US to Deploy Brand New Hypersonic Missile, The "Dark Eagle," to Iran

—Disinformation Expert Ace

The bad news: each of these missiles costs $15 million. And there are currently only eight of them.

The good news: They have a range of 1,725 miles and travel at Mach 5 (at their fastest). They can maneuver in flight and dodge attempts to intercept them. I don't really think Iran is very advanced as far as missile interceptions, but I guess they could try.

Their targets will be the remaining missile launchers Iran uses to terrorize its neighbors, hit US bases, and throttle shipping through the Strait of America. These missile launchers hide in fortified bunkers all day-- and then come out for just an hour to set up and launch a missile, and then hide again. These hypersonic missiles will be used as a very rapid response when a missile launcher is spotted by satellites or spyplanes.

It would take "minutes" for the Dark Eagle to reach its target, minimizing the chances that the launcher will duck back inside its bunker before being hit.

If they can take out eight of Iran's few remaining missile launchers, that will be $120 million well spent. (Though note the program's R&D cost $2.7 billion, but that's mostly sunk cost at this point.)

Bloomberg:

US Central Command has asked to send the Army's long-delayed Dark Eagle hypersonic missile to the Middle East for possible use against Iran, seeking a longer-range system to hit ballistic-missile launchers deep inside the country.

If approved, it would mark the first time the US will have deployed its hypersonic missile, which is running far behind schedule and hasn't been declared fully operational even as Russia and China have deployed their own versions.

The Request for Forces submission justifies the move by saying Iran has moved its launchers out of range of the Precision Strike Missile, a weapon that can hit targets at more than 300 miles, a person with direct knowledge of the request said.

...

Dark Eagle, also known as the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon, or LRHW, has a reported range of more than 1,725 miles, although its exact capabilities are secret. It is designed to glide to its target at more than five times the speed of sound and can maneuver to avoid interception.

...

The US already transferred most of its supplies of the stealthy JASSM-ER cruise missile, also designed for a fight with a near-peer adversary, to the Iran fight. About 1,100 of the missiles have been fired so far in the conflict.

Trump has rejected Iran's laughable "proposal" for the US to end the blockade while Iran continues its nuclear program. He will keep the blockade in place until Iran agrees to give up its nuke program and nuke materials, and is preparing for "short but powerful" strikes against the regime.

President Trump told Axios he's going to keep Iran under a naval blockade until the regime agrees to a deal that addresses U.S. concerns about its nuclear program.

Why it matters: Trump is rejecting an Iranian proposal to first open the Strait of Hormuz and lift the blockade, while postponing nuclear talks to a later stage.

Behind the scenes: U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) has prepared a plan for a "short and powerful" wave of strikes on Iran in hopes of breaking the negotiating deadlock, three sources with knowledge said.

After the strikes, which would likely include infrastructure targets, the U.S. would press the regime to come back to the negotiating table and show more flexibility.

Trump told Axios he saw the blockade as "somewhat more effective than the bombing," and the sources said he had yet to order any kinetic action as of Tuesday night. He did post an AI-generated meme of himself holding a gun with a warning to Iran and the tagline, "NO MORE MR. NICE GUY."

For now, Trump sees continuing the blockade as his primary source of leverage, but he would consider military action if it Iran still won't cave, according to the sources. He declined to discuss any military plans in Wednesday's phone interview, which lasted around 15 minutes.

Judicial Watch Lawsuit Compels Oregon, Against Its Will, to Remove 800,000 Ineligible Voters from Its Voter Rolls -- Nearly One Quarter of All Eligible Voters In the State

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Don't look now, but that thing that never happens is happening again.

Paul Sperry @paulsperry_

BREAKING: Settlement of a Judicial Watch lawsuit has forced the review and removal of some 800,000 ineligible voters from Oregon voter rolls

Judicial Watch is deservedly crowing:

Judicial Watch announced a settlement in its federal lawsuit against Oregon election officials, which confirms 800,000 ineligible voter names are slated for review and removal from voter registration lists. The settlement requires state officials to produce detailed data and enforce federal voter roll clean-up procedures under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA).

I should say that of the 800,000 ineligible names, only 160,000 are being scrubbed now; the other 640,000 will be reviewed and scrubbed from the lists later.

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit in October 2024, alleging Oregon failed to remove ineligible voters and seeking to enforce Section 8 of the NVRA after identifying widespread voter roll maintenance failures across dozens of counties (Judicial Watch, et al. v. The State of Oregon et al. (No. 6:24-cv-01783)).

