Good morning kids. Tuesday and up front we have the conclusion of the hearings phase of sham-peachment and the long-awaited dropping of the IG report to unpack, so here we go. First up, the breaking news is after all the blathering about bribery and Nancy Palsi throwing the Ukraine angle under the bus and returning to the completely dead and rotting Mueller deception, those two have been removed from the articles that the President is to be charged with. Aside from the fact that they are consulting focus groups and Ouija boards to determine their moves, all of this indicates that the Palsi, Schiff-for-Brains and Nadless the Human Pastrami have lost complete control of this entire thing. In any case, yesterday's jam session was no different than any of the previous hearings from either committee. The day started off with the Democrats and their confederates spouting distortions and out and out lies about the President and his actions. The most egregious was this Barry Berke insect doing a Trayvon 911 edited tape hit job by first using a snippet of Trump invoking his Article II authority to fire people as his declaring himself emperor and then playing the soundbite from his campaign where he jokingly asked the Russians to find Hillary's missing e-mails as proof of collusion. The fact that this was not immediately challenged and worse, went completely unchallenged by anyone on the GOP was a major blunder. Opportunity to debunk a major media myth wasted.
You also had the exchange between Berke and dual purpose lawyer and witness Dan Goldman just spit-balling hypotheticals and coming to the conclusion that although Trump might not have acted on his supposed impulses to do something illegal, his impulses alone - because they just know he was thinking them - were enough to hang, draw and quarter him. Louie "Go-Go" Gohmert went nuts when suddenly Berke got up from the witness chair, walked over and took a seat on the panel. G-d bless Gohmert for quipping "How much money do you have to give to get to do that?" which visibly infuriated the amorphous cloud of lipids holding the gavel. He also took a shot at ex-preezy Kenya-Kona Blend which doubtless made him gag on a spliff in the downstairs toilet in Kalorama.
But, then when the Republicans finally got their turn in the afternoon, they quite effectively dismantled with extreme prejudice the Democrats' "witnesses." Again, Matt Gaetz used the thoroughly discredited "pee tape" to flame Dan Goldman, exposing him as a partisan hack after he insisted he wasn't and then Nadless for his utterly unethical use of Barry Berke as both a counsel and witness. Later, Doug Collins went after Goldman for refusing to reveal how Schiff-for-Brains got the call logs for Devin Nunes, Rudy Giuliani and others and who was responsible for leaking them. Collins clammed up. Look, we goof on the bug-eyed schmuck from Santa Monica, but make no mistake; Schiff-for-Brains is a dangerous, power-mad thug.
I have no illusions about whether or not Schiff-for-Brains or any of his Democrat co-conspirators and henchman will ever face any serious legal repercussions or justified retribution for what they are doing to this president and what shred of law and order and justice may yet exist. Odds are they won't. But their actions are not playing well in Peoria, especially considering the nature of Trump and more crucially, his incredible record of success when compared and contrasted to past presidents, Democrat and RINO. The Democrat-Media Complex brought this upon itself, but then again perhaps it was inevitable. The eight years of Obama, plus much of the previous 20 of the Bushes and Clinton brought the nation to a crossroads politically, culturally and economically. Trump and most Americans wanted a way back. And the powers that be would not allow that to happen. Winston Churchill spoke of the end, the beginning of the end and the end of the beginning, in referring to what would prove to be the midpoint of World War Two (El Alamein). Perhaps we may be at or even approaching that "end of the beginning" phase. But despite the urge for eeyore-ism, remember that none of what has been exposed - none of it - would have ever been revealed and confirmed to both us, and now many more Americans than ever had it not been for Donald J. Trump. So, at least there's that. And I think it's going to prove to be a much bigger thing in the long run than even we can see from this vantage point in time.
CLINTON/OBAMA COUP, CONGRESSIONAL PERSECUTION, SPYGATE, DEEP STATE, MUELLER DECEPTION
And that segues nicely into yesterday's release of the IG Horowitz report which as we all had suspected but was to be charitable, a big let down. That said it should be noted that Horowitz's investigation was always going to be limited in scope. Also, Horowitz is a part of the DoJ itself and unlike Barr (I hope), his motivations is to preserve, protect and defend the illusion that all is well in Hoover-ville, and so naturally he found not a smidgen of partisan political motivation in the obtaining of FISA warrants based on the Steele Dossier.
Of course, that got the Irish up of both AG William Barr and his lead investigator John Durham, and they immediately released statements that essentially rebuked Horowitz's non-findings. That said, the report is a bit of a mixed bag as there are a number of findings that don't do much to help improve the completely sullied reputation of the FBI, especially the confirmation that the Bureau doctored evidence in order to frame Carter Page, as well as debunking the latest round of smears aimed at Devin Nunes. Naturally the Democrat-Media Complex is going to shout "no partisanship!" and "investigation justified!" until the 12th of Never. The other glaring and infuriating revelation was that Peter Strzok's infamous "insurance policy" tweet was not even included in the report.
So, okay, Horowitz was an expected let down, but the real action is with Barr and Durham. And along with this serious rebuke of Horowitz, they did publicly state a few weeks back that indictments will be coming down. We shall see if this happens and who gets to be frog-marched. Will it be Comey, Clapper or Brennan or a low-level flunky who gets a wrist slap followed by a book deal and a gig on CNN? The world wonders...
JOE BRIBEM, HUNTER BRIBEM UKRAINE, CHI-COM, OTHER SCANDALS
In DC, it's not how you play the game but how you place the blame, mother of bastard Hunter's bastard looking for a payday and Joey Leg-Hair's scandals are also Obama's.
POLITICS
Trump's inroads with black voters spells trouble for Dems, Dems still hate real Americans, Hillary Clinton on top?, Joey Bribem's belligerence, Larry Elder on bite-sized Big Gulp soaking the poor (I actually think even the so-called "poor" should pay something; skin in the game, what), and someone who thinks Moochelle is going to save the day. No way, in every way possible.
FIRST AMENDMENT, CENSORSHIP, FAKE NEWS, BIG BROTHER BIG TECH
This broke over the weekend but the rumor mill is churning up stories about Matt Drudge having sold his website, Atlanta's daily rag demands a disclaimer on Eastwood's Richard Jewell, and Jimmy Drama claims Fox cancelled his interview because of the IG report, but they respond.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS, INTERNATIONAL
Matt Gaetz is dead right but the other end is an embargo on all immigration, especially from the Middle East, in support of the Iranian people, pastor still lost in the Chi-Com gulag, you can't spell plutonium without p-u-t-i-n, Indonesia arrests child molester who threatened victims with Koran, Caroline Glick on Israel's problematic relationship with Jordan, NATO is still a wreck and if you're a Jew and living in Europe, get the hell out now.
CRIME & PUNISHMENT, NON-DOSTOYEVSKY
Where have you gone Bernhard Goetz, and another look at Nazi collaborator George Soros' attempt to take out America via hijacking our legal systems.
FEMINAZISM, TRANSGENDER PSYCHOSIS, HOMOSEXUALIZATION, WAR ON MASCULINITY/NORMALCY
Another way to destroy the family, there can be no parlaying with these dangerous deviants, Canuck court hands victory to aggrieved normal guy, and it really is a psychosis.
CULTURE WARS, HITHER & YON
Christian Toto on show biz snubbing of Clint Eastwood and Richard Jewell, Heather Mac Donald looks at the wages of social justice, debunking the "we stole America from the natives" myth, bookending 1989 and 2019 and Conrad Black tries remembering Pearl Harbor and the greatest generation, but instead polishes FDR's knob. Very disappointing.
NOTE: The opinions expressed in some links may or may not reflect my own. I include them because of their relevance to the discussion of a particular issue.
ALSO: The Morning Report is cross-posted at CutJibNewsletter.com if you want to continue the conversation all day.
"Remember when Bloomberg demanded a third term as mayor and got it? Trump will do the same. Beware, the same autocratic impulses..." S.E. Cupp
Quote II
“I do believe that we have to deal with the original sin. We have to deal with slavery. Slavery was the thing that put all of what President Trump has done lately into motion. The president has played on racism and he’s used that as a weapon to galvanize a base of support, to mobilize people.” Rep. Al Green (D-TX)
Quote III
“When you talk to those who are in law enforcement and really push them a little bit, like a sheriff or a prosecutor and say, ‘So, really? You mean you’re going to allow violent felons to go ahead and purchase firearms?’ No. They back down pretty quickly.” Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring
Quote IV
And then you have That’sLieutenant Colonel Bratwurst – if you’ve been in uniform, you know there’s one of those guys in every unit, and the wise commander has him off inventorying combat boots at the CIF, where he can’t provoke the troops to hang him by his skivvies from the flag pole out in front of Division HQ. You look at this parade of smug, over-credentialed bureaucrats with delusions of competence and a track record of screw-ups and, to cite the popular meme, you realize that Trump was elected to fire people like them. Kurt Schlichter
Quote V
"The phenomenon of migration is compounded by war, hunger and a 'defensive mindset,' which makes us in a state of fear believe that you can defend yourself only by strengthening borders. At the same time, there is exploitation." Pope Francis
But then again, the Ivory soap never worked on me long term.
***
What do you call a rude and retarded beetle? Greta Beetle.
A newly discovered species of beetle has been named after young climate activist Greta Thunberg.
Nelloptodes gretae bears little resemblance to its namesake - it is less than 1mm long, and has no wings or eyes.
The insect does, however, have two long pigtail-like antennae.
Scientist Dr Michael Darby said he chose the name because he was "immensely impressed" by the Swedish teenager's environmental campaigning.
N. gretae was first found in Kenya in the 1960s by William Block, who donated his samples to the Natural History Museum in London in 1978. It has been held in one of the museum's collections since.
Texas’s growth over the last two decades has been the envy of just about every state in the union. But while that growth has grabbed headlines, parts of Texas have endured some of the steepest population declines anywhere in the country. While that might not be surprising to some who refer to the area as “The Big Empty,” the downfall of communities that dot the area can be shocking to see first hand.
Despite the fact that Texas is the second most populous state in America, it still managed to grow by a staggering 14.1 percent from 2010 to 2018. However, parts of Texas have continued to suffer from population loss, specifically due to rural flight that started back in the 1950s.
The windshield wiper is one of those automotive-related things that has, well, not really changed much since it was invented. A motor makes the wipers move to provide drivers with a clear view ahead. Ta-da.
Tesla often takes a different approach to things, and the electric-car innovator may be keen on replacing the humble windshield wiper with lasers. In a patent application filed this past May and published with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on Nov. 21, Tesla describes a "pulsed laser cleaning" for "debris accumulated" on glass, specifically for automotive application. It also mentions this could be used for "photo-voltaic" applications. That's fancy-speak for solar panels.
Former FBI Director James Comey defended the FBI and criticized Attorney General William Barr in an op-ed for The Washington Post following the release of a highly anticipated report by the Justice Department's inspector general.
"On Monday, we learned from a report by the Justice Department's inspector general, Michael Horowitz, that the allegation of a criminal conspiracy was nonsense," Comey said in the op-ed, which published after the report was released. "There was no illegal wiretapping, there were no informants inserted into the campaign, there was no 'spying' on the Trump campaign. Although it took two years, the truth is finally out."
Comey's comments in the piece, published Monday, come the same day the released report established that the FBI properly opened its investigation into Russian interference during the 2016 election but said there were major errors in how the agency conducted the probe.
The report concluded that officials at the FBI had enough information to properly launch the investigation in 2016, and dispel the claim that US intelligence agencies tried to plant spies in the Trump campaign.
CNN link, you don't have to click is the reason for the large block quote.
It wasn't the news that researchers wanted. Two years after Finland launched a basic-income trial in which nearly 2,000 unemployed residents were given a regular monthly stipend, many of the recipients remained jobless.
The people reported that they were happier and healthier overall than other unemployed residents, but the experiment was widely declared a failure.
"It was discouraging to the basic income community," Michael Stynes, CEO of the nonprofit Jain Family Institute, told Business Insider. "But the survey results, as far as I can tell, are not really usable."
Finland’s coalition government will be composed of five parties all led by women for the first time after the female transport minister won a vote to be the next leader.
Sanna Marin has been chosen by her Social Democratic party to replace the outgoing prime minister Antti Rinne.
She will lead a centre-left coalition of five parties who all have female leaders – four under the age of 35.
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Notice: Posted with permission by the Ace Media Empire, AceCorp, LLC, Russian Bots and local jurisdictions everywhere. The ONT is a sustainable resource. Bite me tree huggers.
#OIG report reminds us how spookily accurate John LeCarre is about the world of spooks: mediocre men w/ privileged pedigrees fantasizing they are James Bond patriotic heroes while acting like slimy, two-bit, comically inept saboteurs from an Elmore Leonard novel.
I think Trump should thank David Frum, John Podhoretz, David French, the Dispatch, the Bulwark, National Review et al. when he cruises -- ahoy! -- to reelection with 350 electoral votes.
Quarterly polling by the Republican firm Firehouse Strategies, with Optimus, had President Trump struggling in the mega-battlegrounds of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- but in the newest edition, he beats every Democrat.
The big picture: Trump won by an average of six percentage points in hypothetical match-ups against all current Democratic candidates, including Joe Biden, who was performing well in head-to-head contests against Trump in polling conducted earlier in the year.
The poll found that a majority of likely 2020 voters surveyed do not support impeaching and removing Trump from office.
