAs and lawyers.
The campus sex-management industry locks in its livelihood by introducing a specious clarity to what is inherently mysterious and an equally specious complexity to what is straightforward. Both the pseudo-clarity and pseudo-complexity work in a woman’s favor, of course. “If one partner puts a condom on the other, does that signify that they are consenting to intercourse?” asks Berkowitz. Short of guiding the thus-sheathed instrumentality to port, it’s hard to imagine a clearer signal of consent. But perhaps a girl who has just so outfitted her partner will decide after the fact that she has been “raped”—so better to declare the action, as Berkowitz does, “inherently ambiguous.” He recommends instead that colleges require “clear verbal consent” for sex, a policy that the recently disbanded Antioch College introduced in the early 1990s to universal derision.

The university is sneaking back in its in loco parentis oversight of student sexual relations, but it has replaced the moral content of that regulation with supposedly neutral legal procedure. The generation that got rid of parietal rules has re-created a form of bedroom oversight as pervasive as Bentham’s Panopticon.
But the post-1960s university is nothing if not capacious. It has institutionalized every strand of adolescent-inspired rebellion familiar since student sit-in days. The campus rape industry may decry ubiquitous male predation, but a campus sex industry puts bureaucratic clout behind the message that students should have recreational sex at every opportunity. . .

*

Plenty of people have fun and consensual group sex. They don’t typically go to the police afterward. And if what Jane Doe and these men wanted was fun and consensual group sex, they could have arranged that for the next day when they were all sober. But let’s just be honest: Most sober and empowered 20-year-old women don’t want to have sex with more than a half-dozen men in a single night, and I suspect that the men in question knew that Jane Doe was not an enthusiastic participant but someone who had to be pressured and plied.

Who are the "plenty of people" who have "fun and consensual group sex" that no one regrets?
Gay men.

George Michael was still in the closet when he released "I Want Your Sex" in the late 1980's, at the height of the AIDS crisis, an affirmation of sex positivity in the face of a pandemic that spread through sex. The song includes the line "sex is best when it's one on one" -- a stipulation that was puzzling to an audience who, for the most part, hadn't considered the possibility that sex could be other than one on one.

For the straight audience "sex" was a term that referred to an activity that was by default understood to be one on one. Only among gays would an affirmation of sex positivity have to be tempered by an enticement that sex is actually "best when it's one on one." It was also a period when public health authorities were pretending that straight people faced the same risk of AIDS as gay people so as not to portray a disease that overwhelming spread through homosexual anal sex as a "gay disease."

Fast forward to the present, kids socialize less, enter into relationships less, and have less sex than ever before -- but the gangbang has entered their repertoire through pervasive online pornography -- and of course one must acknowledge that "plenty of people have fun and consensual group sex" before noting that actually, women don't want it. For them, sex is best when it's one on one.

* * * * *

Founding Fathers

Daily dose of history, September 27

Samuel Adams was an abject failure as a businessman. After graduating from Harvard with two degrees, his father gave him the money with which to launch his business career. Sam soon lost it all. He was 26 when his father died, leaving him a substantial inheritance. But by the time Samuel reached middle age most of the money was gone and he was barely able to support his wife and two children. He was well on his way to being someone history would not remember. But in 1764, at age 42, Samuel Adams gave up any further pretense of being a businessman and devoted himself to his true calling—politics.

An ardent proponent of the rights of the colonists since his college days, and a strident admirer of the writings of John Locke, Adams was a brilliant political organizer and a stirring public speaker—seemingly a natural-born revolutionary. He emerged as a leader of the resistance to taxation without representation. To the Patriots he was an inspiring motivator. To the Tories he was a provocative rabblerouser. Adams played key roles in the events leading to both the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. He founded the Sons of Liberty. He conceived the idea of Committees of Correspondence. He organized and championed the boycott of British goods. And he served as a delegate to the Continental Congress. Thomas Jefferson would later call him, “truly the man of the Revolution.”

After retiring from Congress, Samuel Adams served as governor of his beloved Massachusetts, before dying peacefully on October 2, 1803, at age 81.
Samuel Adams was born on September 27, 1722, three hundred four years ago today.

“If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”

The image is John Singleton Copley's portrait from 1772.

* * * * *

Weekend

The Week In Pictures: Oops, They Did It Again Edition

It was another busy week in the news, although much of it had a deja vu feel. Another Muslim terrorist tried to crash an airplane, but fortunately the plane was full of Israelis and there were spare pilots on board. In the U.K., meanwhile, five “British men” were discovered by a passerby, apparently in the act of perpetrating or planning to perpetrate a terrorist attack on a U.K. air base.
Sydney Sweeney was criticized – again! – for an ad in which she looks too good. Or that is what feminists think, anyway. (Speaking of Sweeney, I have no idea whether she is a conservative or not, but she is smart enough to be one. Sydney’s ad quadrupled the value of her client to $2 billion, and she took equity in the company as her fee.) And, in an original if macabre story, Tennessee’s all-female execution team bungled the long-overdue execution of a murderer. And once again, the upcoming midterms look large in the minds of meme-makers.

* * * * *

Hope you have something nice planned for this weekend.

This is the Thread before the Gardening Thread.

Serving your mid-day open thread needs

* * * * *

Last week's thread, Okay, how do we get the kids to understand WHY things are so weird?

Comments are closed so you won't ban yourself by trying to comment on a week-old thread. But don't try it anyway.

Close it up

Posted by K.T. at 10:18 AM Comments

The Classical Saturday Morning Coffee Break & Prayer Revival

—Misanthropic Humanitarian

[That was a monumental and joyous day!]

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

1) This is an open thread. Feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate. We encourage prayer as well.
2) Be kind. Be nice. And be punctual.
3) Even if you are punctual, there is no running with sharp objects.
4) Have a blessed weekend!

*****

AoSHQ Weekly Prayer List

Please submit any prayer requests to me, “Annie’s Stew” at apaslo at-sign hotmail dot com. Prayer requests are generally removed after four weeks unless we receive an update.

Prayer Requests:

7/30 – David sent an update on his wife, Susan, who we have been praying for as she is treated for cancer. Susan is still doing well and her numbers are headed in the right direction, but they are still having issues with the side effects of the chemotherapy. It is manageable, but they have to increase the number of office visits for additional treatments. Some days are really good right now, but others are only bearable with the Lord’s grace. They are so grateful for the prayers on their behalf.
9/2 Update – Susan is back in the ICU. She either has an infection or the cancer has spread to her lungs. Either way, thank you all for your thoughts and prayers for Susan and please continue them.
9/3 Update – Thank you to everyone for their thoughts and prayers for Susan. They are expecting her to pass into the hands of the Lord in the next day or so. Please pray for them.
9/21 Update – David sends his thanks to everyone for their thoughts and prayers for Susan. She did pass away on 9/4, surrounded by family and friends.

9/10 – Annie’s Stew asks for prayers for her husband as he recovers from knee surgery.
10/1 Update – Thank you for the prayers. Hubby’s pain has decreased and he is doing well with flexibility and recovery.

9/10 – D asked for prayers for the memory of 9/11. May the Lord comfort people in the grief, and may it bring people closer to God.

9/12 – FenelonSpoke asked for prayers for the W family for comfort and strength as they grieve. The deceased was a sweet 92 year old, despite some big tragedies in her life.

9/15 – Sal asked for prayers as wildfires are out of control in the north of the area and threatening the county seat. They are evacuating part of the town. Sal is not in any danger.

9/17 – Teresa in Fort Worth sent an update with good news and bad news. The bad news is that she has a 9mm mass on her lunch, which means the cancer has metastasized outside of her liver. The pump is keeping the cancer in her liver at bay for now. The good news is that they can zap the nodule out of her lung and will watch for if any more nodules appear. As long as this is the only one, the radiation should suffice. She meets with a radiation oncologist on 9/25.

9/18 – Random Dave posted an update to his job progress. He is still looking for FT work, but has accepted a substitute teacher position (more flexibility for interviews, some income to slow the bleeding). He asks for prayers that the interview results he is waiting on will get back to him soon, especially if one is the “right job”. If any are “not the right job”, they would fall away soon and get back to him, and that if all of them are “not the right job”, the ‘right job” would show itself aggressively, so he doesn’t miss it! He also thanks the Horde and the folks at church for their prayers and support.
8/14 Update – Random Dave needs continued prayers for his job situation, that God would guide him to the right one soon, and also for prayers for M’s grandmother, who fell the other day and tore a ligament.
10/1 Update – M’s grandma is healing. They are still praying for complete healing and mobility.

9/18 – Tonypete asked for prayers for #1 son. He has something going on which is, as yet, undiagnosed. He is under care now, so that is a positive step. Prayers also for his wife and daughter #2. Mom is a spoiled princess who consistently chooses the worst path of action regarding #2.

9/18 – Brother Tim posted that he has been overnight in his car more than indoors. He is convinced that his retirement/resignation was a severe error, a result of fatigue and depression. He asks for prayers.

For submission guidelines and other relevant info, please contact Annie's Stew, who is managing the prayer list. You can contact her at apaslo at-sign hotmail dot com. If you see a prayer request posted in a thread comment, feel free to copy and paste it and e-mail it to Annie's Stew. She tries to keep up with the requests in the threads, but she's not here all of the time, so she may not see it unless you e-mail it to her. Please note: Prayer requests are generally removed after four weeks or so unless we receive an update.

2 Corinthians 4:8-9
We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.

Close it up

Posted by Misanthropic Humanitarian at 08:00 AM Comments

Daily Tech News 3 October 2026

—Pixy Misa

Top Story

I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further. (Tech Crunch)

Apple is changing the meaning of granting applications full disk access, because it meant that applications granted full disk access were granted full disk access.
In Muse's case, the AI optionally allows users to enable Full Disk Access. This setting, Apple explains, gives an app permission to access files, mail, messages, and even browsing history.
As I said.