In its complaint, Judicial Watch argued that Oregon's voter rolls contain large numbers of old, inactive registrations; and that 29 of Oregon's 36 counties removed few or no registrations as required by federal election law. Judicial Watch asserted that Oregon and 35 of its counties had overall registration rates exceeding 100%; and that Oregon had the highest known inactive registration rate of any state in the nation. In combination, all of these facts showed that Oregon was failing to remove inactive registrations as required by federal law.

In August 2025, a federal court in Oregon denied a motion to dismiss by Oregon and ruled the lawsuit could proceed.

In response to the lawsuit, Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read announced earlier this year that Oregon has about 800,000 inactive registrations, which are kept separately from the active voter rolls and do not receive ballots. Of those, roughly 160,000 already meet federal and state criteria for removal--having received confirmation notices, failed to respond, and not voted in two federal elections--and are slated for cancellation. The remaining approximately 640,000 inactive records do not yet qualify for removal and will be processed through future list maintenance efforts.

In its press release, Oregon acknowledged that routine removal of outdated records effectively stalled in 2017, leaving a large pool of long-dormant registrations on the rolls without being fully processed for removal. The scale of the backlog underscores a gap in routine list maintenance that is only now being addressed. "These directives are about cleaning up old data that's no longer in use so Oregonians can be confident that our voter records are up to date," said Read.

...

The settlement with Oregon remains in effect for more than five years, with a federal court retaining jurisdiction to enforce its terms. While the settlement resolves the litigation, it explicitly allows future legal action if Oregon fails to comply with voter list clean-up requirements going forward.

The settlement requires Oregon to open its voter roll maintenance processes to unprecedented scrutiny. ...

...

Colorado recently removed 372,000 ineligible voter names thanks to a Judicial Watch lawsuit and settlement addressing the state's compliance with federal voter list maintenance requirements.

In Kentucky, state election board officials reported that "roughly 735,000 ineligible voter registrations" have been removed from voter rolls, as part of a 2018 consent decree settling a Judicial Watch lawsuit.

As part of its 2022 settlement, New York City alone has removed 918,139 ineligible names from its rolls: data show 477,056 removals between March 2023 and February 2025, which is in addition to the 441,083 previously reported removals.

In Los Angeles, county officials confirmed the removal of more than 1.2 million names from voter rolls as part of a settlement. Judicial Watch legal pressure also resulted in election roll clean-ups in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Ohio.

Covert Socialist Kathy Hochul to Overt Socialist Zohran Mamdani: You Don't Have a Tax Revenue Problem, You Have a Spending Problem.

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Hochul to NYC: Drop Dead, says Hadrian.

I wonder if this makes the Democrat Governess Hochul a racisty racist who hates children and The Science (TM) because she's racist. I figure... no, she isn't a racisty racist. Democrats are allowed to object to back-breaking spending. Only Republicans are racist for doing so, because they Hate the Blacks.

Zohran Mamdani is executing his big new socialist plan.

Have you heard this one before? His plan is to spend other people's money until he runs out of other people's money, and then to start spending other other people's money. It's gotta work this time, right? The law of averages says it must.

So he's run out of money, just three months into his term of four years, and is demanding that Governess Granny Hochul rewrite the law to impose new taxes on his citizen-slaves.

And she actually told him to stop spending money he doesn't have and otherwise get bent.

NYC Mayor Mamdani's latest pitch to tax the rich "not happening," Gov. Kathy Hochul says

The budget battle between New York City and New York state lawmakers is intensifying.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin are calling for a new way to tax the rich. They want the state to reduce something called the Pass-Through Equity Tax credit, aka PTET.

...

Menin joined the mayor in calling for the new revenue stream, which could mean another $1 billion to help close the city's budget gap.

Gov. Kathy Hochul slammed the door on their proposal.

"That's not happening," Hochul said. "We are not changing PTET."

Hochul said she has already found over $4 billion in state aid for the city, and that Mamdani and Menin have a spending problem.

"And we've encouraged the speaker and the mayor to do what every other city has to do, [which] is look at your expenses. What is growing exponentially? They have programs that are growing not 4% a year, but 4% [in] months. And so they have to do whatever the other city is doing," Hochul said.

Budget watchdogs agree with Hochul, saying that instead of trying to tax their way out of the budget problems, they should stop spending so much.

"Right-size spending. Stop spending on programs that don't help New Yorkers. We've increased spending $16 billion more than inflation over the last 10 years," said Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission.