LOLOLOLOL
The Democrats have two chances to beat Trump if they can't win two of the three PA, WI, and MI: Slim and none, and slim just resigned after photos of a "thruple" relationship with a staffer surfaced.
Fusion Co-Founders Glenn Simpson and Jonathan Winer Refused to Talk to IG; James Comey and Former FBI Attorney James Baker Also Avoided Fully Testifying
—Ace of Spades
Specifically, Comey and Baker refused to get recertified for a classification clearance, thus blocking the IG's efforts to "refresh their recollection" with classified documents.
"Refreshing a witness' recollection" by showing him documents is a common thing at trials and in investigations.
But sometimes witnesses lie about events, and sometimes lie about having no recollection of certain critical details. James Comey, for example, has a steel-trap recall as to things he wants to claim to his media and government coconspirators, but has all sorts of convenient memory lapses about stuff that could get him into legal trouble.
So the IG wanted to "refresh his recollection" about this convenient periods of Lost Time by showing him classified documents and notes that would explain exactly who he talked to and when he talked to them and what he said to them.
Rather than agreeing to do this, Comey said, "Nah, I decline to get new clearance to see classified material," thus preventing the IG from "refreshing his recollection."
Had he been confronted with a lie about a convenient lack of memory with a document that explained exactly what happened, he would have had to make a choice between telling the truth, or doubling down on his lie even in the face of a documentary record "reminding" him of the truth.
Now, one can get out of a lot of perjury charges by claiming one just didn't remember right, but if someone shows you documentary evidence about what the facts are and you still claim you don't remember, or you remember a version of the story at variance with the written contemporaneous record...?
Well, that makes it much harder to plead "no intent" to a perjury charge.
And so Comey -- the Straight Arrow Truth Teller -- choose to avoid such efforts to get at the truth and keep himself without a security clearance.
For whatever reason, he did not want his recollections to be refreshed.
What is that the Democrats (by which I mean "the media") say whenever a Trump associate declines to testify...?
"The only reason to not testify is because you're guilty."
Hm, why does that rule never seem to apply to Glenn Simpson, James Comey, and the rest of the Straight Shooters Gang?
Star Democrat "Witness" Says That Trump Should Be Impeached Because His 8-Year-Old Son Thinks Trump Is a "Bad Person," Then Jumps from the Witness Seat to the Prosecutor's Table and Starts Interrogating Republican Witnesses
Then, as a prosecuting attorney badgering Republican witnesses:
Dem counsel Barry Berke, who was first to testify at the House Judiciary Committee hearing, is now on dais questioning witnesses as a staff member of the House Judiciary Committee.
GOPs protesting this, say he can't be witness AND questioner. Biggs says this is "unprecedented." pic.twitter.com/e66ggRjLDn
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) on Democratic counsel questing GOP counsel after previously delivering opening statement: "This is not appropriate to have a witness be a questioner of somebody that was a witness when he was...It's just wrong." https://t.co/QF6tEiMaEPpic.twitter.com/5gD9yLbSSO
I initially didn't like it, and wanted to say "#NotMyGhostbusters," but it's grown on me in the past five minutes.
It's set in a small town in the midwest, rather than New York City. This might have something to do with Dan Aykroyd's complaining that Lady Ghostbusters cost far, far too much money to ever be profitable (even if it had been good, which it wasn't).
It also might have something to do with the film's need to position itself as different in all ways from the disastrous Lady Ghostbusters abortion. They need a different setting, a different tone, and a different age cohort of the main characters.
It also differentiates itself from Lady Ghostbusters -- and from The Real Ghostbusters -- by presenting itself not as a comedy at all, but some kind of Spielbergian action fantasy.
There are no jokes in the trailer. None.
Now that's definitely running from Lady Ghostbusters. Whether this is an accurate teaser for the actual movie or if they're just trying too hard to show they're not like the Fake Ghostbusters, desperate for laughs, I don't know.
It has a very Stranger Things look and feel, down to the Spielbergian suburban barely-middle-class messiness.
It has Paul Rudd. I didn't know he was in this.
The Ghostbusters do not appear in the clip, except in a clip from what is probably Ghostbusters 2, presented as a television news clip, as Paul Rudd explains that there were lots and lots of ghosts to bust in the 80s.
But there have been no ghosts since then. Until now.
Didn't see that one coming.
I assume the Ghostbusters will show up (the living ones, at least) to mentor the kids a little, and might even suit up for the climax, but the main characters here are clearly the little kids so the OG Ghostbusters won't be in the movie much and aren't really needed by the plot all that much.
From someone who actually served with Vindman, & is in contact w/many other soldiers who have as well, let me just say wrong on integrity, honor, & patriotism. Vindman's a partisan who made disparaging comments about Americans, & I had to reprimand him for it in 2013.
Speaking to those within his Apache Troop/1/2SCR, his command was cut to the minimum for credit, & just prior to deployment for combat, because, according to his NCOs, he lacked the qualities you just mentioned, & leadership. Also, he was the worse commander they've ever served under & a couple of those NCOs are still active duty Soldiers.
Not all officers are good, as some slip through the system like Vindman. His career should've ended as a CPT, but he switched from Infantry to functional area FAO & survived.
The primary takeaway is Vindman acted out of partisanship by foregoing his chain of command, & leaking to a known partisan Democrat to initiate this impeachment. In the military we resolve things in an apolitical military fashion, through the immediate chain of command, & at the lowest level possible.
That he 'perceived' the President's request as a demand is not a fact, nor should his partisan perceptions or opinions matter. Vindman's disagreement with President Trump on foreign policy, is ridiculous on it's face, as @POTUS sets foreign policy, not congress, and certainly not some LTC staff officer.
If Vindman testifies before the Senate, I have a feeling more military folks will stand to tell the truth.🇺🇸 #TruthExposed #TruthMatters
Trump just gave a short statement to the press from the Cabinet Room, but I haven't found a link to the video yet.
John Durham: I'm the One With the Prosecutorial Power and the Final Say, IG Obama Holdover
—Ace of Spades
NEW: in a rare statement,US Attorney John Durham says: "Based on the evidence collected to date,&while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the IG that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.” #FISA
The omissions -- the deliberate lies and actual fraud perpetrated upon the FISA court -- is "concerning," but none of the rats confessed to having been responsible for the lies, therefore there are no lies, or at least we're going to pretend them away:
We also found the quantity of omissions and inaccuracies in the applications
and the obvious errors in the Woods Procedures deeply concerning. Although we
did not find documentary or testimonial evidence of intentional misconduct on the
part of the case agents who assisted in preparing the applications, or the agents
and supervisors who performed the Woods Procedures, we also did not receive
satisfactory explanations for the errors or missing information....
Thanks to artisinal 'ette for that one.
Page xiv of the executive summary more or less says:
"That so many basic and fundamental errors
were made by three separate, hand- picked teams on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations that was briefed to the highest levels within the FBI, and that FBI officials expected would eventually be subjected to close scrutiny, raised significant questions regarding the FBI chain of command's management and supervision of the FISA process."
There's more but all that's being done? A fucking audit.
Here. I'm going to start skimming. If you see anything good, quote it in the comments, if you would be so kind.
MORE: In statement, Attorney General Bill Barr says evidence compiled by IG shows FBI "launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken." https://t.co/VDyYyO67Br
Don't be surprised when media ignore or distort what the IG report says about rampant FISA abuses and the officials who perpetrated them. Democrat-affiliated media are deeply implicated in the Russia collusion hoax and desperate to avoid any accountability for it.
The AG Guidelines and the DIOG do not provide
heightened predication standards for sensitive matters,
or allegations potentia lly impacting constitutionally
protected activity, such as First Amendment rights.
Rather, the approval and notification requirements
contained in the AG Guidelines and the DIOG are, in
part, intended to provide t he means by which such
concerns can be considered by senior officials.
However, we were concerned to find that neither the AG
Guidelines nor the DIOG contain a provision requiring
Department consultation before opening an
investigation such as the one here involving the alleged
conduct of individuals associated with a major party
presidential campaign.
Crossfire Hurricane was opened as a Full
Investigation and all of the senior FBI officials who
participated in discussions about whether to open a
case told us the information warranted opening it. For
example, then Counterintel ligence Division (CD)
Assistant Director (AD) E.W. "Bill" Priestap, who
approved the case opening, told us that the
combination of t he FFG information and the FBI 's
ongoing cyber intrusion investigation of the July 2016
hacks of the Democratic Nat ional Committee's (DNC)
emails, created a count erintelligence concern that the
FBI was "obligated" to investigate. Priestap stated that
he considered whether the FBI should conduct
defensive briefings for the Trump campaign but
ultimately decided that providing such briefings created
the risk that "if someone on the campaign was engaged
with the Russians, he/she would very likely change
his/her tact ics and/or otherwise seek to cover-up
his/her activities, thereby preventing us from finding
the truth." We did not identify any Department or FBI
policy that applied to this decision and therefore
determined t hat the decision was a judgment call that
Department and FBI policy leaves to the discretion of
FBI officia ls. We also concluded that, under the AG
Guidelines and the DIOG, the FBI had an authorized
purpose when it opened Crossfire Hurricane to obtain
information about, or protect against, a national
security threat or federal crime, even though the
investigation also had the potential to impact
constitutionally protected activity.
Additionally, given the low threshold for
predication in the AG Guidelines and the DIOG..
"Predication" means "pretext," effectively. The rules provide for a very low standard -- almost a complete lack of standard -- for opening up an investigation into a Republican presidential candidate. They're saying that literally anything can constitute a "good faith" reason for suspicion.
Here, the "FFG" information means "Friendly Foreign Government" and refers to Alexander Downer's claim that Papadoplous said something about Russia having Hillary's emails.
...we concluded that the FFG information, provided by a
government the United States Intelligence Community
(USIC) deems trustworthy, and describing a first-hand
account from an FFG employee of a conversation with
Papadopoulos, was sufficient to predicate the
investigation. This information provided the FBI with an
articulable factual basis that, if true, reasonably
indicated activity constituting either a federal crime or a
t hreat to national security, or both, may have occurred
or may be occurring. For simi lar reasons, as we detail
in Chapter Three, we concluded that the quantum of
information articulated by the FBI to open t he individual
investigations on Papadopoulos, Page, Flynn, and
Manafort in August 2016 was sufficient to satisfy the
low threshold established by the Department and the
FBI.
Low threshold means "no threshold whatsoever."
Now we turn to the whitewashing of bias:
As part of our review, we also sought to
determine whether there was evidence that political
bias or other improper considerations affected decision
making in Crossfire Hurricane, including the decision to
open the investigation. We discussed t he issue of
political bias in a prior OIG report, Review of Various
Actions in Advance of the 2016 Election, where we
described text and instant messages between then
Special Counsel to the Deputy Director Lisa Page and
then Section Chief Peter Strzok, among others, that
included statements of hostility toward then candidate
Trump and statements of support for then candidate
Hillary Clinton. In this review, we found that, while Lisa
Page attended some of the discussions regarding the
opening of the investigations, she did not play a role in
the decision to open Crossfire Hurricane or the four
individual cases. We further found that while Strzok
was directly involved in the decisions to open Crossfire
Hurricane and the four individual cases, he was not the
sole, or even the highest-level, decision maker as to
any of those matters. As noted above, then CD AD
Priestap, Strzok's supervisor, was the official who
ultimately made the decision to open the investigation,
and evidence reflected that this decision by Priestap
was reached by consensus after multiple days of
discussions and meetings that included Strzok and
other leadership in CD, the FBI Deputy Director, the FBI
General Counsel, and a FBI Deputy General Counsel.
We concluded that Priestap's exercise of discretion in
opening the investigation was in compliance with
Department and FBI policies, and we did not find
documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias
or improper motivation influenced his decision. We
similarly found that, while the formal documentation
opening each of the four individual investigations was
approved by Strzok (as required by the DIOG), the
decisions to do so were reached by a consensus among
the Crossfire "Hurricane agents and analysts who
identified individuals associated with the Trump
campaign who had recently traveled to Russia or had
other alleged ties to Russia. Priestap was involved in
these decisions. We did not find documentary or
testimonial evidence that political bias or improper
motivation influenced the decisions to open the four
individual investigations.
Oh -- there was an Interagency Consensus.
I see.
The omissions -- the deliberate lies and actual fraud perpetrated upon the FISA court -- is "concerning," but none of the rats confessed to having been responsible for the lies, therefore there are no lies, or at least we're going to pretend them away:
We also found the quantity of omissions and inaccuracies in the applications
and the obvious errors in the Woods Procedures deeply concerning. Although we
did not find documentary or testimonial evidence of intentional misconduct on the
part of the case agents who assisted in preparing the applications, or the agents
and supervisors who performed the Woods Procedures, we also did not receive
satisfactory explanations for the errors or missing information....
Thanks to artisinal 'ette for that one.
Page xiv of the executive summary more or less says:
"That so many basic and fundamental errors
were made by three separate, hand- picked teams on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations that was briefed to the highest levels within the FBI, and that FBI officials expected would eventually be subjected to close scrutiny, raised significant questions regarding the FBI chain of command's management and supervision of the FISA process."
There's more but all that's being done? A fucking audit.
Rumor: Horowitz Report to be Released to Public in One Hour Mark Meadows: I Now Understand the Reason for Media/Democrat Defensive Leaks; It's Worse Than They've Been Claiming
—Ace of Spades
I just got out of a nearly 2 hour briefing on the IG report.