Apple thinks its customers are idiots.

Much of the time, this is true.
"Some developers are using Full Disk Access in ways that could put users at risk, exposing everything on their systems...without users' full knowledge and understanding," Apple said in a new blog post aimed at developers.
Illiterate idiots.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 04:30 AM Comments

The "I Totally Forgot It Was Friday" ONT

—WeirdDave

I was relaxing with a book after dinner. About 8, my wife comes in and says "Hey, shouldn't you be writing the ONT?" I had totally forgotten, LOL. Anyhow...Howdy folks! So, Grok AI scanned my Twitter/X account and generated this picture of what the world would be like if I ran it.

"World under Weirddave0: Common sense paradise. One-page insurance that works, perfect street tacos (no anger), kids learning safe gun handling, free speech zones, metal detecting gold, strong families, free markets. Liberty and responsibility for all."

Posted by WeirdDave at 10:00 PM Comments

Weather Eye Cafe

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Super cell over southwestern England in June

Aerial view of a super cell over New Mexico in 2016.

Gross. Don't click. But you're going to click, right?

A female stork lost her mate but can't feed herself because she's brooding over her eggs. So the locals are feeding her.

The prodigal dog comes home.

The Monorail Man sold his system to Osaka, Japan, after taunting them by saying "Maybe it's more of a Shelbyville idea."

POV: You're driving on a mountain road in Taiwan when an earthquake hits.

The sound of hail falling on flinty rocks.

Huh: The red-and-white stripes on a windsock allow you to judge windspeed with a glance. Basically, each full band held straight by the wind equals 3 knots or 1.5 mph. It can only tell speeds up to 15 knots but if you're a real expert you can gauge speeds higher than that.

An F3 tornado in France from August.

Super cell in Nebraska -- Sidney, I think -- from June. This is just an appetizer. Check out the video of what I assume is the same super cell below.

Posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 07:20 PM Comments

The Week In Woke

—Disinformation Expert Ace

That thing that never happens happened more than 20 more times.

Just in Minnesota, too.

United States Attorney Daniel N. Rosen announced that ten defendants were separately indicted on September 24, 2026, by a federal grand jury for voter fraud. All defendants have made their initial appearances in federal court.
"Today's charges allege that ten foreign nationals committed voter fraud in Minnesota, one voting illegally as recently as this August's primary," said Attorney General Todd Blanche. "The law is clear, only American citizens may vote in American elections, and enforcing this law is fundamental to our democracy. That should not be a partisan concept."

"Our message to aliens who vote in American elections is clear: we will find you, arrest you, and you will face the consequences, including criminal charges and deportation," said DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin. "Under President Trump's leadership, this administration will never allow the votes of American citizens to be cancelled out by non-citizens illegally voting in our elections. Only American citizens should be electing American leaders."

Even greater fraud was committed in Utah, where a postal worker decided to throw over 300 mail-in ballots in the garbage.

An indictment was unsealed today charging a former postman with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) with unlawful secretion, destruction, and delay of mail after he allegedly unlawfully threw away mail that he was entrusted to deliver -- including approximately 300 mail-in ballots to registered voters in Utah.

Damon Matai Seei, 34, of Payson, Utah, was indicted by a federal grand jury on Sept. 16. He was arrested and appeared for his arraignment at the Orrin G. Hatch U.S. Courthouse this afternoon.

"When American voters lawfully cast their vote, they should feel confident that it is counted," said Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter. "Allegedly throwing away hundreds of ballots is a serious federal crime that undermines the integrity of our elections. Ballot integrity is not a partisan issue."

They don't say what zip codes these ballots came from, but I'll bet you 100 Acebucks these are from heavily Republican areas.

The "University" of Connecticut will host three sex toy workshops this fall.

The University of Connecticut (UConn) in Storrs will hold three workshops on Oct. 6, Oct. 22, and Nov. 16 where students can handle demonstration versions of sex toys, including vibrators and plugs.
The events, titled "Good Vibrations: A Pleasure Pop-Up Workshop," will be led by the "Sexperts" student group and are being advertised by the university's Student Health and Wellness.

"Join the Sexperts for our new, relaxed, drop-in workshop all about how sexual pleasure supports your overall well-being," a description states.

"You'll get to see and handle demo versions of sex toys, from vibrators and sleeves to plugs and more while the Sexperts share sex toy history, safety tips and guidance on picking the products that feel right for you," it continues.

Organizers say the event is "inclusive of all genders" and assure participants that they "will not demonstrate actual use of the items."

The Sexperts are also hosting "Kinky Craft Nights" on Oct. 27 and Nov. 12.

Oh good, I was wondering when Kinky Craft Nights would take place this year.

Princeton's faculty now boasts perfect ideological conformity/coercion -- zero Republicans.

Professors often express shock at the thought that there would be any political or ideological litmus test for hiring. I have also opposed such measures. However, the hypocrisy is crushing. Today's faculty are responsible for a near-complete ideological purging of their ranks. They have created a hostile environment for anyone with conservative or libertarian viewpoints, including students who rarely have the opportunity to hear from a professor from a center-right perspective at most schools.
Most recently, forty percent of college faculty admitted that they would vote against any Trump supporter seeking an academic position regardless of their scholarship or teaching ability. Keep in mind that this is only the professors willing to admit to such bias.

Some are more open than others.

I had dinner with a Harvard Law Professor, who expressed disbelief that I expected him to vote for any faculty applicants who held views he considered wrong. When I noted that I regularly vote for faculty candidates who hold opposing views, he just shrugged and said that, if he rejects their views, he cannot vote for those views to be taught to students.

There are few remaining conservatives or libertarians on law school faculties, which have been purged of dissenting voices through a biased hiring and promotion system. Despite years of complaints and declining public trust in higher education, faculty members continue to reinforce bias and orthodoxy in our schools.

I wrote about the rise of this new McCarthyism on the left seven years ago.

Recently, I discussed the example of Fordham University School of Law professor John Pfaff, who called for "repercussions" for professors who do not "recant" their view that the 14th Amendment does not protect birthright citizenship.

Not long ago, I debated Professor Randall Kennedy at Harvard Law School about the school's lack of ideological diversity. I respect Kennedy, and I do not view him as anti-free speech or intolerant. Yet when I noted the statistics on the vanishing number of conservative students and faculty in comparison to the nation, Kennedy responded that Harvard "is an elite university" and does not have to "look like America."

Of course, the problem is that Harvard does not even look like Massachusetts, which is nearly 30 percent Republican.

At schools like Yale and Princeton, they have achieved near 100% for Democrats (with only a couple of percent going for independent or socialist causes). Yet, if you ask faculty about the purging of their ranks, they will often shrug and say that they just cannot find a conservative or libertarian who is intellectually worthy of an appointment to their schools. It was the same absurd rationalization that was once used to justify not hiring minorities or women.

The University of Texas at Austin will eliminate four DEI fake majors.

UT Austin plans to discontinue majors in African and African diaspora studies, Mexican American and Latina/o studies, women's and gender studies, and race, indigeneity and migration. The university is retaining American studies and urban studies while directing faculty to develop broader replacement offerings.
Thomas Lindsay, a higher-education policy expert with the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), told Campus Reform that the cuts were "a defensible, if overdue, exercise of stewardship at a public flagship," while saying UT should disclose the metrics behind its decision.

"American studies" should also be eliminated. It is "media studies" -- mass media studies. TV and movies.

It's a field for people who don't want to read books but instead would just like to watch TV shows and write "essays" about them. And every American studies major I knew entered the field for the communist critiques of the media, which they claim is, of course, too right-wing.

Another fake useless time-wasting "field" in need of purging:

The University of Wisconsin--Whitewater enrolled only six undergraduate students across its Women's and Gender Studies degree programs during the fall 2025 semester.
...

UW--Whitewater had an undergraduate enrollment of 10,743 students in fall 2025, while the university welcomed its largest freshman class in a decade. The six students listed in the Women's and Gender Studies B.A. and B.S. programs represent 0.06 percent of the undergraduate student body.

Too many.

You can't start a campus club unless it's dedicated to Race Marxism.

Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, requires student organizations to submit plans addressing "anti-racism and anti-oppression" to qualify for recognition and funding from a student government supported by mandatory student fees.
The Associated Students of Willamette University bylaws include a section dedicated to "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" (DEI) that establishes standards for what the document calls "anti-racism plans." The student government now refers to them as "Community Respect & Responsibility" plans.

[RELATED: Conservative group exposes student gov for attempting to force club to create DEI position]

The criteria used to evaluate the plans must be updated annually to "reflect and target new areas of anti-racism and anti-oppression knowledge, sources of institutional concern, and noted obstacles to equitable opportunity for marginalized and minoritized students."

Organizations must submit the plans to receive student government funding. If the student government determines that a group has failed to comply with the requirements, the bylaws allow sanctions including loss of funding, suspension of officers, or disaffiliation.

The bylaws also require the Executive Council to offer an annual "Community Respect and Responsibility (CRR) training workshop." The same workshop was titled the "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training workshop" in the 2024 bylaws.

The student government is funded through mandatory student fees. Students at Willamette College, the university's undergraduate college, taking six or more credits must pay a $146 "Student Activity Fee" each semester. The student government is responsible for distributing those funds.

The student government has approved three clubs with ties to national left-wing organizations, according to Campus Reform's review of the university's official student organization list.

Those groups include Choice Action Team, Students for a Democratic Society, and Young Democratic Socialists of America.