And Mamdani's proposed budget will increase NYC's budget by fourteen billion dollars over just two years.

The pro-terrorist socialist theater kid who never held a real job admits that even if he gets this tax increase, he's going to demand New York state send more of its taxpayers' money to NYC so he can waste it.

Despite Hochul's reluctance, Mamdani still wants more state aid, even if were to actually get this new tax.

"We cannot proceed with balancing that budget without the additional revenue and cost shifts from Albany," Mamdani said.

The Covert Socialist will also meet with billionaire Ken Griffin about his complaints about the new pied-a-terre tax, designed to punish rich people for daring to own second homes in NYC.

...

Hochul had another surprise for Mamdani. She has agreed to meet this week with billionaire Ken Griffin. Mamdani has made Griffin the poster boy for why he wants a pied-a-terre tax on people who own multimillion dollar second homes in New York City.

Griffin was so upset with Mamdani's attacks his hedge fund company threatened to pull out of a $6 billion NYC development project.

The PTET is a shelter provided by high-tax leftwing states to allow their richest taxpayers to shelter some of their money so that they don't have to pay the full state taxes. And they're not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts -- they know their rich, highly-mobile taxpayers will flee to states with lower (or no) income taxes if they don't give them a break on taxes.

Mamdani is demanding that the break be reduced from a 100% credit on state taxes to 75%. Thereby reducing the incentive to rich people to stay in the high-tax state, thereby increasing the number of rich people who will flee.

And of course, this is why high-tax states like California are pushing for "exit taxes" -- money they steal from you when you move out of their states. They want to keep you prisoner. If you stay you have to pay their high tax rates, but if you try to leave, they'll shellac you with a huge "exit tax" on your wealth.

I think this will all work out beautifully for the socialists, as it always has and always will.

Actual Justice Warrior seems to understand the PTET tax shelter, which I currently don't.

Economy Grows By Decent 2% Annualized Rate Despite Fuel Price Inflation; New Jobless Claims Fall to Near Record Lows

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Via Ed Morrissey. It's a decent growth figure, rebounding from the weak 0.5% in the fourth quarter of 2025.

Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 2.0 percent in the first quarter of 2026 (January, February, and March), according to the advance estimate released today by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the fourth quarter of 2025, real GDP increased 0.5 percent.

The contributors to the increase in real GDP in the first quarter were investment, exports, consumer spending, and government spending. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, also increased. ...

Real final sales to private domestic purchasers, the sum of consumer spending and gross private fixed investment, increased 2.5 percent in the first quarter, compared with an increase of 1.8 percent in the fourth quarter.

The nominal rate of growth -- unadjusted for inflation -- came in a huge 5.6%. That's a good sign, because the current inflation is temporary due to Iran throttling the Strait of America.

Danny Dayan @DannyDayan5

The economy is simply on fire.

-Claims lowest of cycle, 2nd lowest since 1969.
-ECI shows wages accelerating.
-Core PCE deflator (pre war) hottest since 2023.
-Nominal GDP very strong

If anyone you follow is still talking rate cuts, fire them.

By "claims," he means "new jobless filings," which came in at 189,000, the lowest since... 1969.

A Muslim Immigrant Goes on Stabbing Spree in Jewish Neighborhood in the UK

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Did I say "Muslim immigrant"? I'm sorry, the propaganda media prefers the term "British national born in Somalia." In other words a foreign invader permitted to come to the UK and given a passport to commit jihad.

I saw this yesterday but I didn't post it because, as usual, they were hiding the identity of the terrorist. Identity is the most important thing until an identity favored by the left shoots up a church or school or goes on a stabbing spree.

John Sexton quoting Islamic State Media the BBC:

The two men, aged 76 and 34, were treated at the scene and are now in a stable condition in hospital, the Metropolitan Police said.

A 45-year-old man, a British national born in Somalia, was Tasered by police before being arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, the force said. The suspect is now in custody...

The Met said its officers responded at 11:16 BST on Wednesday after receiving reports that people had been stabbed in Highfield Avenue, which runs off Golders Green Road.

The suspect also attempted to stab the attending officers, the Met said, but none were injured.

Apparently the usual suspects are whining that the British National was kicked when he was on the ground, but that's because, see, he refused to release the knife after attempting to stab the cops.

The Morning Rant

—CBD

They lie. They manipulate. They fake numbers. They fake data. They have their cronies in the various administrative departments massage the numbers and delay the release of the actual...real...data for political ends.