It is deeply disturbing. Some former FBI and DOJ officials are about to have some serious explaining to do.
And after reading this, it's no wonder we've been seeing defensive leaks in the New York Times and CNN. And that the Democrats rushed to hold an impeachment hearing the same day.
It's every bit as bad as advertised. And certainly worse than the media has been suggesting. https://t.co/0U5dzQGDMY
At the heart of the probe is whether the FBI misled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) regarding information from Christopher Steele, a former British spy who worked in 2016 for the DNC and Clinton campaign.
The FBI relied on information from Steele to assert there was probable cause to believe Carter Page was a working as an agent of Russia. Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s highly respected inspector general, opened an investigation March 28, 2018, that initially focused on how the FBI handled Steele’s information, and whether investigators disclosed everything they knew about the dossier to the FISC.
Horowitz since expanded the investigation to look at whether the FBI had a sound basis to open investigations into four Trump campaign associates in late July 2016. The watchdog also investigated whether the FBI properly handled confidential sources used in the probe.
That part of the report will likely focus on at least two FBI informants: Steele and Stefan Halper, a former Cambridge professor whom the FBI tasked to connect with Carter Page and Trump aide George Papadopoulos.
...
The report is also likely to include an assessment of whether FBI officials were biased against Trump during the Russia probe. During an investigation into FBI activities during the Hillary Clinton email investigation, Horowitz’s team discovered anti-Trump text messages that FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok exchanged with FBI lawyer Lisa Page.
More: Fusion Nat whines on behalf of Christopher Steele.
Can confirm NYT report (https://t.co/wTO9MJWVkK) that Barr made a last minute declassification of details about Steele that will be in IG report. Steele was told about this yesterday and was not given a chance to review the new information, which as NYT notes is highly unusual.
Steele was interviewed extensively by the IG’s office this year and handed over documents. As is standard, he was able to review the portions of the report that mention him. So it’s unclear why he’s been prevented from reviewing/being briefed on the newly declassified info.
"Democrats and their progressive media allies shrieking about Russia 24/7 need to step back and listen to themselves. And knowing a little history wouldn't hurt. Back in the 1950s, they used to laugh at the Birchers who were finding commies hiding under every bed. And who also made the claim that President Eisenhower was self-consciously a Soviet agent. That last bit was the straw that broke the camel's back for William F. Buckley, who barred anyone associated with the John Birch Society from appearing in his National Review magazine.
He thus booted them from the conservative movement. And it worked. The John Birch Society was effectively marginalized to this day.
"Well, that was then, this is now. The progressives do not have anyone like Buckley, no voice of reason or sanity who can stand athwart history, yelling 'STOP!'
"And since the only way to maintain a conspiracy theory against the evidence of facts and logic is by expanding it, they just keep getting crazier and crazier. Look at those WaPo headlines. One Republican after another gets declared a Russian asset, and then the *entire party* gets labelled a Russian asset, and there is no evidence that any editor at the WaPo ever said, 'Wow, this is just crazy talk' or 'We need to dial it back a bit, otherwise we'll sound like a bunch of kooks and lose the confidence of our readers.'
They're all on board the crazy train, and there's no brakes."
Friday's Celebs: Laurence Harvey and France Nuyen, who were together in A Girl Named Tamiko (1962), which I had never heard of until I started looking for hotties I could pair Harvey with. The ST:TOS connection was an unexpected bonus.
Today's Edition of the Morning Rant Is Brough To You By:
Good morning kids. Start of a new week and the top stories are the release of the IG Horowitz Report and the House Judiciary Committee set to charge President Trump with treason. Yes, gentle reader, you read that right: T-R-E-A-S-O-N. These people are truly sick. They are doing more than just playing games; they are playing with fire, here. If I had the ability to hold back and not slam my fist into Jerrold Nadler's gaping maw, I would certainly displace the perpetual slab of pastrami with a microphone and try to get him on record to answer the question "do you realize treason is a capital crime?" Okay, I get it. You turds are doing anything and everything you can to sabotage the President while covering up for your own crimes of sabotaging 2016 and then Trump's nascent presidency, which for the record, come within a red nether-hair's breadth of actual dictionary definition treason. Meanwhile, we still have hearings set for today, which you gave the Republicans on the committee essentially zero time to prepare for, dumping thousands of pages of evidence at the last minute. Not that that would matter since the committees are a farce of both fairness and legal precedent.
The Democrats have ensnared themselves in their own trap. For over three years, everything they have done to rig the election and then sabotage this president has failed, and spectacularly so. And since impeachment was promised even before Trump took the oath of office, impeachment is what they are going to have to deliver. But invoking treason is truly crossing a line. For argument's sake, let's say the House votes to impeach - and the jury is still out on if they even have the votes (although I suspect they do and the scuttlebutt that they don't is a head-fake), and then he is exonerated in the Senate. What then? Forget the shmoo-like bespectacled "G-d-cursed chimptato hybrid" screaming at the clouds. Will the Antifarians turn into Weathermen 2, Electric Boogaloo? I almost feel the Democrats would cheer that on, if not intentionally engaging in all of this to enable exactly that. As I said, they are playing with fire here.
CLINTON/OBAMA COUP, CONGRESSIONAL PERSECUTION, SPYGATE, DEEP STATE, MUELLER DECEPTION
Meanwhile, the interminably-awaited Godot-like IG report drops this morning, and Mollie Hemingway has the dope on what we can expect, or not, Devin Nunes rips the FBI for helping frame Carter Page, Trump teases on what Rudy dug up in pierogi-land, and the Senate GOP have requested a sit-down with Alexandra Chalupa. Pfft. She should be "requested" the way Paul Manafort was.
JOE BRIBEM, HUNTER BRIBEM UKRAINE, CHI-COM, OTHER SCANDALS
So we've transitioned from attacking the accusers to the hummina-hummina-hummina Sergeant Schultz phase. And Kerry attempting to shield his own crooked spawn by endorsing Joey Leg-Hairs was colossally stupid.
DEMOCRAT-LEFTIST SCANDALS, CRIMES, CHUTZ-POCRISY, MESHUGAS
Don't worry Bernie; there are scores of unreconstructed bigots and mental defective ex journalists who are eager to ditch coding classes, Fauxca-Has-Been's forked tongue on big money donations and video surfaces of Joey Leg-Hairs praising Confederate flag fans. Remind me again what he said about Trump and Charlottesville.
AMNESTY, IMMIGRATION, BORDER CRISIS, BORDER SECURITY
To the border we go where the CBP debunks that video of an alien allegedly scaling the border wall, LA council goes full insurrection and fully insane, mayors pimping open borders because we need diversity. No, we need an American identity which means we need a 25-year immigration moratorium. See the accompanying piece of the popularity of the baby name Mohammed. Elsewhere, a follow-on essay on the dissolution of said American identity, this Idaho Republican Senator needs to be Pinochet-ed into Al Leppo's lap, and how the Islamists attempt to demonize border security and sovereignty by invoking Gaza.
POLITICS
Joey Bribem flip-flops on work requirements for welfare, House passes bill to nullify voter ID laws, get set for a brokered Democrat convention unless the DNC can rig it for the paste-eating girl-groper, Schiff-for-Brains and Toothy McBigTits get reamed for lying about the new food stamp regs, Mayor Buttplug as the gay Obama (redundant, no?), two essays on progressivism from a campaign standpoint and an insanity standpoint and finally on the need for forming political alliances.
FIRST AMENDMENT, CENSORSHIP, FAKE NEWS, BIG BROTHER BIG TECH
Twitter muzzles for the Muzzies, Nikki Haley hits back at the media lies about her Confederate flag comments, military ban on religious dog tags appealed, S.E. Cupp auditioning for The View or something, on states attacking religious liberty vis a vis pro-life groups forced to hire baby-killing supporters, Dave Rubin launches new platform to get around Big Tech Big Brother, the Slimes' 1619 Project as vast conspiracy theory, and honoring Ted Turner and confronting Jeff Zucker at the same time.
ABORTION
David Daleidin gets six counts tossed but still will be persecuted for committing actual journalism against a Planned Parenthood and Palsi Pelosi's apostasy disgusts.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS, INTERNATIONAL
Hong Kong protests mark six month anniversary and still going strong, Farsis hit with more sanctions for killing Iraqi protesters, US slams Krauts for Hamas-coddling, a call to be wary of NATO, Corbyn/Labour Joo-hate worse than imagined, the taqqiya twins reject "two-state solution," and New Zealand's really not that hot.
WE-ALL-SLAM-FOR-I-SLAM
Robert Spencer on the phantom backlash, we don't do retribution like we used to and Raymond Ibrahim on Mohammed getting into America's top 10 list for the first time. Ugh.
DOMESTIC AFFAIRS, THE BUREAUCRACY, WASTE, FRAUD, CORRUPTION
What was all that about illegal search and seizure? Also, Ohio man gets a slap on the wrist for Food Stamp fraud, a good question about same, Portland to force people to house vagrants, and the FBI goes postal to get your fingerprints.
THE ECONOMY, STUPID
The Trump economy means bad news for Democrats and great news for actual working stiffs and real Americans and what it's like to do grunt work at Amazon. Actually, it sounds pretty good.
EDUCATION, INDOCTRINATION
I think we should heed Fauxca-Has-Been's advice; take over the schools and fire the unionized propagandists, child abusers and brainwashers. Also, the wages of g-dless secularism and more money only means more ignorance.
RED-GREENS, CLIMATE CHANGE HOAX, LYSENKOISM
More scolding and stupidity and the green-red Marxism is a positive for Conservatives, if only the Republicans would get the hell out of the way.
CULTURE WARS, HITHER & YON
Anthony Hopkins may be one of us, Christian Toto slaps around John Legend, Marvelous Mrs. Maisel perpetuates a libel against Phyllis Schlafley and in praise of the White House's Christmas decor.
NOTE: The opinions expressed in some links may or may not reflect my own. I include them because of their relevance to the discussion of a particular issue.
ALSO: The Morning Report is cross-posted at CutJibNewsletter.com if you want to continue the conversation all day.
“Pelosi invokes her Catholicism on everything but abortion,” Rush Limbaugh
Quote II
“We sincerely apologize to this child and her family and will be taking immediate disciplinary action against the person responsible.” Lisa Kinney, DOC Spokesperson
Quote III
"We can't go on like this; it is not sustainable that children skip school and we don't want to continue — we would love some action from the people in power. People are suffering and dying today. We can't wait any longer," Greta Thunberg
Quote IV
"The Internet as we know it was developed by taxpayer-funded research, using taxpayer-funded grants in taxpayer-funded labs. Our tax dollars built the Internet, and access to it should be a public good for all, not another price-gouging profit machine for Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon." Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
After three years of using trumped-up allegations of Russian collusion to try and stymie President Donald Trump’s agenda, it appears congressional Democrats are scheming to pull the same stunt again in case the president wins reelection next year.
It’s hard to draw any other conclusion given the recent rhetoric of the party’s top figures, including House Judiciary Committee chair Jerry Nadler.
Speaking Sunday morning on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he accused the president of posing “a threat to our election” and suggested that, if ultimately acquitted by the Senate, Trump “will do everything he can to make it not make it a fair election.”
In Alaska, a dentist is accused of fraud, unnecessarily sedating patients, and performing a dental procedure on a woman while riding a wheeled, motorized hoverboard, authorities say.
Seth Lookhart, 34, is charged with felony Medicaid fraud and reckless endangerment.
From AP:
A former patient testified Wednesday at his trial that she was angered when an investigator showed her an unauthorized 2016 video of Lookhart extracting one of her teeth while she was sedated and he was riding the hoverboard. Veronica Wilhelm was “pretty livid” about the dentist’s actions, she testified.
“When did Dr. Lookhart get your approval to take out your tooth on a hoverboard,” prosecutor Joan Wilson asked in court.
“I’m not against you for just being American, I don’t hate you because your freedoms, I hate you because every day you supporting, funding and committing crimes not only against Muslims but also humanity,”
If you don’t believe people like myself who constantly talk about how Muslims are not here to assimilate, but rather dominate, maybe you will start to take our argument a little more seriously in time.
Here’s some good or bad news, depending on how you feel about the matter…
Muhammad just made the list, for the first time, of popular baby names in the United States.
WASHINGTON, D.C.—There wasn't much happening in the world today, so Trump simply sat at his desk looking for something to do.
Then he got an idea. Picking up his desk phone, he dialed a number and waited for the man on the other end to pick up.
Meanwhile, Colin Kaepernick was sitting around nervously waiting for his phone to ring at long last. As his ringtone, the USSR anthem, began to play, Kaepernick lunged for the phone and picked up on the first ring. "Hello?" he said, attempting to sound casual.
"Hi, uh, yes, is this a Mr. Kaepernick?" Trump said, stifling laughter.
"Yeah, it's me. Who's this?" Kaepernick said, trying not to get his hopes up.
A cold snap may put a freeze on French fries as farmers deal with smaller potato crops this year.
From an extended rainy period in the Red River Valley of North Dakota, to an early frost in Idaho, weather negatively affected the harvesting of potatoes, reducing the expected haul in the U.S. by 6% as compared to 2018, according to the Department of Agriculture.
As of early November, only 73% of total crops had been harvested.
In Idaho, the state that grows one-third of all potatoes produced in the U.S., a freeze hit between Oct. 9 and 11.