Choice Action Team is associated with Reproductive Freedom for All, a pro-abortion activist organization.

Meanwhile, the student government has refused to recognize a student organization affiliated with Turning Point USA (TPUSA) three times in the past year.

TPUSA at Willamette, formerly known as the Constitutional Heritage Club, sought affiliation with the student government in November 2025, February 2026, and April 2026. The student government rejected the group each time, citing its connection to TPUSA.

One student senator said TPUSA's "overall image ... makes them undesirable," according to The Collegian, Willamette's student-run newspaper.

Quick Quiz-- Which Modern Day Cicero said this: "Not just memory in legacy but pride in what can be the destiny and was the destiny that many fought for"

Answer here. Did you get it?

Horrifying:

End Wokeness @EndWokeness
Sep 28

9 YEAR OLD boy in Cleveland just pled guilty to a vicious gang r*ping attempt against a 5 year old, nearly killing her

PRISON TIME IS NOT ON THE TABLE

The judge is Kristen Sweeney (D)

End Wokeness @EndWokeness
Sep 28

Welcome to the UK's "justice" system:

Danny Tommo
> damaged a migrant invader boat
> DENIED BAIL

5 terror suspects
> bomb plot against US Air Force
> RELEASED ON BAIL

We've got that going on in South Canada, too:

End Wokeness @EndWokeness Derek Chauvin
> Arrested & restrained George Floyd
> Sentenced to 22.5 YEARS in prison

Q'Laundra Hood
> Killed a pedestrian and then fled
> Sentenced to 30 DAYS in prison

Posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 06:05 PM Comments

Jack Smith Appears to Have Lied to Congress About His Pretext for Hounding Trump About Missing Documents

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Jack Smith seems to have, get this, lied to Congress about his pretext for opening up the criminal prosecution of Trump.

Just like the Russiagate Hoax.

New documents first obtained by the Daily Caller suggest former special counsel Jack Smith may have misled lawmakers and the public regarding the pretext for his investigation into President Donald Trump's retention of classified documents.
The documents reveal the National Archives' internal watchdog did not consider its February 2022 message to the Justice Department (DOJ) about Trump's possession of classified documents a criminal referral, contradicting Smith's account of how the case began. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) case report from February 2022, obtained by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, notes that its message to the Justice Department was a referral, but not a criminal referral.

Smith had previously claimed in court filings that the investigation was "[p]rompted by NARA's discovery of classified documents in the 15 boxes in January 2022 and a criminal referral from NARA in February 2022."

So first he admitted he predicated opening the investigation on the NARA "referral."

But when it turned out that you can't open a criminal investigation based on a non-criminal "referral," he retconned his story and said it wasn't based on the NARA complaint.

"The OIG determined that this matter and the other relevant matters be classified as -R (referral to DOJ for their assessment and guidance, not the same as a criminal referral for prosecution which is only done for criminal investigations)," the report first made in 2022 and edited throughout 2023 to include such information notes.

FBI messages included in the documents show that the bureau first treated the missing documents complaint as a "spillage" issue with "little likelihood of being pursued as a criminal matter."

...

"Based on the allegations as set forth below and as supplemented by our virtual meeting, Matters 1, 2, and 3 are not matters for which PIN would open a criminal investigation at this time. If you develop additional evidence related to these allegations, especially as to the contents of the underlying documents or any evidence," it continued about the potential case.

...

In June 2023, Smith's office received a massive trove from NARA: 54 spreadsheets of text messages from inside Trump's orbit obtained from the White House custodian.

After obtaining the documents, senior attorney Thomas Windom was eavesdropping on the conversations between Trump and his top advisors in his first administration, including former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, former Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, first daughter Ivanka Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and many others. It appears the review was done without first separating potentially privileged information.

Republican Senator Jack Haggerty has filed a bar complaint against sleazy Democrat operative Jack Smith.

Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., filed a bar complaint against former Special Counsel Jack Smith on Wednesday for his "serious misconduct" in running the Biden-era Arctic Frost lawfare against Donald Trump and other Republicans.
Jack Smith is "a blatantly partisan actor and his prosecutorial misconduct damaged our constitutional order. He should never be able to practice law again," Hagerty wrote in an X post announcing his filing.

The complaint filed with the Tennessee Supreme Court's Board of Professional Responsibility takes aim at Smith's use of subpoenas to obtain the phone toll records of Hagerty and other Republican members of Congress. Not only did Smith and his team seek and obtain non-disclosure orders to prevent the phone companies from notifying the GOP officials that their records were being subpoenaed, but they also reportedly did not disclose to the court approving the NDOs that the subpoenas targeted members of Congress.

Marsha Blackburn has already sued him, and wants him criminally charged.

"I think that it would be a good thing for him to face prosecution," Blackburn told the John Solomon Reports podcast this week just hours before she filed her lawsuit alleging Smith was never lawfully a special counsel and therefore violated her rights as a member of Congress by collecting her phone records.
"I think it would be a good thing for him to have to reveal who all was in on this with him, and I think it would be a very good thing for him to have to return all these records to the people that he [has] victimized," she said.

Posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 05:10 PM Comments

Hollywood: Shit or Garbage?

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Aaron Sorkin's January 6th obsessive film Social Reckoning -- raging at Mark Zuckerberg for censoring less -- expected to bomb.

Unexpectedly, it's expected to bomb.

Early reports showed the production recreating the riots that Democrats have effectively weaponized for more than five years. They obsess over the subject, eager to paint all Trump supporters with that garish brush.
Now, Jan. 6 has a movie all its own. An early report says "The Social Reckoning" weighs in on that ugly riot.

World of Reel shares a pointed reaction to the film and its subject matter:

January 6th eventually comes up, the entire film builds toward it. The film's arc leads naturally to the suggestion that January 6th was, in part, a product of Facebook itself.

Sorkin has literally said the same thing on the record regarding Facebook and Jan. 6.

The problem?

Who will actually see the movie? Box office projections have "The Social Reckoning" opening to a very soft $6-$10 million on its opening weekend. The competition won't be stiff.

Ana Navarro is urging the Disney Groomer Network to fight the FCC's investigation into its partisanship -- which would require it to devote equal time to the other side -- while urging viewers to vote Democrat.

ABC's The View co-host Ana Navarro urged viewers in a competitive Florida congressional district to vote and promoted the Democratic candidate challenging the Republican incumbent -- even as Disney-owned ABC is fighting to preserve the daytime program's status as a "bona fide" news interview program before the Federal Communications Commission.
...

Navarro did not stop at encouraging viewers to participate in the election. She specifically discussed defeating Salazar and promoted her Democratic opponent.

"And we can actually knock this woman out," Navarro said. "There's a great guy running. His name is Elliott Rodriguez. Give him a look!"

Salazar is actually an open borders "Republican," but that gets her no grace from the partisan Navarro.

That simple comment could cause a major issue for The View, ABC, and the entire Disney company.
The remarks come at a particularly notable moment for ABC because the network is currently embroiled in a dispute with the FCC over The View's treatment under federal equal-opportunities rules.

In May, ABC and Disney-owned Houston station KTRK-TV formally petitioned the FCC to declare that The View qualifies as a "bona fide news interview program."

...

ABC maintains that The View qualifies for the exemption and has argued that FCC scrutiny of the program threatens the network's First Amendment rights.

Navarro's remarks are now drawing renewed criticism of that position.

Daily Wire opinion editor Ben Domenech responded, "How is this not electioneering? She's literally telling them who to vote for."

Speaking of intense partisans at the Disney Groomer Network: Programming chief Dana Walden (a real lefty scrunt) seems to hint that Jimmy Kimmel is donezo.

Disney's Dana Walden on Jimmy Kimmel's Late Night Future: "It's Challenging"
The host is currently on a one-year contract for his ABC talk show.

Disney's president [was] asked about the future of Jimmy Kimmel Live! Kimmel signed a one-year contract extension in December 2025 to keep hosting the late night show through the 2026-27 season, and Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw asked Walden if the host would be sticking around.

"I'm not going to make that announcement here with you today," Walden said....

"The truth is, it's a very challenging daypart," Walden said Thursday at the Bloomberg event.

"Daypart" = "part of the broadcasting day." Late night doesn't bring in the numbers as it did 20 years ago.

"That's not to say that Jimmy is not doing a phenomenal job, and his ratings are up. But they're up relative to a smaller audience that's watching late night on broadcast television."
Kimmel and the show also have a big presence on YouTube and social media platforms, but those views and clicks bring in a fraction of the revenue that on-air advertising does. "That is not a lucrative opportunity for a very premium talk show," said Walden.

"We're trying to make sense of the business while also honoring a deep partnership," she continued. "I love Jimmy; we have great friendship. He's close to a number of the people at Disney. We're trying to work through it and make sense of, what does Jimmy want, what's the right thing to do, and what's the right thing for our business."

Doesn't this sound like an "it's not you, it's me"?

James Gunn's Supergirl is bombing even on HBO, where subscribers can view it for no extra charge.

According to Nielsen's Streaming Top 10 for September 7 through September 13, Supergirl generated just 304 million minutes viewed in the United States during its first four days on HBO Max.
That was enough to make Supergirl the No. 1 movie on HBO Max, but only the fifth most-watched streaming movie across the services measured by Nielsen.

Perhaps more significantly for Warner Bros. and DC Studios, Supergirl's initial streaming consumption appears to have fallen well below several recent DC movies that were themselves regarded as major box office disappointments.

That includes The Flash, Blue Beetle, Black Adam, and even Shazam! Fury of the Gods.

...

Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married Again? led the week with 908 million minutes, followed by The Whisper Man with 404 million and Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu with 366 million.