And their fellow travelers in the media are 100% in lockstep with them. And not just lockstep...they actively tilt their message with deeply biased "reporting," They commission studies that are intended to bolster a political narrative that is at odds with reality, then amplify the false message so that it appears to be the accepted orthodoxy.

In this case it is the widely assumed but absolutely incorrect assumption that political violence is the domain of the right. But it's easy to claim that when the data themselves are manipulated with fake definitions that protect the privileged: Arab terrorists, Antifa street thugs, BLM murderers are curiously absent from the data, or redefined into oblivion.

And hilariously...the sources for much of the data are themselves evil political organizations that have not a shred of credibility in the real world. Gentlemen, I give you the SPLC and the ADL! Otherwise known as friends of the KKK and Judaism-hating pseudo-Jews.

So don't believe anything they say until you confirm it with your independent examination of the data, and even then, be deeply suspicious!

Debunking the Data That Claims to Show Most Political Violence Comes From the Right

On the Left, people point to January 6 as well as data purporting to show that most political violence comes from the Right. After Charlie Kirk’s assassination, The Economist ran a piece claiming to explain “what the data show,” which suggested that most political violence was a Right-wing phenomenon. Other publications cited studies from the Center for Strategic & International Studies or the CATO Institute.

The problem is, the “data” that these outlets have been relying on is deeply flawed.

One of the major sources is the Prosecution Project, an initiative of the University of Cincinnati, which analyzes felony criminal cases involving political violence and sorts them by ideology. “The project examines criminal complaints, indictments and court records, looking for crimes that seek ‘a socio-political change or to communicate’ to outside audiences,” per The Economist. “Its data show that extremists on both left and right commit violence, although more incidents appear to come from right-leaning attackers.”

Yet if you pull up the data center yourself, you can see immediately that it is deeply flawed.

Read the entire thing, and check her work! Because that is what sane people do. This is a vitally important analysis, for the obvious reasons, but also because it proves that what we all suspected was in fact the truth...we cannot believe anything the left says...and the left is everywhere.

[Yeah...Ace beat me to this. I figured his shelving accident would give me enough lead time, but I was wrong.]

[Crossposted at CutJibNewsletter and X/Twitter]. If you folks who are on X/Twitter would follow us it would be much appreciated!

Mid-Morning Art Thread

—CBD

Portrait of the Artist's Mother
Henry Ossawa Tanner

The Morning Report — 4/ 30/26

—J.J. Sefton

center>
Good morning kids. Unfortunately, my dear wonderful wife is addicted to listening to the inbred mouth-breathing credibly-accused intern-murderer Joe Scarborough and his blonde bimbo concubine Mitzi Baryshnikov on MSNSDAP, who almost daily give a platform to deranged scumbag racial arsonist Al Sharpton. While I do my very best to tune all of them out today the wailing and moaning of feces-to-the-face bootblack Sharpton are music to my ears as he flips his sewer-lid medallion over yesterday's glorious victory of America and civilization over his and his ilk's multigenerational strangulation of them.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday sharply limited the ability of states to consider race when drawing congressional maps, a decision that could reshape the balance of power in Washington and intensify redistricting battles ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito struck down Louisiana’s congressional map, which included two majority-black districts, as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

In the court’s 36-page opinion, Alito emphasized that “the Constitution almost never permits the Federal Government or a State to discriminate on the basis of race,” framing the central question as whether compliance with the Voting Rights Act justifies such actions.

For the court’s conservative wing, the answer was no.

Alito and the five other justices were absolutely correct, moral and courageous in upholding the ideals of our Constitution and the ideals behind the concept that undergirds our society, "American Exceptionalism": that is that our founding and society are the exception to every other society in history, which was based on tyranny and oppression of the citizenry.

No doubt this is a big victory but I have a niggling (racist?) feeling that SCOTUS threw us a bone with this insofar as they've already made up their minds that they are going to preserve, protect and defend the bastardization of the 14th Amendment that allows foreigners to spawn on our shores to proclaim the babies as American citizens and then magically transmogrify the parents, uncles, aunts, cousins and others born elsewhere as Americans and ship them all in to become Democrat voters and welfare recipients.

For sure the win yesterday is a gut punch for the Democrat/Leftists, but losing birthright citizenship would potentially be catastrophic for them.

Unfortunately, Dobbs, Bruen and this ruling aside, SCOTUS and every court in the land cannot be trusted to do the right thing. Especially given what President Trump and many decent ordinary Americans have had to endure in the wake of J/6, School board and Pro-life protests that saw them persecuted by judges and prosecutors at the behest of Biden/Obama and their minions.