Cierra Brown estimates her commute to work would only take about 25 minutes if she had a car. That’s part of the reason she returned to McDonald’s in January: Her car had broken down and she needed money. But at McDonald’s, Brown only earns $9.50 per hour as a cashier, which barely helps cover rent and is far from enough to solve her vehicular woes. Without a car, one of Brown’s main headaches is getting to work. Her typical bus commute to McDonald’s takes as long as two hours each way.
I joined the Fight for $15 and a Union because I’ve worked in the fast food industry for 14 years—about half my life—and all these jobs have a few things in common. They all paid poverty wages. None of these jobs have given me the opportunity to come together with my coworkers in a union, or receive any healthcare benefits. And the only way we'll create change in these jobs is workers coming together and demanding it.
Once upon a time I worked in a restaurant for a short period of time. I knew that it wasn't going to be a career for me. It didn't take me 14 years to realize it doesn't pay well.
Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s latest provocation, a sculptural intervention that consists of a banana duct-taped to the wall of Perrotin’s booth at Art Basel in Miami Beach, has been sold. The work, titled Comedian (2019), had been priced at $120,000; like most of Cattelan’s works, it exists in an edition of three, plus two artist’s proofs. Two of the three editions of Comedian had been sold by Wednesday afternoon, and according to a Perrotin rep, the gallery is “currently speaking with a museum that wants to acquire the third.” The work comes with a certificate of authenticity, and owners of the work replace the banana as they see fit.
In general, we try to be pretty honest people. I mean we're journalists. But when it comes to Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy, or whatever it is in your family ... is it bad to lie to your kids to keep the magic alive?
Cory's gotten deep into the Santa ruse: setting out the reindeer snack, calling into the Santa tracker on Christmas Eve. Anya wrote notes impersonating the Tooth Fairy and when that didn't work, she even set up a phone call! The con has gotten really long, and the kids might be on to us. We know we're not alone.
Here are four tips for handling that awkward moment when your kids start doubting the world of magic. Luckily Rosemarie Truglio, a childhood development specialist and senior vice president of Education and Research at Sesame Workshop, is going to help us figure out how — and how long — to keep the magic alive.
Kentucky Fried Chicken teamed up with Enviro-Log to bring back the 11 Herbs & Spices Firelog that apparently sold out in just a few hours last year. On its site, JFC uses big bold type to make darn sure buyers understand that this log is "NOT ACTUALLY FRIED CHICKEN." The 11 Herbs & Spices Firelog available exclusively at Walmart. 'natch.
“In the U.S., we already have a single-payer health care system, called the Veterans Administration Hospital system. A 2015 internal audit of the VA reported, ‘307,000 veterans may have died waiting for care.’”
Humanity’s ancestors may have been saved from extinction by alcohol, scientists have suggested
In a new book, called Alcohol And Humans: A Long And Social Affair, professors Dr Kim Hockings and Dr Robin Dunbar say that African apes who lived around 10 million years ago evolved to metabolise ethanol, the chemical compound in alcohol.
These primates eventually gave rise not only to humans but also to chimps, bonobos and gorillas, all of which share the ability to break down booze. The common ape ancestor evolved to carry a protein that made metabolising ethanol more efficient, which allowed them to eat overripe fermented fruits that fell on the ground.
According to Dr Hockings and Dr Dunbar, these primates were in competition for survival with rival monkey species who were able to eat unripe fruit that was still on plants.
I don't know about extinction, sure has kept the advertising firms in cash.
An average mug costs between $5 and $10, while a nice travel mug goes for around $20, or maybe a little more if you’re feeling fancy. So how on earth does a company justify a smart mug that costs a whopping $180?
While it might sound outlandish, this question isn’t purely hypothetical, because thanks to the Ember’s second-gen Travel Mug, the value of a $180 smart mug is something that actually needs to be examined. So what makes this travel mug so smart?
A Kentucky judge has been accused of turning her chambers into a glorified frat house, having a threesome with staffers and allowing employees to get drunk on the job — all while abusing her power to win re-election, according to reports.
The judge, Dawn Gentry, was hit with nine charges by the state’s Judicial Conduct Commission on Wednesday related to the Animal House antics, Cincinnati.com reported.
The trouble started when Gentry hired her band’s guitar player, Stephen Penrose.
Football player who lost both parents celebrates Senior Day by taking the field with his two dogs
Josh Butler walked out of the tunnel with his two dogs
***
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Gun Thread: After Thanksgiving and Before Christmas Edition [Weasel]
—Open Blogger
note asymmetrical hand size
Can you believe Thanksgiving is already in the rear-view mirror and Christmas is coming up fast? I don't know about you all but this year has been flying by for me. While you're out shopping for others, how about getting yourself a little something, too? Or even a big something! Here's a question, what one shooting related item would you like to find under the tree on Christmas morning? I'm talking about the one thing you've always wanted but have never managed, for one reason or another, to get for yourself?
Let's take a look below and see what our moron pals have been up to, shall we?
Well here's a nice stocking stuffer sent in by a lurker.
I saw last Sunday's post about the dry fire laser. I highly recommend the below product, DryFireMag, which eliminates the need the rack the slide for trigger reset. Just insert like a regular magazine and go to town. I use it with the MantisX system and have seen incredible results.
That's a nifty little gizmo, and at $99 not a bad deal. What do you all think? Anyone else have one? Thanks for the product endorsement, lurker, and feel free to jump in and comment anytime!
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Our pal Scuba_Dude is definitely putting his new NYC firearms license to use by taking every opportunity to get to the range!
Here are some pics of a day at the range. My target is on the right and my nephews is on the left. I had the target at around 7 - 9 yards. Gun used was my Sig P226 RX using only the iron sights. Ammo was Blazer 115 grain FMJ. 90 rounds used.
I think those are probably Birchwood Casey six-inch Shoot-N-C stick on targets, and I have to say that at 20+ feet Scuba_Dude is doing just fine from a self-defense prospective. Nice shooting!
Scuba_Dude also went on to mention that he has registered for a couple of pistol courses at the Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH, in the late spring of next year and has graciously agreed to grant the Gun Thread an exclusive report afterwards. Thanks Scuba_Dude, can't wait to hear all about it!
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Next we have a follow-up report from our pal WTM in Texas. Last week WTM shared photos from a visit to the The Bryan Museum in Galveston, TX, and this week he has a report from The Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco, TX.
I have also been to the Texas Rangers Museum in Waco, TX., and here is a tiny fraction of what they have on display. The museum has many hundreds of Ranger firearms on display, ranging from the lever action rifles and SA revolvers of the Rangers’ early days through the weapons used in the 1960’s. I didn’t get photos of those, unfortunately, but they must have two hundred lever action rifles alone in one display. There is a large section devoted to law enforcement in the 1930’s, and therein is a very nice display on Bonnie and Clyde. My maternal grandparents knew Bonnie and Clyde, and my grandfather was probably the one who customized Clyde’s sedan so as to allow use of a BAR through the rear window.
BTW, all automatic weapons seen here and in the museum are fully functional, except that their firing pins have been removed.
So how cool is it that WTM's grandparents knew Bonnie and Clyde? Thanks WTM!
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Next up we have a great range report from our pal Iron Mike Golf
Tomorrow is opening day of whitetail gun season here in Ohio and a family tradition is for the menfolk to go over to my B-I-L's on Sat after Thanksgiving and confirm zero. Wyatt (Grandson the Elder) has been pestering me to go deer hunting this year. He turned 9 in Oct. I got him a 22 (a Rascal), but my back has been in poor shape and had't taken him for any shooting yet. After Thanksgiving dinner, my B-I-L said he was getting ready to sell the Mossberg 500 Youth model in 20 ga his son used while growing up (he's in college now. B-I-L got him a full sized 12 ga semi and the proceeds from the 20 ga are retroactively applied to the new piece). While the others took turns shooting, Wyatt was learning and dry firing the Mossberg. It's too much gun for him to shoulder or even shoot sitting. B-I-L's target berm is down slope, so prone was out, too. I ended up using my range bag atop an archery target so Wyatt could shoot sitting behind that as a rest. He only took 2 shots (not used to the recoil yet) and the attached photo shows his results at 50 yards. Those are his first from any firearm. Yeah, I am proud.
Great shooting, Wyatt! OK, I don't know about you all, but I think introducing a youngster to shooting for the first time is just about the best thing you can do. Do you have any young people, whether related or not, that you can take to the range? Thanks for sharing this outstanding story, Iron Mike Golf!
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I'm pretty handy, but have never attempted anything like this! Our pal DBCooper has created a very cool shop, as the photos below will show. DBCooper explains:
Got to thinking that a lot of the Horde have mentioned not having a shop or many have run out of room for things. I took a 20 foot Shipping container and with simple techniques and skills and stuff from Home Depot built an extra shop. 4 inch foam insulation then hard faced, wiring and power strips installed, overhead 4 foot lights, cheap linoleum floor. Has water, a sink, phone and a 110 RV A/C and heater. Runs on a 20 amp 110. I built a 1000 lb inner armored wall with a Sea Door so it has a double locking entrance and is plenty secure. The photos were taken before the unfortunate canoe accident and now it's filled with rakes and weedeaters and shovels and my push mower. Wish now I had made a 40 footer for all my garden tools but I don't have a ton of money in it and it's my favorite place to hang out.
Ho-Lee-Shit! What a great job! I'm pretty impressed with how this turned out, and it makes me wonder if there would be a market for storage container conversions. Very nicely done, DBCooper!!
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Link-O-Rama
Naturally, everything seems to be on sale at this time of year. Now is the time to do some shopping. Whether it's a gun you've been wanting, or an accessory you have needed, now is the time to save some money. I'm going to keep saying this until every last one of you pays attention, you almost certainly do not have enough ammo.
Please note the new and improved gmail account morongunthread at gmail dot com. An informal Gun Thread archive can be found HERE. If you have a question you would like to ask Gun Thread Staff offline, just send us a note and we'll do our best to answer. If you care to share the story of your favorite firearm, send a picture with your nic and tell us what you sadly lost in the tragic canoe accident. If you would like to remain completely anonymous, just say so. Lurkers are always welcome!
That's it for this week - have you been to the range?
Food Thread: The Bigger The Better! Make Something Huge For Christmas Or New Year's Eve...
—CBD
There's nothing quite like a large hunk of flesh, still attached to the bones, and complete with the fat that the beast was kind enough to deposit in and on its carcass.
Who doesn't like a monstrous slice of prime rib, or a wonderful rich and fatty slice from a lovingly roasted lamb leg, or even -- dare I say it -- a double-cut chop from a luscious pork roast?
I guess, for the purposes of politeness and inclusiveness, I should include large birds, but please don't throw TURKEY! at me. Roast a goose or even a duck, but not (shudder) turkey again!
I think the prerequisite is size...there is something festive and wonderful about the idea and the sight and the aroma of something big. When the host has to get help to carry the damned thing into the dining room, you know that you are in the right place!
We had some friends over for dinner recently, and they brought cupcakes for dessert! "What?" Cupcakes? How very pedestrian*! But these weren't ordinary cupcakes. Two of them had small plastic vials of liquor embedded in them (it's sort of tough to see in the photo), and the idea was to squeeze the vial, thus injecting the liquor into the cupcake. Sounds...um...stupid? But it was brilliant! it worked fabulously well, I think in part because the liquor was not full-strength stuff, but rather what I am guessing was a mix of liquor and perhaps wine or even water. The guts of the cupcake was flavored but not overwhelmed.
Oh...the cupcakes themselves were great too.
* Not really. Anything is appreciated and most welcome. Seriously.
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Well, there is nothing about this dish I don't love. Cheesy Grits Casserole
And it is a reflection of the joys of Southern cooking, which is some of the finest cooking being done in America. It is about unabashed pleasure, without any of the crap ..the guilt and virtue-signalling and pomposity...that is flung so liberally (SWIDT?) in other parts of the country.
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Yes, I would eat one of these.
What a good idea! Apple Pie Cookies
I wonder where I can get pie dough? Hmmm...Oh, I know one place I can't get it: Bluebell's kitchen. She promised to drop by before Thanksgiving to make me some of her famous pie doughs, but she never showed. Typical Red Sox fan.
By the way, these seem to be the kind of cookie that is best fresh and warm. I'll bet they are spectacular a few minutes out of the oven. It's just the sort of thing that I would eat a few seconds too early and burn the crap out of my mouth.
So who is coming over to Chez Dildo to make them? I am, as I have admitted in the past, a retard when it comes to pie doughs, so if I ever attempt this recipe it will come out weirdly shaped and lopsided. But hopefully still delicious.
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Oh my! Some of these must be fake, because they are just so stupendously , outrageously, unbelievably ugly and non-functional that I can't believe anyone actually took them seriously.
I just spoke with an old friend who just bought a house. It has a 1970s kitchen, complete with a mural of a monkey on the wall. So maybe I am wrong...maybe these are all serious!
I have posted this recipe before, but it is a crowd pleaser, and one that, while it is a tedious process, can be done in advance.
Caramelized Onion Toasts
1 stick (4oz) of unsalted butter
3 big Vidalia or yellow onions, sliced
4 anchovy halves, chopped
3 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme leaves
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 baguette
Extra-virgin olive oil
Shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano
Heat ½ stick of butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onions, chopped anchovies, thyme, salt and pepper and cook until the onions are golden brown, about 20-30 minutes, but it could take longer. Be careful not to burn the onions. If necessary, turn the heat down. The onions will eventually caramelize at the lower temperature; it will just take longer.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Meanwhile, holding the knife parallel to the cutting board, shave off the rounded top and bottom of the baguette with a serrated knife so that it lies flat. Don’t cut too much; just enough so that the baguette doesn’t roll around. Then cut the baguette in half lengthwise and then each long slice into 3 equal pieces to make 6 slices of bread so that it fits easily on the baking sheet. Melt the remaining butter and brush both sides of the bread.