James Gunn might soon be out. His Lanterns show takes a blowtorch to one of DC's most beloved heroes, Hal Jordan. This is probably because Hal Jordan is white and they want to replace him as the main Lantern with the black John Stewart.

And because Hal Jordan was identified specifically as a Republican in a DC event. So, you know --Racist.

So the show turns him into a murderer and loser.

Oh, and kills him. Or maybe he took the coward's way out and killed himself.

Sunday's episode confirmed the death of Hal Jordan, and Green Lantern fans let the DC Studios co-head hear about it.
Gunn spent Monday replying on Threads, telling one fan "sorry if you don't like it," and another that the DCU following their favorite comics continuity is "probably not going to happen."

The episode reveals that following the events of Episode 5, Kyle Chandler's Hal Jordan went to prison for 10 years.

...

One fan told Gunn to "at least respect the characters that made the comics popular."

"Killing Hal off right away after we have waited 15 years to see him on screen again was the worst thing you could have done," the fan wrote.

Gunn's answer, in full:

"Hal's the star of TV series & he's in all the episodes so far. It's more live action screen time than all the live action screen time he's had combined throughout history. Kyle is amazing in the role. We more than respect him. We love him, despite his imperfections."

...

Gunn says they love Hal. It's exactly what Cosmic Book News has questioned all season: you don't treat these characters this way if you love them.

Hal Jordan waited 15 years to get back on screen. The DCU brought him back to send him to prison for a decade, confirm his death, and dig up his corpse for the ring.

That's not paying homage. It's a mockery of the source material, the creators behind it, and the fans who made these characters popular in the first place.

...

Per Cosmic Book News' sources, Gunn is expected out when his contract expires next year.

Tom King, a leftwing depressive mope of a DC writer who has character assassinated every character he's been allowed to write, was one of the creators of the show. His specialty is deconstruction, so Gunn knew what he was getting when he hired King.

King is also finally done at DC, "insiders" say.

Tom King, who co-created Lanterns and helped Gunn build the DCU, just exited his Wonder Woman comic, and per CBN's insiders, he's done at DC.

A bad sign for Gunn is that his planned show, Dynamic Duo, about two of the Robins teaming up, has been "delayed."

Cancelled, I think that means, as Paramount prepares a clean sweep of the DCU's personnel. Gunn wisely got his Superman sequel into production in a hurry, to make sure he at least has a job until the movie's release -- as Kathleen Kennedy often did. But after that, he's gonzo.

By the way: the Lanterns writers have no imagination beyond today's Twitter Outrage. They say they based the Hal Jordan-John Stewart relationship -- an older white guy who won't give up his spot to the minority who wants to supplant him -- on the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris succession dynamic.

The increasingly contentious relationship between Hal Jordan and John Stewart in HBO's Lanterns was partially informed by a surprising real-world political event: the 2024 transition from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket.
...

"What does it mean when you are the superhero and have been the superhero for decades and you've been holding on to this sort of legacy, and then all of a sudden this young guy comes around," Britt-Gibson said.

John's individual characteristics were also deliberately positioned as threatening to the veteran Green Lantern.

"Young and black," one panelist said.

"And handsome, and strong, and confident. It's threatening," came the response from Britt-Gibson. "And fearless, of course. That's threatening."

The writers then revealed that the extraordinary political events of 2024 became part of that creative conversation.

...

The political upheaval was unfolding while the Lanterns writers were discussing similar themes involving Hal and John.

"Right as we were having the conversation, we had already started talking about it and breaking it, the Democratic National Convention was coming up," Baden Kelly explained. "That's when we were trying to figure out who is going to be the front runner here. Is it going to be Kamala or is it going to be Biden?"

Hey Kids! Comics!!

But they looooove Hal Jordan, right?

They're absolutely obsessed with "racism" -- and attacking white people every five seconds.

The writers of HBO's Lanterns changed John Stewart's backstory after Aaron Pierre was cast in the role, incorporating the actor's lighter complexion into a storyline in which John's appearance was considered "more palatable to White people."

In other words, the Guardians of the Universe, beings of near-infinite power and hundreds of thousands of years old, chose a light-skinned black man to be a Green Lantern so that he wouldn't provoke Muh Racism in white people.

Millennia-old space aliens who have had contact with 10,000 sentient alien species are all about the tiny distinctions in skin tones on Earth.

This seems more of a "You Thing" than a "Guardians of the Universe Thing."

...
"John Stewart is supposed to be a dark-skinned Black man," Baden Kelly explained. "We are changing that canonically by having Aaron come in, and we need to change that in the writing. We need to find a way to make this make sense."

Rather than simply accepting Pierre's appearance as another difference between a comic book character and his live-action counterpart, the writers decided to incorporate his complexion directly into John's upbringing.

That decision ultimately became part of the explanation for why John was treated differently from his brothers.

...

She then explained what the writers decided to add to John's story.

"That's when we baked in this idea that part of his being chosen is because they felt like his particular looks were more palatable to White people," Baden Kelly said. "And if that is who he was going to have to impress to get this job, he was probably the more likely of the three brothers to be able to do it."

We can turn Hal Jordan into a murdering loser, but we need a backstory involving space aliens sensitivity to "colorism" to explain why the TV version of John Stewart is one shade lighter than his comic book version.

I continue to not understand why David Ellison bought Warner Bros/Discovery. It's an ailing brand whose biggest IP is billions of dollars of debt.

Warner Bros. Discovery stumbled in the second quarter, demonstrating the hazard of depending heavily on blockbuster returns from its Burbank film studio.
Disappointing performances by "Supergirl" and "The Bride!" drove down quarterly theatrical revenue by 46%. The tepid showing illustrated how the Warner Bros. studio has fallen since last year when it was riding high at the box office with "Sinners" and "A Minecraft Movie."

..

Overall, profit for Warner Bros. Discovery, which also is the parent of HBO, CNN, TLC and HGTV, plummeted 91% to $149 million, or 6 cents per share, compared to $1.6 billion in the second quarter of 2025 amid the film studio's blazing run.

The company also fell short of Wall Street expectations for revenue, which sank 11% to $8.7 billion, despite noteworthy gains in its HBO Max streaming business.

In fairness, the company did have a good 2025.

Posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 04:10 PM Comments

RFKJr. Exposes More Billions in Medical Fraud

—Disinformation Expert Ace

KanekoaTheGreat @KanekoaTheGreat
NEW: RFK Jr. says Medicare spending on wound care patches exploded from $200 million in 2019 to $14 billion last year: "It's all stolen."

Bad actors billed Medicare billions by slapping the most expensive skin grafts on elderly and dying patients who didn't need them.

"The doctors who prescribed them would get 6% of the sales cost. And so, they were incentivized to prescribe more expensive products. In Europe, they spend 35 cents a cubic inch. We were spending $135, and that went up to $2,000 a cubic inch."

"So 2019, we were paying $200 million. Last year we spent 14 billion. All stolen. It's all stolen. And we were on track to spend 23 billion this year."

"We put an end to it, and we now have driven that cost down to somewhere around a billion dollars."

In one Arizona case, the owners of two wound care companies pleaded guilty to more than $1.2 billion in fraudulent claims. Medicare paid over $1 million per patient for grafts slapped on elderly patients who didn't need them, many of them dying in hospice.

In June, DOJ charged 11 more defendants over more than $2 billion in allograft claims, including a company accused of issuing sham invoices to inflate what Medicare paid.

It feels like every week I learn a new way people were ripping off taxpayers for billions.

Video below the fold.

Related: Hennepin County, Minnesota helpfully set up a new welfare program for Somalis to defraud.

They got so many obviously-fraudulent applications that even fraud-happy Minnesota had to halt the program.

It's estimated that three-quarters of the applications are fraudulent.

The welfare was for businesses who were "harmed" by ICE operations in Minnesota, due to illegal aliens not showing up for work or illegal aliens not patronizing restaurants.

Hennepin County shut down a small business grant program after apparently fraudulent applications raised concerns, with $1.5 million in public money left in the fund.
The county said fraudulent applications plagued the recovery program, which was meant to help offset local business losses during Operation Metro Surge. County leaders repurposed the remaining $1.5 million into what they described as a lower-risk program with wide-ranging support such as business consulting for new entrepreneurs.

Two successes came out of the now-ended fund, according to the county: no tax money actually went to fraudsters and legitimate businesses did receive help.

Um, no. You stopped the obvious fraud. Plenty of more skillful fraudsters got paid.

...
Hennepin County Commissioner Jeffrey Lunde said 82 legitimate businesses received help, but the county got about 300 applications and shut down the $2 million program after giving out $500,000.

218 out of 300 applications were "obviously fabricated."

Commissioner Lunde said the county and a nonprofit helping to review grant applications found a significant number with red flags for fraud.
"As we dug deeper in, and we started to see patterns, and those patterns were not -- they were fraudulent patterns," Lunde said.

Note that the only reason these fraudsters were caught is because they copy pasted repetitive applications for a large number of fake businesses. That's the "patterns" the commissioner euphemizes above.

Also, the only verification they bothered doing was going to the addresses of the "businesses" to make sure they even existed. Three quarters of them did not.

But of the businesses that did exist -- how many actually suffered thousand dollar "losses" due to illegal aliens not coming to work or eating in their restaurants? They didn't bother to even check that.

Actual Justice Warrior has more, including video of local news coverage. Lord knows you won't see national media outlets cover it.

Trump boasts he'll be sending out $500 refund checks to people overcharged for Obamacare.

The real refunds need to go to independent workers who pay for their own insurance, but who are forced to subsidize the unhealthiest of all people getting insurance through Obamacare.