With the clock running down on the Trump miracle administration, there is also talk about Alito and or Clarence Thomas retiring, who can the President turn to or trust to advise him as to replacements?

On Wednesday, the 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the president had raised his arguments too late.

I'll complete the thought for the hack-in-black..."If only he didn't survive that assassination attempt, we'd hear the case... And then rule against him after they shoved the orangeman casket into the ground."

And of course we have this that undergirds my fears about Birthright Citizenship:

The three liberal judges — all of whom usually support pro-migration claims — suggested they might block Trump’s actions on the claim that Trump may be partially motivated by racially discriminatory “animus.”

Finally there's this insanity. And note who the judge is.

Brnovich,Judge Susan Brnovich of the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona on Tuesday said that the state’s voter registration list is not subject to requests from the U.S. Attorney General.

Brnovich, a Trump appointed-judge, dismissed the case with prejudice because an amended complaint would be “legally futile.”

The dismissal follows after after judges have ruled against the Justice Department’s attempted to obtain at least 30 states and the District of Columbia’s constituents date of birth, address, driver’s license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers.

The Trump administration seeks the data to ensure states are complying with federal election laws and to check the citizenship status of individuals on the voter rolls.

Gevalt. Alito and Thomas cannot and will not hang on forever, despite Thomas knowing full well where this nation is headed. God bless him for hanging on. Every second he lasts gives us a fighting chance, however brief.
Have a great day!

One final totally random musing...

Color me jaded but let's say that if I were a late night host and quipped "The Meathead got a meat cleaver" about Rob Reiner, I don't think I'd get the guffaws or invocation of the First Amendment that homunculus Kimmel got.

And lastly, a quick shout-out and a huge thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY LINKS
• While the world was once again forced to hold its collective breath on Saturday evening as an attempted assassin sought to slay U.S. President Donald Trump, the safety of populists throughout the West has become an increasing concern.
  Brexit Boss Nigel Farage Reveals His Home Was Targeted in Firebombing Attack

• ‘… Perhaps now we know why the Biden junta did not want to share its Planned Parenthood records with Congress,’ Sen. Ernst wrote.
  Senator: Biden Agency Used ‘Benghazi’ To Hide Emails On Planned Parenthood Loans
  
• Lawmakers adopted the procedural measure in a 216-210 vote, which cleared the way for Congress to renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) section 702, which allows for warrantless surveillance of foreign nationals’ communications with Americans ahead of a Thursday deadline. Republican leaders have engaged in lengthy negotiations with members who wanted to amend section 702 to add restrictions to the surveillance of U.S. citizens’ communications.
  Republicans Poised To Allow Continued Unfettered Government Spying On American Citizens

Daily Tech News 30 April 2026

—Pixy Misa

• OpenAI has largely abandoned its plan to spend half a trillion dollars of other people's money on its Stargate project, leaving it to other people to spend half a trillion dollars of other peoples money on its Stargate project. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The real question is, how did they get the thing inside a mountain in the first place?

Wednesday Night ONT - April 29, 2026 [TRex]

—Open Blogger

Good evening Horde. The time has come for mid-week shenanigans. The bar is open.

Welcome to the Wednesday night ONT which means another edition of random overnight fun and games. Pull up a chair and sit a spell. Good will offerings of amusing puns are happily accepted. Pants are optional. Be nice to your fellow commenters and AoS contributors. This is a Tucker, Candace and Megyn free zone. Please.

Will you be smarter after reading this ONT? Will you be better looking? Will you be more fun at parties? Will you lose weight? Will you be wealthier? Will you be more fashionable?

Maybe you should just settle for being whelmed.

[Top photo: Somewhere unknown in Ireland that reminds me of Stonehenge but doesn't look anything like Stonehenge, Jenny Rose photo]

***

Flaming underpants? How is it that I have gone my whole life without knowing this story from the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne??

Barry Larkin, now a veterinary surgeon from Melbourne, planned to interupt the torch relay along with eight other students from St John's College, believing that the Olympic Flame received too much reverence.

The fake torch was hardly a master forgery, which makes the fact that it was passed off as the real deal all the more humorous. The fake was made using no more than a wooden chair leg that had been painted silver, holding at top a plum pudding can. As for the flame, which proved to be far from a reverent affair, this was created using a pair of underpants, soaked in kerosene.

After a shaky start, Larkin ran with the torch to Sydney Town Hall protected by police who thought that he was the official runner, where he presented the torch to the Mayor of Sydney, Pat Hills.