When the onions are cooked, put the bread slices on a baking sheet and spread with the onions. Drizzle with olive oil, but not too much; there is plenty of fat in this dish!. Place in the oven and bake until the bread is crispy, about 10-15 minutes. Sprinkle with Parmigiano-Reggiano shavings. Cut into pieces on the diagonal and serve hot.
Food and cooking tips, Castelvetrano olives with a sprinkle of chili flakes, young wild pigs, crisp bacon (although I am moving toward less crisp), thick and fluffy pita, and good tomatoes that aren't square, pale pink and covered with Mestizo E.coli: cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com. Any advocacy of French Toast with syrup will result in disciplinary action up to and including being nuked from orbit. And yes, shaking a Manhattan is blasphemy...it's in the Bible!
Hope For Casualties! The Newest Internecine Struggle On The Left Is Popcorn And Pudding Worthy!
—CBD
It's a Politico article, so don't click!. But it is a clear signal that the hard Left is becoming frustrated with the superannuated Democrat leadership, and wants change now. It's hard to see anyone on the national stage who would give them what Warren constantly signals as her platform (Sanders is, perhaps, different, but no farther left), but that's simply not enough for these heirs to the Weathermen and the SDS and every other left-wing organization that espouses the overthrow of free markets, free speech, and every other freedom we have.
Millennial socialists’ favorite magazine is breaking up with Elizabeth Warren. But it’s saying: It’s not me. It’s you.
That magazine is Jacobin, the nine-year-old publication that has become the de facto voice of the young socialist movement in America. Its favorite candidate all along has been Bernie Sanders, the only self-proclaimed socialist to mount a major campaign for the presidency of the United States since Eugene Debs almost 100 years ago. But for many months, as the 2020 campaign began to unfold, Jacobin treated Warren as the next best thing.
I don't know about you, but I am rooting for both sides! Let this be the beginning of a long, brutal nasty, underhanded battle for the soul (if they have one) of the lunatic fringe of the Democrat party, otherwise known as their base.
As Churchill famously said (or didn't say),
If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain.
I would disagree with the first point, but wholeheartedly embrace the second...
The Rule Of Law Is A Marvelous Thing, Unless It Fails The People
—CBD
Is this what is coming in America? When it is blatantly obvious that some are above the law, are the good and not-so-good people of this country going to take matters into their own hands?
Police said they needed to question the suspects at the crime scene — before daybreak — to have them retrace their steps and collect more evidence.
But by sunrise, all four suspects had been shot dead by police. They had yet to be charged.
"Law has done its duty," the top police official on the case, V.C. Sajjanar, told reporters at a news conference.
Not for the failures of violent crime tactics (although there are numerous failings on that front) but for the increasingly common assumption that there certain classes of people, namely politicians and the rich, who are actively protected by the government legal apparatus. They are afforded privileges to which we have no access. And even worse, that government legal apparatus has been weaponized for the craven political and financial desires of the chosen few.
How will this play out? Will the elites -- the Deep StateTM -- win out? Will they retain control of the whip hand of government and continue their campaign to cow into total submission the people of America? Or will there be a sea change? One that takes back the power to control our government, rather than be controlled?
Good morning to all you 'rons, 'ettes, lurkers, and lurkettes, wine moms, frat bros, crétins sans pantalon (who are technically breaking the rules), wits, half-wits, quarter-wits, eighth wits, and the whole geometric series, the sum of which equals two Morons. Welcome once again to the stately, prestigious, internationally acclaimed and high-class Sunday Morning Book Thread, a weekly compendium of reviews, observations, snark, witty repartee, hilarious bon mots, and a continuing conversation on books, reading, spending way too much money on books, writing books, and publishing books by escaped oafs and oafettes who follow words with their fingers and whose lips move as they read. Unlike other AoSHQ comment threads, the Sunday Morning Book Thread is so hoity-toity, pants are required. Even if it's these pants, whose ugliness is excelled only by that hat, which looks like something they would use to hide a wireless router.
John K. King started in the book business when he was just a teenager in 1965. Since then, he has continually advanced in the field; starting out selling books out of the trunk of his 1954 Packard to present day, offering over a million titles that can only be housed within four expansive floors of seemingly endless shelves.
You could probably spend a week in there and not get to the end of it.
It Pays To Increase Your Word Power®
The Icelandic word GLUGGAVEÐUR means ‘weather that looks appealing from inside, but would be unpleasant to be outside in’. It literally means ‘window-weather’. pic.twitter.com/jIxjhqrYYq
OM, since you often recommend Kindle versions of books, I wanted to (briefly this time) mention my frustration with Kindle for NOT making available the versions of some books that I'm seeking, but instead making ONLY a version that is sometimes poorly edited and constructed.
And they do some bait and switching with it, as in you'll see the version want in print, then you click on the "Kindle Edition," and it's not only not the same version, but you don't discover that until you read the comments where buyers are furious about it.
Anyone ever mention this to Amazon? I mean anyone with a media voice, and has Amazon ever addressed the topic themselves? It strikes me as shoddy business practice.
Posted by: BurtTC at December 01, 2019 11:39 AM (hku12)
I have downloaded free ebooks from Amazon that were formatted so poorly as to be virtually unreadable. I'm sure Amazon has been made aware for this, but by nobody loud enough, so I doubt anything is ever going to be done about it.
This is a site called Standard Ebooks, which is a volunteer-driven, not-for-profit project that produces new editions of public domain ebooks that are lovingly formatted, open source, and free.
Ebook projects like Project Gutenberg transcribe ebooks and make them available for the widest number of reading devices. Standard Ebooks takes ebooks from sources like Project Gutenberg, formats and typesets them using a carefully designed and professional-grade style manual, fully proofreads and corrects them, and then builds them to create a new edition that takes advantage of state-of-the-art ereader and browser technology.
At Standard Ebooks, we do a careful and complete readthrough of each ebook before releasing it, checking it against a scan of the original pages to fix as many typos as possible. Even if we do miss something, our ebooks are stored in the hugely popular Git source control system, allowing anyone to easily submit a correction.
It's all open-source stuff. Authors, editors, proofreaders, and other interested parties can look at their typography manual in order to produce works in accordance with their standard.
The downside here is that Standard Ebooks' catalog is currently very tiny: only a few hundred books. They're adding books, but the progress is very slow. I think what they're doing is a great idea, but they've got a lot of work ahead of them to catch up with Amazon.
Morons On the Loose
All Good Used Bookstores Have Taxidermy
Apparently, there was an unauthorized Mo-Me in Detroit last week, wherein a motley crew of morons invaded the John K King Bookstore.
I spent yesterday afternoon with fellow Morons at John King Books in Detroit, a four-layer cake of used and rare books...
One could happily spend an entire afternoon in one tiny section of this store. The staff was friendly and knowledgeable. "Where are your cheesy sci-fi paperbacks with Bug-eyed Monsters and chicks in brass bras?" "Right this way, Madam."
Shibumi spent a good half hour reading naughty Victorian limericks aloud.
Posted by: Cardinal Eris (weapons: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, fanatical devotion to the Pope) at December 01, 2019 09:27 AM (Dc2NZ)
I can imagine another version of someone asking a clerk for help in that store:
"Where are your fantasy novels when the world was young, and strong men walked the earth, large, hairy, muscle-bound barbarians with massive thews, bulging biceps, and thighs like oak trees, clad in fabulously furry loin cloths?"
"Right over here, Mr. Buttigieg."
I just hope none of the morons got lost and are still in the store somewhere.
More On Boggies From 'Bored of the Rings'
All boggies originally lived in holes, which is after all hardly surprising for creatures on a first-name basis with rats. In Dildo’s time, their abodes were for the most part built above ground in the manner of elves and men, but these still retained many of the features of their traditional homes and were indistinguishable from the dwellings of those species whose chief function is to meet their makers, around August, deep in the walls of old houses. As a rule, they were dumpling-shaped, built of mulch, silt, stray divots, and other seasonal deposits, often whitewashed by irregular pigeons. Consequently, most boggie towns looked as though some very large and untidy creature, perhaps a dragon, had quite recently suffered a series of disappointing bowel movements in the vicinity.
Who Dis:
The last 'who dis' I did, a couple of weeks ago, was a photo of Shirley MacLaine
Moron Recommendations
BTW, I'm a fan of Kissinger and have a copy of his Diplomacy on my bookshelf. Very good overview of power politics.
Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at December 01, 2019 11:05 AM (cfSRQ)
Ah, Henry the K. Haven't heard his name in a looong time. Let's take a look at Diplomacy, which was published in 1994. The Amazon blurb is pretty lame, and doesn't tell you much, so I just grabbed one of the 5-star reader reviews that looked to be a lot more informative:
The Study of Peace
The study of history often seems to be preoccupied with war. Henry Kissinger corrects the imbalance with his authoritative account of the people who ended wars and preserved the peace, from the time of Napoleon to end of the Cold War. The book is dedicated “to the men and women of the Foreign Service.”
He starts with the Peace of Westphalia and the Congress of Vienna, which pacified Europe for more than one hundred years. In the twentieth century, he is obliged to recount more wars, which he attributes to failures of the Wilsonian approach, and then the mixed success of Kennan’s containment theory.
Kissinger obviously prefers realpolitik, and he mocks the “theological” and “psychological” schools of international relations. He nonetheless admires the United States for its idealistic approach, conceding that no other approach is compatible with America’s core values.
The material on New World Order feels dated, but still a good analysis considering the book came out in 1994. As a history book, Diplomacy amply demonstrates the importance of studying how peace has been maintained in the past, that we may have more of it in future.
Looks like Diplomacy is OOP. But used hardbacks can he purchased starting at $6.27.
The Kindle version, because it leaves out 12 pages of maps, I rate at 2 stars. It is really annoying to buy a book and then find out you've been short changed. The seller should be required to inform the buyer that the Kindle version has been abridged.
This sounds like the tomfoolery with e-versions that BurtTC was complaining about.
Like him or hate him, I would think that Kissinger's stature is such that anything he writes on the subject of international relations is worth reading.
Exit question: Was Kissinger a globalist, a nationalist, or is trying to fit him into one of those categories a bit anachronistic?
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I found Caedfel disappointing. The sensibility was too modern. (And I figured it out too early.)
Posted by: Eeyore at December 01, 2019 09:57 AM (ZbwAu)
You may like Margaret Frazer's Sister Frevisse series.
Posted by: artemis at December 01, 2019 11:05 AM (AwPyG)
I had never heard of this author or Sister Frevisse, so I went looking, and found a lot. The first one is The Novice's Tale:
In the fair autumn of Our Lord's grace 1431, the nuns of England's St. Frideswide's prepare for the simply ceremonies in which the saintly novice Thomasine will take her holy vows. But their quiet lives of beauty and prayer are thrown into chaos by the merciless arrival of Lady Ermentrude Fenner and her retinue of lusty men, sinful women, and baying hounds. The hard-drinking dowager even keeps a pet monkey for her amusement. She demands wine, a feast...
And her niece, the angelic Thomasine.
The lady desires to enrich herself and her reputation by arranging a marriage for the devout novice. She cares nothing for the panic and despair she leaves behind her.
But all her cruel and cunning schemes are brought to a sudden end with strange and most unnatural murder.
As suspicious eyes turn on the pious Thomasine, it falls to Sister Frevisse, hosteler of the priory and amateur detective, to unravel the webs of unholy passion and dark intrigue that entangle the novice and prove her innocence... or condemn her.
There are 17 installments in this series. The Kindle editions appear to be reasonably priced, some for as low as $2.99.
The author passed in 2013.
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And speaking of medieval mysteries:
78 Reading "Thirteenth Night: A Fool's Guild Medieval Mystery " by Alan Gordon, a clever mystery sequel to Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. The Fools Guild is an organization used to keep order in medieval Europe, under cover that Fools (entertainers in many ways) can go anywhere and not be noticed. That sounds overly simple but Gordon's writing is observant, sophisticated, and has just the right amount of humor. The take off on Shakespeare adds to the appeal for me.
If the stories keep up to this level, I'll end up reading the entire series. So far, it is very enjoyable.
Posted by: JTB at December 01, 2019 09:48 AM (bmdz3)
Twelfth Night is for revelry, Thirteenth Night is for revelations...
"Orsino is dead." The message sends the jester Feste, disguised as a German merchant, back to the duchy where, years earlier, he had foiled the plans of Saladin's agent, Malvolio, and secured the duchy for Orsino and his bride, Viola. As agent of the Fool's Guild, Feste must uncover the cause of Orsino's death, be it accidental, suicide, or murder. Has Malvolio returned to win the revenge he swore? Or has another, more sinister cabal plunged the duchy into political upheaval?
There are 8 novels in this series, most of which are $7.99 on Kindle.
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Books By Morons
I have a couple of new (to me) moron authors this week.