President Donald Trump is set on Sept. 30 to start sending $500 checks to nearly 1 million Americans his administration says were overcharged through the Affordable Care Act's federal exchange for buying health insurance.
Treasury Department checks, along with letters signed by Trump notifying recipients, will begin going out to more than 950,000 Americans across 30 states, according to an administration official.

"For years, the Biden administration overcharged you to fund the operation of HealthCare.gov," Trump says in the letter, which was viewed by USA TODAY. "That money belongs to hard-working Americans, not the Government, and now I'm returning it to you!"

Trump announced the $500 Obamacare refund checks on Sept. 10 in a video posted by the White House that coincided with the Republican midterm convention in Dallas. The money is separate from a controversial $5,000 dividend Trump has vowed to distribute to all Americans if Republicans retain control of Congress after the November midterm election.

The White House has said the Biden administration collected user fees from health insurance companies that consumers paid for in the form of higher premiums ‒ and that the premiums exceeded what was needed to run the exchange. The Trump administration has accused the Biden administration of sitting on the surplus of money.

The checks, issued five weeks before the November midterm election, come as Americans' anxieties over high costs and affordability pose major political liabilities for Trump and Republicans as they look to hold on to power in Congress.

"You have paid into this flawed System, and now you are finally getting something back," Trump says in the letter.

In news that would make RFKJr. happy: McDonald's is spending $8.5 billion to change its menu to be healthier -- more protein in meals.

The fast-food chain is exploring higher-protein menu options and different portion sizes, as customers increasingly look for meals that will satisfy them without leaving them feeling like they need to unbutton their jeans.
...

The menu rethink is part of a much bigger makeover. McDonald's plans to spend roughly $8.5 billion to support franchisees over the next decade. The money will go toward modernizing restaurants, improving operations and helping franchisees win customers.

The plan did not impress Wall Street, with shares falling 6% in afternoon trading after the spending was announced.

Part of that shift comes as Americans are putting more money and attention toward wellness. GLP-1 use is one piece of that change. About 11% of U.S. adults said they were using a GLP-1 medication for weight loss in 2026, up from just 3% in 2024, according to Gallup.

The U.S. wellness economy reached roughly $2.1 trillion in 2024, making it the largest wellness market in the world, according to the Global Wellness Institute.

That focus is increasingly showing up in how some consumers order fast food, too. McDonald's is placing a sizable bet on getting customers through the doors more often at a time when its rivals are making their own expensive plans.

Burger King, for example, has committed up to $700 million through 2028 to its "Reclaim the Flame" turnaround plan, which includes restaurant remodels, new technology, kitchen equipment and other upgrades. Those efforts appear to be gaining traction as Burger King U.S. reported comparable-sales growth of 8.5% in the second quarter of 2026.

...

Now the company is looking for ways to stretch business even further. It plans to explore more flexibility on the beef side, including different portion sizes and menu options.

"We're looking to add more choice in beef for those seeking more flexibility in portion sizes, for example, a burger bowl," Jill McDonald, McDonald's executive vice president and global chief restaurant experience officer, said during the meeting.

You're spending billions to introduce a burger without the bun?

But that's not their real plan. Their real plan is to make Quarter Pounders entirely out of 10 karat gold.

Gold has no calories. Look it up.

The fast-food giant is giving away a miniature Quarter Pounder made from a quarter pound of 10-karat gold as part of its 2026 Monopoly Golden Edition promotion in Canada.
According to Access Winnipeg, the unusual collectible has an estimated value of C$20,000, which works out to roughly $15,000 USD.

Unlike the restaurant's usual signature burger, there is no need to add cheese or a side of fries.

McDonald's official promotion website confirms that the prize is crafted from a quarter pound of 10-karat gold and comes with an appraisal.

So now that this is a Health Gains thread:

Does apple cider vinegar help with gastric reflux?

"Most of the research on apple cider vinegar is about blood sugar and weight. For digestive symptoms, I am not aware of a single well-designed human trial showing it helps reflux, bloating, gas, or the gut microbiome," says gastroenterologist Sameer Berry, MD, a clinical assistant professor of medicine at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine in New York City and the chief medical officer of Oshi Health, which provides multidisciplinary gastrointestinal (GI) healthcare.
Acid reflux, when acid from your stomach moves up into the esophagus and throat, is common: Research has found that 2 in 5 Americans experience it weekly. Some people with the condition rely upon anecdotal evidence that ACV can tame uncomfortable symptoms like heartburn and indigestion.

I'm one of them. When I get reflux, which I get if I eat carbs or something that disagrees with me within two hours of bedtime, if I drink a tablespoon of ACV in a glass of water, the reflux goes away in 20 minutes.

Years ago someone claimed that reflux is not caused by too much acid, as you might think, but too little acid, where your stomach never finishes digesting a meal so it just hangs around in your gut. Apple cider vinegar gets the last meal fully digested.

Or maybe it just sends a signal to the stomach that, as it has a lot of acid in it, it's time to turn off the acid taps.

I don't know. But it works for me, much better than antacids ever did.

The online claims aren't backed by research though, says Dr. Berry. "There is absolutely no evidence in human trials that ACV does anything for acid reflux," he says, adding that for reflux, "I don't recommend it."
ACV may also make chronic reflux, known as gastroesophageal reflux disease, symptoms worse because it is acidic, says Simon Mathews, MD, a Baltimore-based gastroenterologist and spokesperson for the American Gastroenterological Association, where he chairs the Committee for GI Innovation and Technology. "An inflamed esophagus doesn't benefit from an increased acid load," Dr. Mathews says.

Maybe. All I can say is that it works for me, every time.

Vinegar is bad for your teeth so you need to brush your teeth after drinking it. Because I don't want to be bothered with that in the middle of the night, I take apple cider vinegar pills when I get woken up with reflux. They're cheap and available on Amazon (and pretty much any drug or nutrition store.

By the way: A commenter recommended nicotine lozenges over gum. I knew about lozenges, but never tried them until he recommended them. Thanks -- it's how I take nicotine now. Costco sells a big box of them, 270 lozenges, for $45. Pretty cheap.

"If you enjoy the taste and if you feel better on it, it's totally safe to use. If your reflux gets worse with it, then I would absolutely stop," he says.

Well of course. But it's worth a try, I think.

Here's seven supplements you should take if, unlike me, you're over 40.

To spare you having to read, here are the seven: Vitamin D3, Vitamin B12, Calcium, Magnesium, Potassium, Omega 3s, Probiotics. Potassium's hard to get in a supplement because the little pills they sell have 3% of the RDA of potassium. You have to take -- let me run the calculations -- ten just to get 30% of the RDA. You could, however, get Potassium Chloride, which people cutting salt use as a salt substitute. But I'd be cautious. I have to assume they strictly limit the amount of potassium in each pill for a reason.

A special message about addiction for Jack Straw.

Anyone have any health gains to report?

I have a semi-gain. I got serious about staying Keto for the first time in years. I've been in keto almost every day, at least just a little. (I check my urine.)

But unlike in previous keto regimes, I'm not really losing any appreciable weight. Has anyone else gone through this? Is there a fix to kick-start actual fat-burning? (You don't have to mention the "fat fast," I know about that.)

Posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 03:10 PM Comments

Schmolls: Paxton and Collins Up Over Their Weirdo Opponents

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Paxton is up according to his own campaign poll.

People scoff at campaign polls. But campaign polls are real polls, unlike media polls, which are cheaply done just for clicks. Campaign polls have real money and effort put into them.

The problem is that the campaign can withhold all the polls that show them down and then release the one poll that shows them up. I assume that happens all the time. All the time.

That said, at least the last poll of likely voters has Paxton up:

A new poll of likely voters shows Republican Ken Paxton leading Democrat James Talarico 48% to 45% in the Texas U.S. Senate race.
The Pulse Decision Science survey, conducted Sept. 24-27, was identified as a Republican internal poll.

Trump boosted Paxton:

"He is unbelievable. He is a loyal, hardworking character. Ken's one of the best state attorney generals in the entire country. He has been for the last many years and frankly he's gonna go down as one of the best ever," Trump said in a video.

The RCP poll of polls says the Collins is up over the replacement for Maine Fuhrer.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, has reclaimed the lead in her reelection bid, not merely in a single poll, but in a major polling aggregator.
As of press time, Collins led former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson by 0.2% in the RealClearPolitics polling average. That metric includes six surveys, three of which show Collins leading. One InsiderAdvantage survey shows the race tied while two show Jackson with a lead.

Notably, none of the three most recent surveys show Jackson leading the contest.

In hard left Minnesota, the ultra-left-wing lieutenant governor Peggy Flanagan -- who wore a t-shirt with the motto "PROTECT TRANS RIGHTS" written on a combat knife -- is up only a single point over Republican Michelle Tafoya.

The InsiderAdvantage survey found that 46 percent of likely voters in the state supported Flanagan, while Tafoya garnered 45 percent support.
Matt Towery, a pollster with InsiderAdvantage, called the survey results "unusual" for a race in a blue-leaning state, noting outgoing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz's (D) waning approval ratings and a widespread fraud scandal in the state as possible contributing factors to this close race.

"Tafoya does extremely well with men and Flanagan is losing every age group other than the youngest of voters, who in the poll have a significant 'enthusiasm about voting' gap versus other age groups who are more enthusiastic," Towery said in a statement.

CNN's Harry Enten points out that Republicans typically outperform their September polls by five points -- which means the Republicans would hold the Senate with a 50 50 split and Vance as a tiebreaker.

Let's do better than that.

CNN asks 'What if the polls are wrong?' and notes that Republicans have performed September polls by 5 points in the last few cycles:

Harry Enten: "Lets just say that the GOP outperforms the polls like they did 2018 , 2024, you get a 50/50 senate with JD Vance casting a tie… pic.twitter.com/DQMgnD20cg
— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) October 1, 2026

Because you stomp on my face when I post schmolls, here's a column from Kurt Schlichter on what I'll call the Twilight of the Cucks.