As the mayor was unprepared, he did not look at the torch and went straight to his speech. While Hills was talking, Larkin walked quietly away, avoiding attention. Hills didn't realise at all that the torch was fraudulent until someone whispered in his ear and told him it was a fake. Hills looked around for Larkin, but by now Larkin had merged into the crowd and escaped.

What could be a better tribute to the Olympic spirit than unauthorized flaming underwear on a chair leg?

***

Remember when Late Nite TV was fun and silly. Yeah... good times.

***

"Really big pig" seen wandering loose in North Carolina

Authorities in North Carolina are asking local residents to keep an eye out for a "really big pig" seen wandering loose in Durham County.

The Durham County Sheriff's Office said on social media that the "new heavyweight champion" was spotted in the Mason Road area but animal services personnel were unable to locate the "ham-bassador."

"To put it lightly: he is a REALLY big pig. We're talking 'absolute unit' status," the post said. "He's currently living his best life on the lam, but we'd like to get him somewhere safe before he decides to move into someone's backyard permanent-like."

The sheriff's office said residents should report any sightings of the pig and not attempt to capture it themselves. The pig's owner has not yet been identified.

***

Bill introduced to name "Loveland Frogman" as Ohio's official cryptid

A bill introduced in the Ohio House would designate the Loveland Frogman as the state's official cryptid.

A bill sponsored by Reps. Tristan Rader, D-13th district, and Jean Schmidt, R-62nd district, calls for the local legend to be named Ohio's official state cryptid.

House Bill 821 describes the Loveland Frogman as "a frog-like, bipedal creature standing approximately four feet tall."

The legend dates back to 1972, when two police officers reported spotting a large frog-like creature on different nights.

The Frogman made headlines again in 2016, when a couple claimed to have seen the massive amphibian while playing Pokemon Go.

The sighting prompted Mark Mathews, who purports to be one of the police officers who spotted the Frogman in 1972, to come forward with the whole story.

Mathews said the first officer to spot the Frogman, Ray Shockey, told him he saw the creature near the Totes boot factory and the Little Miami River.

Mathews said he was skeptical of the story, but a few days later he was driving in the same area when he saw something run across the road.

He ended up shooting the creature and putting it in his trunk to show Shockey, who confirmed it was the same animal he had seen.

The animal was a 3- to 3 1/2-foot-long iguana that was missing its tail.

I don't know whether to be impressed that the Ohio legislature has solved the rest of the world's problems so that they have time for such things, horrified that the Ohio legislature is passing legislation to to formally embrace a hoax, or pleased that people so stupid are busy doing things like this instead of doing harm by "fixing" things elsewhere.

At least in North Carolina, they're spending their time looking for something that actually exists. Although I'm not sure how big a missing pig needs to be to warrant making the news. To be fair, the report does say the pig has "absolute unit" status.

***

Anyone Want a 145,000-Pound Dinosaur? The World’s Largest T. Rex Needs a New Home.

The world's largest Tyrannosaurus Rex statue needs a new home.

Tyra, located in the Canadian Badlands, is a gigantic kitschy roadside attraction that, like the dinosaurs she is based on, is facing extinction. The 86-foot-tall T. rex that weighs in at around 145,000 pounds - significantly taller and heavier than any real-life T. rex - has called the small Canadian town of Drumheller her home since 2000. Visitors have been able to climb inside the giant dinosaur and stand in its open jaws that double as a viewing platform.

Unfortunately, according to the Calgary Herald, Tyra is facing a problem no dinosaur has ever faced in their collective many millions of years on Earth: her lease is set to expire. In 2029, the current terms suggest that the structure could be dismantled. Local officials understand that it is a bit of a logistical nightmare to just up and move a giant dinosaur monolith, but so far, no one has come up with a viable solution for moving such a behemoth.

In the meantime, Tyra underwent a structural assessment to ensure that she is stable and safe, and local officials invested over $300,000 into repairing and restoring the local landmark, ensuring that if Tyra does in fact change locations, she will be in relatively good shape.

Maybe AOP needs a new lawn ornament? Tyra lives just down the road. If anyone can engineer a giant T-Rex transfer, it is AOP.

Hat tip: Blaster

***

The Wednesday ONT is not the food thread, but this seemed like a trivia nugget worthy of an ONT.

You would be surprised to learn that almost 69% of the US mushroom production occurs in the borough of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. It is a small town of about 6000 people, but mushroom-growing facilities around town produce almost 451 million pounds of mushrooms annually (2024). 451 million pounds of mushrooms would occupy about 45 American football fields or 35 soccer fields. The dollar value of mushroom production in the US is roughly $ 1 billion per year.