LIEUTENANT EVE SHARPE should have seen the avalanche of trouble headed her way but events had dulled her edge and crumbled her foundation of toughness. With the press and politicians all coming for her, Eve begins to question whether she is really a cold blooded murderer or simply losing her mind. Was it an officer involved shooting gone wrong? An honest mistake? Or, something much, much worse?
There's one thing for sure, it has turned the Chicago Police Department upside down, and Lieutenant Eve Sharpe's life along with it.
The Kindle version is only 99 cents, so what can you lose? Also, visit Holly's Amazon page and check out his other books, including Street Crimes, a 21,000 word short-story collection that is "...sometimes funny, sometimes disconcerting, sometimes plain terrifying. Perfect if you like action-packed suspense."
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Moron author Matt Thomas tells me that he found AoSHQ about a year ago which he says he visits
...several times a day. I love the political commentary yet the library, prayer, cooking and pet threads remind me that life is so much more than politics.
His third book, Arcade, has just been released.
In the near-future, our technology centered world is reduced to a pre-industrial state. Explosions around the globe generate electromagnetic pulses that destroy every piece of technology using electronic circuits. Silicon Valley is not immune to the chaos that erupts. In the ruins of the world's technology hub, society's remnants focus on survival.
In the final days before the Change, retired FBI agent Walter Jackson pursues his estranged wife and daughter from Memphis to the Bay Area. His return home now impossible, Walter survives by working for the local police while still seeking his family. He discovers a high-tech company that still operates with food, power and a mission that reaches far beyond our solar system. Its leader, Sloan Holt, is also driven by the need to recover a loved one.
Walter and Sloan collaborate, but other dangers put them at risk - from an industrialist who sees opportunity in the chaos to unknown forces from an alien world. The game of survival is being played out in an apocalyptic arcade.
The Kirkus review says it "appeals to those who like stories such as Ready Player One, Alien and Interstellar."
So that's all for this week. As always, book thread tips, suggestions, bribes, insults, threats, ugly pants pics and moron library submissions may be sent to OregonMuse, Proprietor, AoSHQ Book Thread, at the book thread e-mail address: aoshqbookthread, followed by the 'at' sign, and then 'G' mail, and then dot cee oh emm.
What have you all been reading this week? Hopefully something good, because, as you all know, life is too short to be reading lousy books.
A woman, cranky because her husband was late coming home again, decided to leave a note, saying, "I've had enough and have left you...don't bother coming after me"
Then she hid under the bed to see his reaction.
After a short while, the husband comes home and she could hear him in the kitchen before he comes into the bedroom. She could see him walk towards the dresser and pick up the note.
fter a few minutes, he wrote something on it before picking up the phone and calling someone.
"She's finally gone...yeah I know, about bloody time, I'm coming to see you, put on that sexy French nightie. I love you...can't wait to see you...we'll do all the naughty things you like."
He hung up, grabbed his keys and left.
She heard the car drive off as she came out from under the bed, seething with rage and with tears in her eyes.
She grabbed the note to see what he wrote.
"I can see your feet. We're outta bread; be back in five minutes." H/T CBD
“No person shall throw or shoot any object, arrow, stone, snowball or other missile or projectile, by hand or by any other means, at any other person or at, in or into any building, street, sidewalk, alley, highway, park, playground or other public place within the city,” New Municipal Ordinance in Wausau, Wisconsin.
My disdain for elected officials continues to increase daily.
IF YOU BUY THE JERSEY Lilly, you’ll own the biggest business in the town of Ingomar, Montana. That’s because it is, in fact, the only business in Ingomar. You’ll also be the town’s 14th resident.
The century-old building has survived two World Wars, the Great Depression, and a fire that nearly wiped Ingomar off the map. Owners June Nygren and Boots Kope will be damned if they have to shutter its doors because no one can pony up the $225,000 for this historic bar. “I’m just hoping somebody will say, ‘You know what, I wanna be away from it all.’ This is a spectacular place to do that,” says Nygren. The nearest town, Forsyth, is “only” 44 miles away. “That’s really close in Montana, trust me.”
Crafted from four fake Christmas trees, chicken wire, green mesh, and a fog machine, Treezilla -- a smoke-breathing Godzilla tree -- is really something to behold! Its creator, Steven Newland of New Zealand, recently sold it in auction for $415 NZD (approx. $269.58 USD). A bargain!
Construction work is a hazardous vocation riddled with potential pitfalls and physical dangers. For 21-year-old Sanjay Bahe from Balaghat, in central India, getting an iron rod pierced through his skull will likely serve as a lifelong reminder of that fact.
According to The Daily Mail, the young man was in the middle of repair work at a construction site when he accidentally fell into a well. That split-second accident resulted in a large iron rod going straight through his head.
She got the government job, and then a jail sentence. Veronica Hilda Theriault of Australia will spend the next year in jail after lying on the resume she submitted to land the role of chief information officer in South Australia's Department of the Premier and Cabinet in 2017, reports CNN. The 46-year-old worked in the role for more than a month, earning $22,500 of what was to be an $185,000 annual salary, before she was fired and charged with deception, dishonesty, and abuse of public office. In district court on Tuesday, Judge Michael Boylan said she'd lied about her education and work history and given "glowing feedback" while posing as a reference for herself. Her brother—awarded a government contract earning him more than $15,000 during Theriault's employment, per PerthNow—had also supplied a false reference for his sister.
Generally, when opposing counsel tells you to “eat a bowl of dicks,” you know that your settlement talks are going nowhere fast. When opposing counsel later informs you that he’s going to “let the long dick of the law f*ck [your client],” then you know that something may be amiss. When opposing counsel then begins to refer to you as a “cumstain” and a “limp dick mother f*cker,” you may realize that your settlement talks have gone completely off the rails. When opposing counsel threatens to “water board each one of [your client’s] trolls who show up for depo without any mercy whatsoever,” and claims that he “know[s] where you live,” you know it’s time to file ex parte with a judge to get some much-needed relief.
This is what happened in a recent dispute between Christopher Hook, a plaintiffs’ lawyer in California, and a legal team at Sheppard Mullin led by partner Peter Klee. The matter itself is a simple insurance dispute over about $200,000, but Hook’s conduct has turned it into a complete circus sideshow. Sheppard Mullin represents Allstate and Hook represents a couple trying to fight the company for an ever-increasing amount of funds, into the millions.
In a declaration supporting Allstate’s ex parte application for relief, Klee says Hook “bombarded” him and his colleagues with “over 100 emails.” Here’s a taste of what went down between Hook and the lawyers at Sheppard Mullin:
***
Officially it isn't winter, but it feels like it in many parts of the world. Yes, we've seen this before, but it's a great rerun.
I wouldn't bet against this Colorado kid being a Florida resident someday.
***
THE ONT MUSICAL INTERLUDE
&&&
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There are three of them. You can judge who is gold, silver and bronze. Genius Award Winners.
ALTAMONTE SPRINGS, Fla. - A 17-year old boy is being charged as an adult for attempted murder after shooting at two men, and hitting one of them, who used fake money to buy marijuana, police said.
Julio Aguirre is being held without bail in Seminole County Jail in connection with the shooting, which happened on Nov. 2 outside Imperial Class Tattoo on State Road 436.
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Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by Appreciation.
Notice: Posted with permission by the Ace Media Empire and AceCorp, LLC. No it wasn't. No one is in the control room tonight.
Organic Food & Anti-Vaxxers - Does The Fear of Safe Food Lead to Fear of Safe Vaccines [BUCK THROCKMORTON]
—Open Blogger
The American media and our popular culture both celebrate a fear of safe, nutritious food if it is not labeled “organic.” To be consistent then, why don’t we also celebrate anti-vaxxers’ fear of safe vaccines, which are also not “organic?” To be clear, I am not an anti-vaxxer. I am strongly pro-vaccine. Everyone in my house is vaccinated, and I am appalled at the outbreaks of contagious diseases due to anti-vaxxers. But let’s be clear, a venn diagram of those who obsess about organic food and anti-vaxxers will reveal a major overlap. If you know an anti-vaxxer, he is most likely committed to an organic diet.
Our culture accepts as a scientific fact that organic food is healthier than non-organic food. You can watch TV, read popular magazines, or listen to healthy-living gurus, and overwhelmingly you will be told that organic food is healthier than non-organic food. Recipes tend to call for organic produce and ingredients. And it goes beyond organic foods. Genetically-modified foods are slandered as “frankenfoods” concocted by mad scientists in a laboratory. Further, we are admonished to avoid anything that is not “natural.”
OK then. Vaccines are genetically modified, lab-made, and certainly not natural. Being anti-vax seems a logical extension of the natural, organic lifestyle.
I know several people - including family members - who have so completely bought into the natural-organic hype that they genuinely believe GMO and non-organic foods are poisonous. They would rather starve themselves and their children to death than ingest a gram of non-organic food. They look at the shelves of a regular grocery store and see rows and rows of poison. There is a medical term for this fear of safe healthy food - it’s called “orthorexia.” I am not shocked that some of these individuals are anti-vaxxers. Instead, I am shocked (and relieved) that some of the orthorexics I know actually do vaccinate themselves and their children.
I used to be amused that Whole Foods could gouge its customers and get them to pay a “designer label premium” for regular groceries. Like patrons of Saks or Nieman Marcus, Whole Foods’ affluent customers could feel a sense of affluent superiority to those who shop at mass market grocery stores. But it’s now clear that Whole Foods isn’t just putting a fancy hood ornament on its groceries - its business model also promotes fear – a fear that if you don’t stretch your wallet for “safe” organic groceries, then you are imperiling the health and safety of yourself and your loved ones. That is wicked. And very effective. The organic food obsessives I know include cash strapped individuals who do not have the means to afford the Whole Foods lifestyle. But they shop there anyhow. They have to. Out of fear.
Vaccinations are critical to the safety of our communities, so we must keep striving to educate citizens on the importance of vaccinations. But let’s also stop celebrating the irrational fear of safe, healthy groceries. If we are going to applaud an individual for being terrified of a can of Del Monte green beans, then we can hardly be surprised that she is terrified of injecting her child with a lab-made, genetically modified, live virus of an awful disease.
Viktorija isn't titled, at least not yet. Her FIDE rating is 1928, which, in the U.S., would make her a Class A player, one step below Expert and 2 below Master.
Shore is purty, though.
Moviegique will be along later with the movie thread. As always, the chess/dress pr0n thread is an open thread, so there is no such thing as an off-topic comment.
Beginner Problem - White To Play (351)
Goal: White can force checkmate in 3
Hint: Checkmate will be delivered by a rook
Note: that cryptic line of letters and numbers you see underneath each board diagram is a representation of the position in what is known as "Forsyth-Edwards Notation", or F.E.N. It's actually readable by humans. Most computer applications nowadays can read FEN, so those of you who may want to study the position, you can copy the line of FEN and paste into your chess app and it should automatically recreate the position on its display board. Or, Windows users can just "triple click" on it and the entire line will be highlighted so you can copy and paste it into your chess app.
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So that about wraps it up for this week. Chess thread tips, suggestions, bribes, rumors, threats, and insults may be sent to my yahoo address: OregonMuse little-a-in-a-circle yahoo dott com.
I saw Katie's story and my Maizy just had some lumps removed from her left leg. Her recheck is on Monday (please God can we lose the cone) and her biopsy results should come back Tuesday or so. She's only two so praying it's not serious. So sorry to read about Katie. She's a beautiful girl. - Bean Counteress of Rohan
Looks like Maizy has taken to the cone of silence perfectly. Hope her biopsy results were negative.
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Looks like you've been slow on pets of late...long time lurker thinking its high time I shared Copper's pic.
Copper moved on to heaven this past September at age 14 after 13 wonderful years with us. I'm sure St. Peter is already wondering "Doesn't this guy EVER get tired of chasing that frisbee???"
I love this pic from when we had just gotten him at age 1. He's got that combination look of happy and "what kind of mischief can we get into today, Dad?"
So sorry to hear of your loss. A retrieving Corgi? That's a little different than the herding ones I've met over the years. Thank you for coming out of the Lurker shadows.
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Hello, here's a little story I put together several years ago. Baby was
"helping" me with the harvest, lol.
Baby loved Outside and was happiest when we were Outside, too! She was
always nearby, supervising whatever we did. Her favorite game was to
sneak up behind me, quietly drop one of her toys, then wait until I
turned around and found it-- then I'd throw it (and she'd be happy as a
lark!) and our game would begin anew.
Unfortunately, she grew old and was in so much pain that we had to send
her to the Rainbow Bridge.
She'll live forever in our hearts. - "JQ"
JQ quite the cute little photo story you told there. Baby sounds as if she was the apple of your eye. Amazing how a creature can become such a part of our fiber and being.
Thank you.
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Dear MisHum,
I sent in some photos of our new additions a few weeks ago and promised to send some of the older pets as well. Here are three of our older cats, all offspring from a feral female who was seen in our yard a couple of times, obviously pregnant and just as obviously starving. We managed to trap her and she downloaded four kittens about three weeks later. She tamed up and made a great companion, too! That was 14 years ago, and three of the four kittens are with us still. From top to bottom are Birdman, the only cat I’ve met who cannot meow but chirps like a bird; Scooter Bug, who loves to sit on my motor cycle seat while I’m working on the bike; and Purrcious, a larger version of her mom, pink and gray and purry all over. Missing is Tigger, who passed over the rainbow bridge a year ago. He used to deliver toys to us with great fanfare and especially loved his stuffed pig toy which was nearly as big as he.