The Last Stand of Rove, Cornyn, and the Establishment Frauds

Twenty years ago, people would've thought you were crazy if you told them that Karl Rove would be welcomed onto the pages of the regime media to announce that his powerful principles require him to vote for a Democrat who believes you should carve up little boys and girls to conform to the trendy gender delusions of their Munchausen mommies. But in 2026, when he did that, nobody was surprised. Nobody was shocked. After all, betrayal is the old Republican establishment's brand.

Rove and his ilk claim that taking sides against us is mandated by their principles. What principles? We understand what the principles of our alleged betters in the conservative (sic) movement really are. They're not a set of rigid standards that must be adhered to at all costs and hazards; they're a joke, a ploy to manipulate the rubes, moral Calvinball for people who demand our respect and obedience yet hold us in utter contempt.

But of course, Karl Rove isn't alone. The doddering has-been is just emblematic of a particularly pernicious political type that those of us who actually believe in something beyond our own prosperity, prestige, and power have been trying to exile from the GOP for decades. All this stuff about the gentlemen of the Republican Party, the compassionate conservatives, the sensible adults in the room, has been revealed to be a lie, but it was always a lie. It was always a scam. When they speak of principles, they're talking about arbitrary and amorphous guidelines that they impose from on high to control you. But those principles never apply to them. Why, the idea that they should be bound by any guardrails is profoundly insulting to them. They are beyond such common limitations. You, however, are absolutely bound to them, like a serf to his master's fields.

And here's the not-so-surprising part. Those principles they always talk about? Somehow, those principles always end up reinforcing the power of the failed GOP establishment at the expense of the GOP base. And those principles always require that we give up our interests, our rights, and our prosperity. Pretty convenient, huh? Tell me one establishment GOP principle that helps us in the base at the expense of those at the peak of the pyramid, and I'll show you a unicorn.

There's no such thing as a unicorn.

...

Uh, no. This was just a convenient excuse for them to do what they wanted to do anyway, which is to slap back at the people who dared not to genuflect to them anymore. Do you think Karl Rove would be doing this if anyone at the White House took his calls? Their phony outrage is a convenient excuse.

This fat cuck is hedging his bets:

🚨Just in: Chuck Schumer says Republicans would Steal the Midterms Elections

He said: “Two things could have us to lose. One, they steal the election. The second thing is money. They have obscene amounts of money.” pic.twitter.com/mCTtv5xbfc
— The Calvin Coolidge Project (@TheCalvinCooli1) October 1, 2026

I sent that to Jake Tapper. I'm sure he'll want to scold Schumer as he scolded Trump infinitely for saying the 2016 election might be rigged.

Close it up

Posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 02:10 PM Comments

Supreme Court Will Decide Major "Environmental" Case, Deciding If Leftists May Use the Power of the Lawsuit to Steal Democracy From the Hands of the People

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Shawn Fleetwood of The Federalist:

The U.S. Supreme Court will kick off its 2026 term next week with what will be one of its biggest cases of the year. And according to several legal specialists, there's much more to the dispute than meets the eye.
The case in question is Suncor v. Boulder, which deals with the lawfare that Boulder, Colorado, launched against Suncor Energy companies and the Exxon Mobil Corporation. The city is seeking monetary damages based on claims that the oil giants' activities are contributing to "climate change" and that such activities are harming Boulder residents.

Before SCOTUS is the question of whether federal law prevents state-law claims "seeking relief for injuries allegedly caused by the effects of interstate and international greenhouse-gas emissions on the global climate." The justices will also consider whether they have jurisdiction to hear the case.

During a Tuesday virtual press conference, Alliance for Consumers Executive Director O.H. Skinner said that Democrats and their allies are attempting to make the suit out to be nothing more than a "basic tort case" that is "trying to hold people accountable for their actions." In reality, however, he noted that the lawsuit is effectively "a Swiss Army knife for them to accomplish social change through a court system."

"It's actually bigger than 'climate change,'" Skinner said. "It's about [Democrats'] overall ability to weaponize courts to accomplish policy goals that are sweeping and that are multibillion-dollar in scale, and they could end up with an order that basically rewrites the American economy [if they prevail]."

Should the Supreme Court endorse Boulder's position that states and localities can pursue these types of state-based claims against Suncor and Exxon, the AFC executive director said, such a ruling would open up Pandora's box for leftists to advance similar lawfare against other industries they disfavor. He specifically noted that standard could apply "across all sorts of different social questions, all the way down to guns."

One bad thing is that Alito has recused himself, due to an investment in energy companies.

I don't know why righties recuse themselves. Lefties never do.

Another case will be decided by the Supreme Court: a "landmark" lawsuit against the Muslim government of Dearborn, Michigan making non-Muslims dhimmis.

In Sept. 17, the American Freedom Law Center filed a landmark lawsuit on behalf of a Dearborn, Michigan, resident, alleging that the Arab-majority Detroit suburb, led by Muslim officials, has promoted Islam and discriminated against and fostered hostility towards Christians and Jews -- in violation of the Constitution's establishment clause.
The details of the case brought by my courageous colleague, Federalist Senior Legal Correspondent Margot Cleveland, are shocking. She alleges that Dearborn's leaders have endorsed glitzy Ramadan displays and advertised an iftar dinner with public funds. Conversely, they have allegedly ignored Cleveland's requests for comparable commemorations for Christian and Jewish holidays and sidestepped concerns over public rallies glorifying jihadism. They have also berated a Christian pastor and fellow constituent. Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud called Pastor Ted Barham a "bigot" and "Islamophobe" who "is not welcome here" when he questioned the city's renaming of a city street for an avowed Hamas and Hezbollah supporter.

The complaint cites past instances where courts have found the city to have discriminated against non-Muslims.

Having petitioned her elected leaders to treat all religions equally, only to face stonewalling, Cleveland has taken them to court in defense of her and her neighbors' sacred rights.

A victory for AFLC could end such discrimination and set a powerful precedent. It would send a message to other like-minded officials nationwide. Cleveland's complaint should also serve as a clarion call for Americans about the potential consequences of Islamization.

Meanwhile:

Have you ever suspected that left-wing Lawsuit Slop Firms work hand-in-glove with left-wing media operations?

James Varney:

Many Americans may be losing trust in journalism, but attorneys at the Clarkson Law Firm are apparently not among them.
In recent years, the Southern California-based firm filed at least four class-action lawsuits in federal courts that appeared to rely heavily on investigative articles published by ProPublica, STAT News, and other news outlets. Most of the suits came on the heels of negative stories about some of the country's biggest health insurers, including UnitedHealth Group, Cigna, and Humana. Facebook's owner, Meta, also seems to have come into Clarkson's crosshairs following a news report about privacy concerns regarding its high-tech eyeglasses.

Clarkson, which advertises itself as a "public interest law firm," was also quick to amend suits by adding plaintiffs that appeared in the articles, most of which alleged insurers were cheating Medicare patients through AI algorithms that denied patients care.

Legal experts say this pattern raises questions because attorneys are generally required to conduct their own inquiries before filing class action suits. News reports are considered hearsay, so filing suits largely based on them is forbidden by the rules of procedure that govern federal courts.

"Relying solely on an article in a newspaper, journal or other publication would not satisfy the class action requirement," said Arthur Landry, a veteran insurance defense attorney in famously litigious Louisiana. "The class actions against the health insurers in question for alleged wrongful denial of claims appear on their face to be based entirely upon publications, and there is no reference in the suits to counsel having attempted to verify the contents of the articles."

"The apparent connections between the publications and the lawsuits, including close time relation between the press coverage and the filing of pleadings, raise serious questions," he told RealClearInvestigations.

While RCI found no evidence that Clarkson and the news outlets coordinated their efforts, the repetitive timeline of stories and lawsuits, stories about the lawsuits, and social media doubling or tripling each gives the appearance of an operation rather than individual efforts, a pattern that has become a modern-day loop used by those looking to influence public policy not just on health care but other major issues such as artificial intelligence, global warming and the like. When the work of nonprofits, academic researchers, and other groups that share the same public policy goal is added, there is a cascade effect that makes their position more formidable.

One of the most striking examples of this dynamic started on March 13, 2023. That day, STAT News, a respected online outlet that focuses on healthcare and is available only with a subscription, published the first in a series of articles on alleged attempts by UnitedHealth to deny coverage, expensive hospital visits, and the like to its Medicare Advantage patients.

Eight months later, on Nov. 14, 2023, STAT published another article in the series, which would become a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting, reporting that a UnitedHealth subsidiary, NaviHealth, used an AI algorithm to try to shorten patients' rehabilitation stays to boost profits.

On that same day, Clarkson filed a lawsuit against UnitedHealth that largely recounts the March and November stories. The lawsuit footnotes the STAT articles eight times in the 45-page filing. Two of the footnotes refer to the STAT story published that same day in November.

The lawsuit also repeats language in the Nov. 14 article. One paragraph in the Nov. 14 lawsuit involves an allegation STAT published that day, namely that NaviHealth "set a target for 2023 to keep rehab stays within 1 percent of the days projected by the algorithm," thereby turning something reported that day into a pleaded factual allegation.

The lawsuit also appears to have cribbed language from STAT's March article. STAT's claim that company algorithms "compare a patient's diagnosis, age, living situation, and physical function... in a database of six million patients" and that they were used "to pinpoint the precise moment when they can plausibly cut off payment" are repeated verbatim in Clarkson's filing.