China is the undisputed leader in mushroom production. China accounts for 93% of the world's global mushroom production.

The history of mushroom farming in Kennett Square dates back to 1885, when a grower obtained mushroom spores from Europe and began growing mushrooms. This concentration of mushroom farming in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, is due to historical immigration patterns, primarily of Italians in the 1950s or 1960s, easy availability of horse manure for the mushroom substrate, and easy access to the Philadelphia and New York markets.

Source

***

Chick-fil-A employee accused of stealing $80,000 with mac & cheese scheme

A former Chick-fil-A employee was arrested for stealing $80,000 with a mac & cheese scheme at a Texas restaurant, police say.

Keyshun Jones was fired from the store in Grapevine, outside Dallas, last November, but authorities say he would repeatedly slip back in, enter food orders on the register, and refund them to his personal credit card.

Jones was taken into custody on April 17 after allegedly ringing up 800 orders of mac and cheese.

Investigators began investigating the cheesy fraud after the restaurant reported hundreds of phony refunds.

Jones faces charges of property theft, money laundering and evading arrest.

He faces up to 10 years in state prison, if convicted - where he'll also be able to order mac & cheese, according to the menus on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Just imagine the jailhouse conversation: "What are you in for?"

"Money laundering"

"Yeah? Wow. That's sounds big. What did you do?"

"I stole 800 orders of mac and cheese."

Silence.

***

Public Service Announcement: by popular demand, the Hobby Thread on Saturday will be car repair.

Think of it like our very own Car Talk (with Click and Clack), Under the Hood or Motor Medics. We can expand to anything with a motor - truck, RV, motorcycle, quad, etc. Bring your ills and mechanical gremlins. Ideally, the experts among the Horde can join to offer their wisdom and advice. If they don't, the rest of us can make wild and uninformed guesses.

Either way, the advice will be free. (That also means it may be worth exactly what you paid for it.) Ace of Spades disclaims any responsibility or liability for advice given or not given. Caveat emptor.

Credit to RandomDave and ARiK for the suggestion.

***

The Pittsburgh police scanner keeps giving. Thank you people of Pittsburgh!

***

Blues Brothers for the big ONT finish:

***

Written correspondence can be sent to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com. Are you lurking ?? While not technically royalty, the Wednesday ONT enjoys a special relationship with the United Kingdom. The Wednesday ONT also wishes to express its condolences to those impacted by World War Eleven. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Close it up

Ice Cream Cafe

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Enjoying a pup cup.

Ice cream factory.

Babies eating ice cream for the first time. Number Four will SHOCK YOU!!!

LIFE HACK!!! HOW TO EAT AN ICE CREAM CONE LIKE A PRO!!! YOUR LIFE BEEN HACKED!

I'm the cock of the walk.

The sheriff breaks up the fight.

Computer-generated walking tour of Ancient Rome.

A different cut showing how Airplane! was just the movie Zero Hour! but with jokes. I can see how they wrote Airplane -- I see them sitting around watching this old, lame movie, making wise-cracks like "And please don't call me Shirley" while watching it, and then deciding to write it as a script. And they had to pay for the Zero Hour! script because all of their best wise-cracks were in response to that particular movie.

This boulder kinda looks like a scoop of ice cream, kinda.

FCC Demands Eight ABC Stations Re-Apply for Certification Early, Citing the Stations' Brazen Racial Discrimination Based on Illegal "DEI" Criteria
Plus: Comey May Be Forced to Give Up Profits on His Stupid Book?

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Bad news for the Disney Groomer Network.

Tim O'Brien:

[T]he Federal Communications Commission (FCC)... announced on April 28 that it is moving up its review of the ABC network's eight local broadcasting licenses over the network's diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices.

On March 27, 2025, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr initially sent a letter to Disney CEO Bob Iger notifying him that the FCC was investigating the company (Disney and ABC) to determine if it was in violation of the FCC's own equal employment opportunity regulations. Common sense will tell you that when you replace "equal" with "equity" you will have problems, and that's what they're looking at.

Keep in mind that this was months before the assassination of Charlie Kirk in September and the Jimmy Kimmel drama that followed.