We have a couple more, too and we’ll get those in later. As always, I appreciate you doing the work to show off the moron pets. I always remember the famous quote by Groucho Marx - “Outside of a dog, a book is Man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”
Mostly Lurker, Occasional Poster - Bama Bubba
It certainly appears that these kittehs hit the lottery with their mom finding you. It definitely looks like these cats have a horrible life. Couch time? Really. We appreciate your submission today. Thanks.
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Hi Mis Hum,
I'm hoping this will work. Thanks for all your work on Thanksgiving! I hope you got time for a few slices of pie. - Heidi and Cannibal Bob
Sorry I misplaced your original and email about this crazy cat. And as far as pie goes. Yes, I was not deprived in that area. Thanks for the photo. Hopefully you are here today and can give us some more of the story.
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Hiya,
Here's my hairy high- maintenance cat, Laszlo, a/k/a Lasznardwin. He died suddenly on 11/26 from a brain infection. His back feet were the size of Twinkies. I loved the big galoot. I'm a Lurker--Schadenboner is what hooked me. Just call me SNAB.
Hi SNAB, my condolences on the passing of your cat Laszlo. Its nice to know that I'm not the only one who uses the word galoot when discussing a pet. May all your memories be pleasant.
***
Long time lurker, but had to show you our beautiful rescue, Edison, our nine year old Shih-Tzu/Pomeranian. We adopted him just before his second birthday and he came to our home completely trained with exquisite manners. We have since undone some of them, but he has been and continues to be the best-looking creature at our holiday table. He treats everyone and everything with sheer delight at their appearance before him. We have learned a lot from him on how to live well.
Sincerely, Debra
Edison certainly looks quite snazzy. More than I can say about half of our Thanksgiving crowd. Thanks for coming forward and sending us his photo and story. We appreciate that.
***
Tuga, our tortoiseshell. She was the Queen and we had her for 18 great years. Keep up the great work. - Simper Fi, Bobbigbear
What a pretty cat. Sorry she is no longer part of your squad. Thanks for sharing with us today.
***
A big "Thank You" to all of you who sent in photos of their pets and other pet related items. You make this thing work.
If you have something you wish to share, you can reach us at petmorons at gmail dot com.
Saturday Gardening And Puttering Thread, Cozy Edition [KT]
—Open Blogger
Hello, gardeners, putterers, photographers and friends. Above is a photo of northern lights from Jake Holenhead, from Northern Alberta or the Northwest Territories, taken some years back. We will feature more of these later. But today, we are going indoors for the rest of this thread.
Christmas Decorations Have you put up Christmas decorations yet?
The First Family is celebrating their third Christmas in the White House. This year's theme, "The Spirit of America," is a tribute to the traditions, customs, and history that make our Nation great. Designed by First Lady Melania Trump, the White House decorations celebrate the courageous individuals who have shaped our country and kept the American spirit alive.
This plant is 2 years old, and always indoors back by breakfast nook on north side windows.
Christmas cacti can live for a long time and are sometimes handed down in families for 100 years. My cousin (the one with the geraniums in her basement) has one that has been handed down in her family, and she has given starts to other family members.
This video discusses how to tell Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter Cacti apart, and how to keep them healthy.
Other indoor gardening
JQ sent the following pre-Christmas update:
Holiday greetings, fellow gardeners!
I managed to keep this poinsettia alive for a whole year and now it's
beginning to bloom again. When purchased, the bracts were solid, deep
red. It's been about 3 weeks since muted color began to appear on some
larger leaves (not sure if they will ultimately turn completely) and
about 2 weeks since the little, newer leaves started turning red-- first
the veins, then whole leaf. I'm so excited about it-- never done this
before!
There are all kinds of instructions online for 'forcing' rebloom but I
haven't done anything special, other than repotting and severe pruning
when it went dormant in ~February, then moving it outside in late spring
to a half-sunny spot. Once night temps dipped to 50F, I brought it back
indoors to live by the south-facing sliding glass door. The floor gets
very cold there, so putting it on a plant dolly probably saved it's life.
Thank you very much for hosting the garden threads, KT-- they're a
weekly dose of inspiration!
Lirio 100 has a lemon tree:
This is a small Meyer lemon. It was outdoors all summer, had few flowers in when it was kept in the sun. It's now indoors under LED grow lights and is covered with flowers. A little surprising!
Seed Catalogs
I have received catalogs from Burpee and Pinetree. Anybody else got an interesting catalog? Buying any gifts for gardeners, maybe so they will grow something for you?
U.S. Botanical Garden
We mentioned the U.S. Botanical Garden back in November. Sharon got a chance to visit:
Was in DC for Thanksgiving and had a chance to visit the Botanic Gardens on the Mall. Christmas decorations were just starting to go up. They have this fabulous miniature train that runs around and through the garden for Christmas. So much to see, but I love the orchids. Never ceases to amaze me that nature produces such spectacular colors and diversity just to attract birds and bugs.
Ten hospitals--three in Alabama and seven in Australia--have been hit with paralyzing ransomware attacks that are affecting their ability to take new patients . . .
This is a relatively new health care challenge. But others have been developing for many, many years.
WeirdDave knows more that I do about health care systems, and last night in the ONT, he posted this link on Trump's requirement that hospitals disclose their negotiated rates.
He said:
If you want to know how to reform health care to bring down costs, this is where you start, right here, with absolute price transparency. There's no reason that people can't shop for health care like they do anything else. This is a good start, but it doesn't go nearly far enough. Baby steps.
Anyway, what would ordinary consumers do differently if they had access to the prices of their health care in advance? This piece, linked in J.J. Sefton's Morning Report a while ago, provides a few ideas. Why primary care costs a trillion dollars more than it should:
As a Direct Primary Care physician in Greeneville, Tennessee, who has not accepted health insurance for over 18 years, I have been in a unique position to see how insurance for nonemergency outpatient medical care not only increases our country's debt but also how it stifles our overall economy leading to reduced tax revenues from which to resolve this debt.
Americans carry insurance for unexpected catastrophes such as car accidents, burned houses, and inpatient hospital care. We don't purchase it for routine car or home maintenance, so why do we have it for everyday medical care? The reason is, unlike other insurance, it is a pre-tax expense enjoyed primarily by large and medium-sized corporations that exert a large amount of political influence.
Most people don't know that this tax exemption for employer-provided health insurance adds about $350 billion to our national debt each year while discriminating against the self-employed and employees of small businesses, many of whom can't afford health insurance yet were cruelly forced to pay ObamaCare penalties. The increasing number of families choosing membership in Christian health care sharing ministries don't benefit from this tax exemption. As a matter of justice both to future generations who will be responsible for this debt and to the many uninsured, Congress should eliminate this tax favor. While they are at it, Congress should remove the tangle of insurance regulations so companies will have to compete by offering consumers the opportunity to buy policies that make sense.
When Americans pay directly for outpatient medical care at facilities that make their pricing transparent, they pay much less than they would at facilities that don't.
Doing so -- I estimate -- would return to the economy as much as $1 trillion a year, mainly because insurance for routine health care makes it easier to conceal and inflate prices while charging for services that patients wouldn't necessarily allow to be done if they knew ahead of time that they would have to pay for them with their own money.
The commission has estimated that of the thousands of alarms going off throughout a hospital every day, an estimated 85% to 99% do not require clinical intervention. Staff, facing widespread "alarm fatigue" can miss critical alerts, leading to patient deaths. Patients may get anxious about fluctuations in heart rate or blood pressure that are perfectly normal, the commission said.
And bed alarms, a recent arrival, can lead to immobility and dangerous loss of muscle mass when patients are terrified that any movement will set off the bleeps.
This seems dumb. I was in the hospital for a couple of days recently. In addition to patient monitors, there were two or three extended hospital-wide alarms. Sort of disconcerting, since I did not know what they were about. I had some mobility once I got past the emergency room. I appreciated that.
What do you think would improve the quality of care in hospitals? I vote that we don't make our hospitals too much more like Italy's.
Get off Facebook for your health?
Holly Shakya, assistant professor at UC San Diego, and Yale professor Nicholas Christakis spent two years following 5,208 adults who are part of a Gallup long-term study. After asking permission, they monitored these subjects' Facebook use directly from Facebook, rather than asking subjects to report their own use. (People often don't realize how much time they spend on the social network.) And they checked in with subjects on their emotional and physical well-being, as well as their body-mass index (BMI), three times over the course of two years.
"Overall, our results showed that, while real-world social networks were positively associated with overall well-being, the use of Facebook was negatively associated with overall well-being," the researchers wrote in a Harvard Business Review article. "These results were particularly strong for mental health; most measures of Facebook use in one year predicted a decrease in mental health in a later year." Yikes.
O.K. These results are not unexpected. But I'm not sure the study design can lead to sweeping conclusions that correlation = causation here. Maybe people who are feeling mentally unhealthy turn to Facebook more than other people, for example. But there are reasons I don't have Facebook on my phone.
Why is too much Facebook bad for your emotional health? Previous research has shown that the social network creates a sort of false peer pressure. Since most people are cautious about posting negative or upsetting experiences on Facebook, the social network creates a misleading environment where everyone seems to be doing better and having more fun than you are. As the researchers put it, "Exposure to the carefully curated images from others' lives leads to negative self-comparison."
Well, that makes sense. Facebook also doesn't show the effort that goes into many meatspace social interactions. Like the little community Christmas celebration I have been involved with recently. A little group of adults were recruited to sing, and we practiced a few times, got costumes together, and coordinated with the committee running the celebration. Meanwhile, other folks arranged entries for a parade, brought a tree from the mountains - taller than the one at Rockefeller Center - stabilized it in the middle of the road and decorated it, brought snow from the mountains for the kids to play in, got people to provide food and activities, brought in a live camel and dwarf reindeer, and roasted chestnuts on an open fire.
Little of the planning and work that went into the event is evident in the Facebook photos of the final fun phase. You see the crowd and the lights. Not the dirty trucks. The dirty truck phase is more personal than the crowd phase for most participants. Sometimes there are fun or rewarding aspects to the dirty truck phase, but they seldom get memorialized on Facebook.
Good morning Morons and Lurkers. Let us take a gander at a few items that didn't get too much attention here at the AosHQ this past week. As always, this is an open thread, so be nice to one another. Don't run with sharp objects. And please don't tug on the 'ettes pony tails.
Like it or not, the holidays are upon us. The weather is colder, the lights are brighter and Hans Gruber is falling off the Nakatomi Tower. The season's upon us.
I don't have one of those, but my wife bought a cheese advent calendar, and it is fantastic. Every day, a new kind of cheese. So Gouda!
Journalism Today
This pointed out by @markknoller so just checked the photos I took today during the Cabinet Room lunch meeting with UNSC ambassadors to verify: Salt and pepper shakers for @POTUS are indeed larger than those for his guests. pic.twitter.com/ChoW8nydjP
I'm so glad we have these hardened professionals to look into the issues that threaten the Republic.
NFL
I know a lot of y'all have cooled on the NFL, but we are in the last stretch to the playoffs, and there is one story around the league that's amazing. Well, two, counting the mighty Baltimore Ravens, but they represent excellence and achievement, I want to focus on the other end of the spectrum.
The NFC Least
NOBODY wants to win this division. The Giants and the Redskins suck, and the Cowboys and Eagles are working hard to play up to their standards. This means there are a couple of wild scenarios that are still possible.
I can't decide which I would prefer. Redskins in the playoffs? That would be wild, but I think I like the idea of the Cowboys getting in at 6-10....and then making a run to the NFC championship game. That would probably force Jerry Jones to extend Jason Garrett's contract, and wouldn't that be a hell of a thing? Garrett was the Ravens' first choice for coach in 2008, but he decided to remain in Dallas. Talk about dodging a bullet!
This actually highlights something I've been wondering about lately: Is a Western style democratic republic possible without a population that shares general “Judeo-Christian” values? I'm starting to believe that it is not. Yes, Rome had a republic for 500 years, but it wasn't really anything like what we have in the West other than in the general form of the government. Nobody else in history has done it, and as we in the West become more and more secular, we seem to be reverting to the human norm. Next stop, nobles and serfs, served with a hot piping cup of nasty, brutish and short.
Hard Read
Last night I posted a link to an article by Bobby Jenks, ex-MLB reliever, that detailed his incredible journey into addiction following an injury. If you missed it, I recommend you go back and read it, it's good. From the same site, here's one by Rich Hill that will leave you in tears.
In it Dodgers pitcher Rich Hill recounts the story of what happened following the birth of his second child, Brooks, who was born with a terminal illness.
Maybe we should follow the lead of Europe: European nations offer incentives to have kids I don't really like the method they're using in the article, way too government-centric, but it's something to consider. Their might be a way to get the same results without the government just paying for it all, off the top of my head I'm thinking maybe something that encourages one parent to stay home with the kids while the other can support them with a full time job. I'd have to think on what form such a policy could take, however, I really have no idea.
Related:
Me: can you put your toys away
4: you didn’t say please
Me: can you put your toys away please
4: you didn’t say may I
Me: *not thinking at all* may I put your toys away please
At my house Mischief and Mayhem would be getting their hides tanned, but the dancing girls are as cute as a bug's ear and I wouldn't mind, er, decking the halls of some of the floozies in the video (IYKWIMAIKYD).
If you want to know how to reform health care to bring down costs, this is where you start, right here, with absolute price transparency. There's no reason that people can't shop for health care like they do anything else. This is a good start, but it doesn't go nearly far enough. Baby steps.