Later in the complaint, Clarkson alleges the algorithm's "generic recommendations fail to adjust for a patient's individual circumstances and conflict with basic rules on what Medicare Advantage plans must cover," the exact language STAT used in March.

STAT did not respond to RCI's questions about whether they were in contact as the articles were being prepared, and Clarkson declined comment. STAT's investigative pieces do not mention Clarkson.

After the lawsuit was filed, STAT published -- again on Nov. 14, 2023 -- a story boasting its work had been the basis for the litigation, and all parties trumpeted their work on social media posts, thereby achieving the cascade effect and creating a public relations crisis for UnitedHealth.

More on the Democrat Media Party's coordinated lawfare/"journalism" scam at the link.

Posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 01:10 PM Comments

The Red-Green Alliance Takes Another Blow as Oil Traffic Through the Strait of Hormuz Rebounds to 98% of the Pre-War Level

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Iran recently pleaded for another seven-day ceasefire.

When America rejected that -- actually, the "negotiators" were told to leave -- Iran published its letter urging Democrats to side with Iran as usual and vote against the GOP.

This is why: the world is getting most of its oil through the Strait, protected by the US military, and Iran is getting zero barrels through, stopped by the blockade.

Literally all we now have to do is maintain the blockade, keep the west-side of the Straight clear, and wait for Iran to collapse.

Even the NYT admits Iran is losing the War of the Strait.

Mideast Oil Exports Rebound Even as Prices Remain Elevated
More tankers are moving through the Strait of Hormuz as shippers gain confidence, but the global supply of oil is still below demand.

By Peter Eavis
Sept. 29, 2026

Oil exports from the Middle East have risen sharply this month, some oil analysts say, taking them closer to the level they were at before Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz in March, a rebound that could ease some pressure on global energy prices.

In September, an average of 10 million barrels of oil has gone through the waterway daily, according to Kpler, a firm that tracks oil tankers. Separately, six million barrels of crude a day has left the Persian Gulf states this month through pipelines and ports that bypass the strait, Kpler's data shows.

That's a grudging estimate. Most other say 12-13 million barrels per day, plus another 6-8 million through Saudi Arabia's East-to-West oil pipeline, meaning the we're now seeing about 20 million barrels per day again, or close enough to make no difference.

Before the war with Iran began at the end of February, around 19 million barrels of crude left the region daily through the waterway and other routes. Because of the difficulty in tracking tankers, export totals supplied by analysts might not reflect the true flow of oil, but most experts say volumes rose significantly this month.

The turnaround has most noticeably occurred in the strait, even though Iran continues to attack tankers. A U.S. military operation aimed at protecting the vessels from the attacks appears to have encouraged more shipments by big exporting countries, like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

"They are getting a substantial amount of oil out, and it is increasing over time as shippers' confidence goes up," said Eugene Gholz, an associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame and an expert on conflict in the strait.

President Trump, members of his administration and U.S. military officials have said for weeks that the Strait of Hormuz is open, and that tankers are moving oil through the strait.

🚨 JUST IN: The “experts” just entered a state of SHOCK after crude exports surge to 98% of pre-war levels around Hormuz, per WSJ

Saudi Arabia RESTORED pipeline flows and exports are now nearly 18 MILLION across a 10 day average 🔥

They said it was impossible, but it JUST… pic.twitter.com/8kvl9iam6B
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 1, 2026

Tonight on God Bless America 62:

Even CNN is admitting that oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz is at the highest levels since the war started.

Jake Tapper: "Gulf oil producers are managing to get a lot more oil through the Strait of Hormuz. Marine data trackers say oil… pic.twitter.com/QyiM2Rz0kk
— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) September 30, 2026

Here's the other side of the balance sheet: While we're getting most of the non-Iranian oil through the Strait, Iran is getting none through.

Scott Bessent reports that Iran got zero barrels of oil out in tankers in September.

In a post on the social media platform X on Thursday, Bessent said that "Iran loaded ZERO crude oil onto tankers in September," adding that the restrictions imposed by Trump were "cutting off the Iranian regime's most critical source of revenue."
The Treasury Secretary hailed the Operation Economic Outcast, saying that the move was "severing the economic lifelines that have allowed Tehran to finance its terrorist agenda."

There may be a small amount of oil getting out in tanker trucks, but that's no way to move a lot of oil.

Visual proof of Bessent's claim:About 20 empty Iranian tankers are now stranded off the coast of Sri Lanka. They cannot go back to Iran because of the blockade.

And the US is pressuring Sri Lanka not to allow them to refuel and resupply.

The ships are empty, having dumped their oil off in China and India, and now languishing with no cargo.

🇮🇷🇺🇸 Around 20 empty Iranian tankers are drifting off Sri Lanka with food and water running low as US pressure cuts off their supplies

The blockade has kept them from going home since July, and when they moved toward Sri Lanka, the US embassy warned local suppliers to stop… pic.twitter.com/s2caPYkabv
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) October 1, 2026

The U.S. pressure campaign against Iran has left dozens of Iranian or Iran-linked tankers stranded in Asian waters, unable to return home or access ports and suppliers because of sanctions risks.

Around 20 empty tankers are drifting near Sri Lanka alone, with crews reportedly… pic.twitter.com/3YFrPqO6y5
— Clash Report (@clashreport) October 1, 2026

The NY Post says trust the blockade.

Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has moved back toward pre-war levels -- and Iran's domestic deterioration is increasingly difficult to dismiss.
Iran's rial fell to roughly 2.2 million to the dollar in September, from about 958,000 a year earlier.

Inflation is nearing 70%, food prices have more than doubled, and unemployment is above 9%.

The latest official figure put youth unemployment at 20.1%.

Oil exports have also collapsed, falling to roughly 260,000 barrels a day from 1.7 million a year earlier.

The bigger story is what those numbers mean for the IRGC's power.

The IRGC still must pay its own forces while financing allies and militias across Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

Washington has been squeezing that network's financial lifelines by targeting oil exports, shadow fleets, exchange houses, front companies and the foreign buyers willing to take sanctioned Iranian crude.

China matters most here: Treasury estimates that China buys about 90% of Iran's oil exports.

In April, Washington sanctioned Hengli Petrochemical's Dalian refinery after it bought billions of dollars of Iranian petroleum, including crude linked to Iran's armed forces.

That is the difference between sanctions on paper and sanctions that bite.

...

China's political strategy has come under strain, too.

Beijing celebrated the 2023 Saudi-Iran agreement as proof that China could stabilize the region.

Three years later, however, Saudi Arabia is again confronting Iranian and Iran-backed threats around Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab, while Beijing has had to press Tehran to rein in the Houthis after Saudi appeals with no success.

...

The IRGC has also lost much of the leverage it once derived from threatening Gulf energy flows.

Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline can carry up to 7 million barrels a day toward the Red Sea, with roughly 5 million available for export.

The UAE has gone further: It left OPEC on May 1, freeing itself from production quotas, and pushed crude output above 3.8 million barrels a day in June.

...

Trump is doing something Washington has rarely attempted with this breadth: going after not only the IRGC itself, but the entire system that kept it funded, supplied and able to project power across the region.

That is precisely why his pressure should continue -- whatever the domestic political consequences.

And oil prices should start falling quickly.

And then what will the Democrats say?

Dubai is also building an alternate port on its southern coast to bypass the Strait completely. It won't be finished for another two years, but after that, Iran will never be able to hold the world to ransom again, even if the IRGC is still in charge.

Which I don't think they will be.

I was alerted to this by this video by Max Afterburner. He's an Air Force pilot and generally rah-rah and go USA, so you can discount his predictions a bit, but he thinks Iran is now begging for a "deal" -- one which they'll never honor, of course -- because they are now on the brink of collapse but are no longer inflicting reciprocal pain on Trump or the rest of the world. Their plan was to absorb the pain while inflicting pain on Trump to make him break, but now all the pain is on their side.

Worth the watch.

He also mentioned Boeing's boating about the upcoming F/A XX 6th-generation fighter.

That won't be available for a while, of course.

Not until the 2030s, and that assumes no delays.

Boeing has been selected to build the Navy's sixth-generation carrier-based strike fighter, dubbed F/A-XX, icing out what was considered to be its biggest competitor in late-stage negotiations, Northrop Grumman.

Inked at $20 billion for the full-scale development phase, the contract, according to a Pentagon release, "procures multiple test aircraft for ground, airworthiness, systems, and weapons integration testing."

...

Equipped with an extended range to provide power projection from U.S. carriers, Boeing has promised that the F/A-XX will, crucially, be interoperable with both manned and unmanned platforms such as Collaborative Combat Aircraft.

...

Boeing's contract award marks another milestone victory for the company, which has now all but guaranteed its monopoly on sixth-generation fighters across the services.

Boeing also won the contract to build the next-gen Air Force fighter, the F-47.

In 2025, Boeing beat out Lockheed Martin for the contract to build the U.S. Air Force's sixth-generation fighter under the Next Generation Air Dominance program, or NGAD.

That aircraft, since dubbed the F-47, has entered its engineering and manufacturing development phase, one service official announced in July, with first flights expected as early as 2028.

The Air Force at the time announced plans to purchase at least 185 of the next-gen fighters, a number designed to replace the F-22 Raptor fleet.

A mocked-up image:

Close it up

Posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 12:02 PM Comments

THE MORNING RANT: With the End of Biden-Era Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards, the Era of CAFE Credit Trading is Also Over

—Buck Throckmorton

The Trump administration continues to restore freedom to the American automobile market. Under authorization established by Congress, Transportation Secretary Duffy just released the “Freedom Means Affordable Cars” initiative, which reversed Biden’s corporate average fuel mandates ("CAFE"). It also eliminated regulations that created market distortions that were costly to consumers. Those former regulations were all in service to the climate hoax, of course.

Mr. CBD discussed this news earlier this week, pointing out that the 50-mpg goal of Biden/Buttigieg was unachievable, and that its un-achievability was in service to the left’s war on the legacy auto industry and to consumer choice.

I would like to point out two other major consumer-friendly results of this initiative:

1) Re-setting of Vehicle Classification: Current CAFÉ regulations have counter-intuitively incentivized auto manufacturers to add weight and off-road functionality to cars so as to classify them as “light trucks” and evade the CAFÉ regulation for cars (which are stricter than for light trucks.) At the same time, there has also been an incentive to build larger and heavier “light trucks,” because the bigger the vehicle’s footprints, the lower the CAFÉ requirement for the “truck.”

Aside from this creating incentives that were contrary to the goal of CAFE, it also made cars more expensive and less fuel efficient than they would be if consumers could just buy whatever car or truck they wanted.

2) Elimination of CAFE Credit Trading: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ("NHTSA") created a market for the trading of CAFE credits, which has served the purpose of awarding EV manufacturers (primarily Tesla and Rivian) credits they can sell to other manufacturers that could not achieve the mandated CAFE fleet requirement.

This is a huge consumer-friendly development. Ford spent $800 million on CAFE trading credits in 2025 alone, which amounted to about $400 per new gasoline-powered car it sold. To put this another way, if you bought a new Ford Explorer in 2025, about $400 of your purchase price was remitted by Ford to Tesla to buy CAFE credits. The same applies if you bought a car from other mass-market auto companies such as Toyota, Honda, and Dodge.

While I am a huge fan of Elon Musk for buying Twitter and restoring free speech - as well as for Starlink, DOGE, SpaceX, etc - I resent having been forced to contribute to Tesla’s revenue stream when I’ve purchased new gasoline-powered cars.

Tesla Made $1.99 billion by selling regulatory credits in 2025 (some of this was from Europe and elsewhere, and this also includes other credit markets such as California’s ZEV credits.) This all went to the bottom line. Tesla’s net income in 2025 was $3.8 billion. It would have been below $2 billion without the sale of those regulatory credits.

Rivian’s staggering losses would have been even worse if it weren’t for the money that was paid by legacy auto manufacturers to Rivian for its CAFE credits. Over the past two years, Rivian has received over $500 million from the sale of regulatory credits.

In summary, Secretary Duffy states that this regulatory relief will:

• Give automakers the flexibility to manufacturer cars the public wants to buy.
• Reduce the average cost of a new vehicle by $1,300 for American families.

• Save the American people $138 billion over the next five years.

• Prevent more than 300,000 serious injuries and save 1,900 lives by encouraging new car sales.

*****

Exploding EVs

Since I’m discussing EVs…

I’ve been remiss lately in covering electric vehicle fires, which are still an ongoing problem. Thanks to a reader named Javier who sent me this link:

“Adams County House Fire Started from Electric Vehicle Battery in Garage” [Fox 3 – Denver]

A north Denver home caught fire on Friday after an electric vehicle battery sparked in the garage, prompting firefighters to warn people to properly care for those batteries so the same doesn’t happen in their homes.
------------------------------------------------------------

Deputy Fire Chief James Wood said a mom and daughter were inside when it began. “The daughter smelled smoke; she sent her outside. When they came out, they noticed that the garage was on fire,” Wood said. He said they believe the fire started near the hood of an electric vehicle in the garage. It then spread up the garage wall into the attic and ran the length of the house.

------------------------------------------------------------

Houses on both sides of the fire suffered some damage as well, but fortunately there was no significant loss.

I would be extremely upset if my house were damaged because a neighbor’s runaway thermal EV fire couldn’t be contained.

The photo above is the subject house in Adams County, with an EV “charging” in its garage.

*****

Other Stuff I’m Writing About

My latest piece at the The American Spectator has been published. “How to Actually Save Local Newspapers; The Chattanooga Times Free Press could turn out to be the model for other newspaper turnarounds” contrasts two recent newspaper reorganizations:

1) McClatchy’s Miami Herald slashed headcount in the local newsroom in favor of wire services and national news & politics.

2) The new owner of Chattanooga’s newspaper rid it of layers of left-wing editors as well as its NY Times wire service subscription, in favor of expanded local news coverage.

There have been several more major newspaper reorganizations in recent weeks, but one is noteworthy for going in an entirely different direction. The money-losing Chattanooga Times Free Press was just bought by Craig Fuller. Fuller is the publisher of Freightwaves and several other successful publications that focus on business, transportation, and leisure activities. He quickly dismissed most of the rabidly left-wing editors at the Chattanooga Times Free Press, shrank the editorial page, fired the New York Times wire service, and committed to putting only local news on the front page. He also hired new writers to expand coverage of sports and local business. National news (from the AP only) is now relegated to an inside page.

This piece is not behind a paywall. I’d be honored if you’d give it a read.

My latest at The American Spectator, “How to Actually Save Local Newspapers,” contrasts the new owner of Chattanooga’s paper refocusing on local while the Miami Herald guts local reporting in favor of national news & politics.@FreightAlley @rayadverb https://t.co/8wTp33C6CD
— Buck Throckmorton (@BuckThrockmort) October 1, 2026

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

Close it up

Posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM Comments

Mid-Morning Art Thread

—CBD

Between Two Fires
Francis Davis Millet

Posted by CBD at 10:35 AM Comments

The Morning Report — 10/2 /26

—J.J. Sefton

Good morning kids. I know I'm a day late, but October already. Meh, on a personal note, 10 Years already! Wow. I want to take a moment to express my sincere gratitude to all of you and of course Ace for allowing me the incredible opportunity to do this column. And a nod to all the cobs for their support and collegiality over the years! It's been rewarding and challenging, especially the past two years as I have been dealing with health issues, brain cancer which unfortunately despite surgery as well as chemo and radiation, are ongoing as I have had a couple of recurrences which I am still dealing with and given the nature of this disease, barring some miracle cure or treatment regimen, I will be facing for the rest of my life, however long the good Lord grants me. So with that I thank you all for your prayers and good wishes, so enough of that and let us get to the news of the day.

While we're speaking of cancer, we collectively still must deal with Islam.

On Wednesday night, I visited the University of Texas at Austin to address students there — and so did notorious Twitch streamer Hasan Piker.
I, a female survivor of Hamas’ brutal terror, came to share my story at the campus’ Chabad student center.

On an auditorium stage half a mile away stood Piker, who once said about the day I was shot and taken: “It doesn’t matter if rapes f–king happened on Oct. 7, like that doesn’t change the dynamic for me even this much.”

This man sold out the 460-seat venue where he spoke within 20 minutes, and another 2,500 people joined a waiting list.

He isn’t a fringe character on college campuses; he’s increasingly becoming the mainstream on campus. But his enthusiastic fans are the people who most need to hear my story.

The problem is that they'll hear your story and at best call you a liar and at worst ululate in orgasmic glee at what you endured.

The list of Muslim suicide pilots also includes EgyptAir Flight 990 in 1999 where the first officer kept shouting “Allahu Akbar” while downing the plane as well as Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, the subject of endless fantastic conspiracy theories ranging from UFOs to black holes, but that was actually likely the work of Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah.
After the FlyDubai incident in which an Omani Muslim pilot stabbed an Indian pilot in a reported attempt to hijack Flight FZ1073 bound for Israel and possibly crash the plane, the list of Muslim pilots who tried to bring down airplanes is up to 4. And that means that 44% of pilots who deliberately crashed tried to crash planes were Muslim.

to tweak the twisted verbiage and illogic of Leftists and Democrats, and make it relevant and accurate, what we desperately need, and have needed for almost 15 centuries, is Common Sense Islam Control... Before Islam controls us to death!

Who do you think is the most extreme socialist candidate running in these 2026 midterms?” a participant named Barry M. asked. . . “This guy’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He goes on Fox News, and he deflects every question: ‘Did I want America to suffer during 9/11? Well, people can’t afford groceries.’ That isn’t the question that you were just asked. This guy is the most dangerous one,” the senator continued.
“Well, that’s like who’s the tallest midget? Because man, oh, man. That’s a tough one. I’d have to say just on sheer jihadist credentials, it would have to be Abdul El-Sayed,” (Sen. Bernie)Moreno replied. .. El-Sayed, who is running against Republican Mike Rogers, has claimed he is “not a socialist,” although he is running on a platform backed by socialist lawmakers Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). He has also campaigned with far-left streamer Hasan Piker, who claimed America “deserved 9/11.”

And from the insane we go to the ridiculous.

Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike — who is now in the hospital after a botched execution — was given the all-female lethal injection team she had requested, her attorneys revealed on Thursday.

Couldn't they find women who could get the job done?! I understand this Lindsey Clancy was available?! Well, that or find a jihadist with a rusty hacksaw, we're overrun with them!!! And jeez, what are they using for lethal injections, St. Joseph's aspirin? Um, I'm no chemist but I understand something called potassium cyanide might've worked a tad better in stopping this fiend's black heart.

Anyway, God bless you all and on that and all the other depressing notes I bid you to have a great weekend!

Posted by J.J. Sefton at 07:25 AM Comments

Daily Tech News 2 October 2026

—Pixy Misa

Top Story

Xbox is not for sale, says Xbox. (Windows Central)

Unless you have a lot of money.

Like... Any at all.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 04:30 AM Comments

Thursday Overnight Open Thread - October 1, 2026

—Doof

From Seaeyes

Howdy Hordelings! Welcome to the Thursday ONT! Mixed bag of content for those who care. Open thread, as always. On time, as always. What's on YOUR mind tonight?

Posted by Doof at 10:02 PM Comments