This is a long article (10,000 words, almost as long as a joke I once posted) tracing the history of New York's failure to upgrade or replace Penn Station. Throughout it, the author simultaneously bemoans the inability of government to DO BIG THINGS for THE BENEFIT OF EVERYONE (plenty of kudos for Woodrow Wilson and the idea that “smart people” should run everything) while stating the necessity of maintaining the “progressive” idea that government has to “protect” every little person and interest group against EVIL BIG BUSINESS, RICH PEOPLE, AND (oddly enough)GOVERNMENT. Logically it's a dog's breakfast, but the history is good and you'll be rolling your eyes at the ineptitude of city hall by the end. Worth a read if you've got the time.
Reflections Thread: Please Share Your Sad Stories About How Trump Destroyed the Economy and Blew Up the Planet and Killed You
—Ace of Spades
Among the many discussions we're not permitted to engage in the Trumpreich is the rather important fact that we all died between November 8, 2016 and February 2017.
I think it's about time that we were bold enough to say, courageously, "Mr. Cheetos Mengele, you murdered us all, and no, that's Not Okay."
"I say, Seth, did you read that coquettish little missive
by David French in his very masculine column French Press?"
A polyamorous woman in Florida with four partners is pregnant, and says despite sharing her bed with her many lovers, she’s certain of who the father is.
Tory Ojeda, 20, lives with three of her four partners in their Jacksonville, Fla., home. Marc, Travis, Ethan and Christopher take turns spending time with Ojeda, "swapping in and out" of her bed each night, she tells Barcroft Media.
The household’s love story began three years ago when Ojeda met Marc, 18, in high school. Two months later, she opened things up with Travis, 23 -- to whom she is now engaged. Later, she brought Ethan, 22, and Christopher, 22, into the fold[s].
Sorry, it seemed like they made a typo on that last word so I fixed it for them.
...
Ojeda and her boyfriends hope society will one day come around to their type of relationship -- already, couples and "throuples" say opening up their marriage has only made it stronger.
So this is a quipple.
If you want to donate to the child's Psychiatric Institutionalization Fund, I'll set up a Go Fund Me.
Here's some video. Seriously, it looks like the Daily Twitter NeverTrump Circle Jerk. They just need a couple of obese men.
Exit quote: "Tory [the quadruply-penetrated female] is the hub, and we're all the spokes, in a giant wheel."
No really. They said that.
This is so hot I want to drink a nice tall cold glass of bleach.
Just as the Democrats did over the last several weeks in the House, Republicans in the Senate majority will have a chance to call their witnesses and dominate the process -- with condemnations of those who duck their subpoenas. Topping their list are the former vice president, his son, and Alexandra Chalupa, a former Democratic National Committee operative whom Republicans have accused of digging dirt on the 2016 Trump campaign with help from Ukrainian officials.
Chalupa has said she’s "on a mission" to testify and repudiate such accusations. But there's a reason Democrats didn’t put her in the hearing hot seat last month. She has publicly said that officials at the Ukrainian Embassy were "helpful" to her efforts to research the activities of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's Russia ties – even as she insisted the embassy was not trying to interfere in American politics.
Also worth exploring: the convicted domestic bomber she palled around Ukraine with.
They ought to call him, too.
...
Joe Biden on Wednesday said he would not testify in impeachment proceedings against President Trump as Republicans focus on the underlying cause for Trump's concerns about the Bidens' activities in Ukraine – primarily that Hunter Biden was paid millions to sit Burisma's board while his father served as the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine. Trump's efforts to persuade that country's new president to investigate the matter is at the heart of the impeachment proceedings.
"No, I'm not going to let them take their eye off the ball," Biden told reporters on the campaign trail when asked if he would acquiesce to Republicans' calls for him to testify in an impeachment trial....
But even Democratic impeachment witnesses testified last month that Hunter Biden’s role at Burisma raised legitimate conflict-of-interest questions and that they were at a loss to explain why no one in the Obama administration put a stop to it.
Listen, Fat, you're gonna have to testify under oath.
Thread: What Words and Expressions Did You Grow Up With That No Longer Make Sense?
—Ace of Spades
One I remember -- which is being used less and less -- is "turn the channel."
TV's don't have dial channel selectors any more, so "turning" the channel doesn't make physical sense. Now people just say "change" the channel. I just heard someone using a strange expression for this, like "turn up" the channel or something.
There's another signal, but I don't know what it's called -- I think if you left your phone off the hook for long enough, it stopped the staccato sound and started a whining/whirring noise that was often used as a sound cue in movies to mean "insane."
Adam Schiff: This Phone Record Proves that the OMB Called Rudy Giuliani. That Is All the Proof We Need That He Was Lobbying to Deny Ukraine Aid. OMB: That's... That's not our phone number, dude Adam Schiff: ... Adam Schiff: But Russia
Who called Rudy Giuliani from the White House, and who took his calls in the administration? Those question have been buzzing around the White House after phone logs were released Wednesday detailing how President Trump's personal lawyer back-channeled diplomacy to Ukraine.
But the phone calls, a presidential spokesperson told RealClearPolitics, were not coming from inside the Office of Management and Budget: "No one from OMB has talked to Giuliani."
...
The report details phone calls and texts dating from last spring and summer, including a nearly 13-minute call on April 24 from an "OMB Phone Number." It is part of the evidence that Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff relied on to build his case for impeachment.
"This is not about Ukraine. This is about our democracy, this is about our security," Schiff said during a press conference after releasing the committee's impeachment report. "Americans should care deeply about whether the president of the United States is betraying their trust in him."
Senior administration officials reply that no one is betraying any trust. They tell RCP that Schiff must have the wrong number....
Apparently Schiff and his staff believe the 395 prefix that showed up on the phone records subpoenaed by House Democrats from AT&T and Verizon belongs only to phones in the OMB offices, something that Republican sources say isn't accurate.
Schiff is so concerned about using foreign sources to get dirt on domestic political opponents that when two men identifying themselves as Russian officials peddled him dirt on Trump, he was all too eager to set up a meeting.
The men turned out to be Ukrainian radio hosts pranking him, but obviously he didn't know that.
So there was Pencil-Neck Adam, trying to collude with Russia.
As the little pillow biter has lectured us for two weeks -- just because your collusion failed, doesn't mean it wasn't a crime to attempt it, and it doesn't mean you should not be subject to removal proceedings in the House.
The gunman who opened fire Friday morning at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida, fatally shooting three people, has been identified as an aviation student from Saudi Arabia as investigators are looking into whether the attack is terrorism-related.
The gunman was confronted and taken out by a pair of responding officers. Two people were killed at the scene while a third victim died after being rushed to a local hospital. Seven others suffered injuries and are undergoing treatment, including the two officers, one of whom was shot in the arm and the other in the knee. Both are expected to survive.
As I say:
"We may never know his motive," authorities vowed.
Shouldn't a historic television pageant be good for the ratings of CNN, the Orange Man Bad network?
Apparently not.
CNN posted its lowest primetime ratings in three years over the Thanksgiving holidays, while Fox News posted higher ratings than CNN and MSNBC combined.
...
It was CNN's worst primetime week in three years, and its worst week among the 25-54 demographic.
But apparently CNN leaned on one of the traditional media companies it is illegally colluding with, and Google -- parent of YouTube -- took down the video at CNN's demand.
Filed a counterclaim making that precise point. Youtube replied: "Unfortunately, it's unclear to us whether you have a valid reason for filing a counter notification, so we won't be able to honor your request.” Not sure if I care enough to keep fighting.
So Google continues suppressing conservative speech and acting as CNN's censors, and the people being directly cash-money paid off by Google -- by which I mean Heritage and the rest of Conservatism, Inc. -- will continue defending them.
No, scratch that -- they don't defend them any more because they know they've lost the argument and they don't want their bribes from Google and Koch Industries being made an issue of.
So they just employ the tactic they've learned from their very good liberal media friends, who they resemble more and more -- they just don't talk about these things.
You don't need to make a defense when you've successfully embargoed a story and kept 95% of the public from even hearing about it.
This post was not brought to you by the Asness Chair of Liberty.
Stocks surged on Friday on the back of U.S. jobs growth that easily topped analyst expectations as Wall Street wrapped up a choppy week of trading.
...
The U.S. economy added 266,000 jobs in November, according to figures released by the Labor Department. Economists polled by Dow Jones expected a gain of 187,000. The unemployment rate fell to 3.5%, matching its lowest level since 1969.
“After the sharp slowdown at the start of the year, the recent rebound in employment growth is clearly encouraging, and suggests that the loosening in financial conditions this year is starting to support the economy,” said Andrew Hunter, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics, in a note.
"Wednesday's "expert testimony" from some law profs in front of the House Judiciary Committee can be summed up like this:
Prof. Noah Feldman: "Orange man bad!"
Prof. Michael Gerhardt: "Orange man bad!"
Prof. Pamela Karlan: "Orange man bad! And my womb is barren. As in Barron Trump. Ha ha. Get it? But serious you guys, orange man bad!"
Prof. Jonathan Turley: "Orange man bad, maybe, but not impeachable."
Prof. Pamela Karlan: "I would like to say 'orange man bad' again."
"This is their best case? A bunch of professors who didn't actually witness anything? One of the reasons why they don't get laughed out of public life is because of the compliant, supine media. With nothing to keep them in shape, the Democrats have gotten all fat and flabby, and they really do think no one can see their shoddy merchandise for what it is. And then they get indignant when the shoddiness of their merchandise gets pointed out.
"I think the Republicans on the committee did a good job exposing these "witnesses", especially Karlan, as pretty much being Democratic activists, and not the Olympianly detached and neutral legal experts that the Democrats were attempting to pass them off as.
"This leads me to wonder how these impeachment proceedings would go if they took place during the time of Nixon's impeachment, the mid 70s. There would be no internet, no CNN, no C-SPAN, and there would only be the WaPo, the NY Times, and the 3 "alphabet" TV networks (ABC, NBC, CBS).
"All the Democrats would have to do is bar all TV cameras and limit coverage to only allow newspaper reporters, who could spin this story any way they wished.
"My guess is that they would present the profs as neutral experts, just like the Democrats would like. Republican challenges to this narrative would simply be ignored. All the big newspapers were liberal, even back then, except for the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. But the Democratic narrative would be pushed out to millions of Americans via TV news every night.
"I think the main game-changer here was the advent of C-SPAN. I think Americans need to know how their government that they pay taxes for functions, and C-SPAN provides that service well.
"My conclusion is that C-SPAN is a national treasure."
Karma's A Bitch: Cancel-Culture Enthusiast Gets Cancelled:
I'm not altogether happy about this. Yes, this psychopathic rage-monkey woman reaped what she sewed, the evil that she sought for another fell upon her, she fell into the pit she dug for another, the hand grenade went off in her own hand, etc., and that's a good thing. She's basically a terrorist who got blown up by her own IED. But I really don't like the idea of calling up somebody's employer to get her fired for reasons completely unrelated to job performance. I don't like cancel culture, and there's no good end to it. But I'm not a pacifist; I don't think we should back down in the face of such aggressive bullying. Cancel me? Cancel you, bitch.
Part of the problem is the merchants and proprietors of the shops where these incidents typically occur. Where was the manager of the Starbucks when this unhinged lunatic cut loose? That's the question I ask whenever I hear about these public meltdowns. The crazy woman should've been firmly escorted off the premises by security or by the local police, and told her business was no longer welcome. But this would require courage to treat a progressive whacko the same as a drunk or unruly customer, and in deep blue Palo Alto, CA, perhaps that kind of courage is in short supply.
Wednesday's Celebs: Leslie Parrish was the love interest in Manchurian Candidate (1962), which, in my opinion, is one of the best movies ever filmed. That's why I greatly resented the 2004 remake, and refused to see it, as it could only be inferior. But I won't hold it against Liev Schrieber for being in it, because actors gotta eat, same as everybody else.
Friday Shoe Pr0n:
Today's Edition Of The Morning Rant Is Brought To You By Triple Chocolate Cake Sundae:
Matt Eaton: Ghostbusters 3 looks a lot like The Force Awakens He points out how the new trailer features the Ecto-1 in place of the Millennial Falcon and the family memento ghost-trap instead of the family memento lightsaber. He doesn't mention another huge one: That the younglings in this movie have completely forgotten about major events from just more than 30 years ago. Same as The Force Awakens declared that most people now considered the Rebellion and The Force and Luke Skywalkers to be "myths."
Bendix, a member of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association told NBC News that she was “disappointed” by Hillary’s answer to the rumors. "It's so frustrating when public figures like Hillary feel the need to dispel lesbian rumors in a way that equates lesbianism or queerness with salaciousness," she claimed.
Bendix clarified that it was Hillary's use of the word "tempted” that really annoyed her, adding that it's unnecessarily "damaging to others." "I think there’s a way to refute untrue ideas about one's own identity without saying something damaging to others," she claimed.
Update your Rules: The only two acceptable answers when asked if you're gay are "You betcha!" or the Russell Ziskey special, "No, but I am willing to learn"
The C***shed Axis is all in for Mayor Pete You watch the Usual Suspect's twitter streams and every day it's a new agitation for Mayor Pete Bootieguage. I guess they've decided that Sundown Joe isn't going to make it physically or mentally, so they're recharacterizing another dyed-in-the-wool archprogressive as "The Thinking Man's Conservative" or whatever.