Now, just recently, David J. Brown, the chief of the video division at the Federal Communications Commission's media bureau, sent a notification memo to The Walt Disney Company that said: "Specifically, FCC rules provide that whenever the FCC regards an application for a renewal of a license as essential to the proper conduct of an investigation, the FCC has the authority to call the broadcaster's licenses in for early renewal. Doing so both allows the FCC to conduct its ongoing investigation and enables the FCC to ensure that the broadcaster has been meeting its public interest obligations more broadly...The FCC determines that calling in Disney's ABC licenses for early renewal, at this time, under the Communications Act's public interest standard is essential within the meaning of agency regulations."

The ABC stations in question were on the schedule for license renewal in the 2028-2031 window. The FCC's decision now requires the ABC stations to file for renewal by May 28 of this year.

It's important to understand that the Federal Communications Commission doesn't regulate networks directly; their content is carried by third-party local broadcasters that use the public airwaves, which the FCC does regulate. American Broadcasting Company owns eight local television stations that are within the FCC's jurisdiction: WABC-TV New York, KABC-TV Los Angeles, WLS-TV Chicago, WPVI-TV Philadelphia, KTRK-TV Houston, KGO-TV San Francisco, WTVD-TV Raleigh-Durham, and KFSN-TV Fresno.

Those are among ABC's biggest stations. Only two -- Raleigh-Durham and Fresno -- are second-tier.

On to James Comey.

James Comey posted his "8647" threat to boost sales of his piece-of-shit homo book.

But that means he profited from a crime, and may be forced to disgorge those profits.

Though, to be honest, I can't imagine she made much money off this "book."

Paul Sperry @paulsperry_

BREAKING: DOJ sources tell me prosecutors are pursuing a "forfeiture action" in relation to James Comey's alleged felonies because they believe Comey posted the "86" Trump threat to also help drum up sales of a forthcoming book. Comey posted the image five (5) days before the May 20, 2025, release of his new crime novel. Controversy over the posting thrust Comey back into the headlines and drew potential book buyers to his Instagram and X accounts where he heavily promoted the book.

According to the Comey indictment, "Upon conviction, the defendant shall forfeit to the United States any property, real or personal, which constitutes or is derived from proceeds traceable to the said offense."

Viva Frei explains that the case against Comey isn't just about the "8647" tweet-- he posted a series of tweets to promote his gay book, which spoke of... encouraging people to kill political enemies.

Conversation Viva Frei @thevivafrei

Too many people are either ignorant of the facts, or being obtuse as relates to Comey's "8647" (in shells!) Instagram post.

It was not a simple "one-off" post. Faulty premise and factually incorrect.

So everyone comparing it to Jack Posobiec's 2022 tweet of "8646" is not comparing comparables.

Also, not an irrelevant factor - Jack is not the former Director of the FBI!

Posobiec's tweet was stupid. And I would expect to be investigated and possibly charged if I were to ever post anything so stupid.

That says, now back to it not being a "one-off" possibly ambiguous tweet:

People are either unaware of, or ignoring the context of Comey's Instagram post. It was not a "one-off". It was actually the second in a series of three posts, all of which were connected, self-referential, and clearly deliberately so.

Post 1: Comey at the beach, reading his new book, FDR Drive (image attached).

Post 2: 8647 in shells.

Post 3: The summary of his new book which he is reading in Post 1. That summary:

"Garcia believes Buchanan went far beyond the protection of the first amendment when *he singled out his enemies by name* and *suggested "something should be done" about them*. His fans have obliged, killing or grievously, injuring some of his foes."

Comey is telling you exactly what he is doing.

Reading his book.

Singling out his enemies by name (as close as he can get) - 47 for Trump.

Suggesting "something should be done about them" - 86 for kill or eliminate.

And "his fans have obliged" from his book description that he posted.

All of the elements are there to eliminate any ambiguity as to what common meant - sandwiching his 8647 in shells in between a picture of him reading his book, and a summary of his book - which has to do with calling out enemies by name, suggesting something should be done to them, and his fans obliging.

He quibbles about whether the indictment should contain all of this evidence. I don't think it does. An indictment is not a presentation of evidence. That's what a trial is. An indictment is just a listing of charges that a grand jury has said there is evidence enough to support a conviction thereupon.

The Family of Democrat Thugs Who Assaulted Savanah Hernandez Have All be Indicted by a Federal Grand Jury

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Acting AG Todd Blanche @DAGToddBlanche

Today, Christopher, Deyanna, and Paige Ostrouchko were indicted by a grand jury for allegedly assaulting journalist and Turning Point USA contributor Savannah Hernandez, while she was lawfully reporting on anti-ICE protests outside a federal building in St. Paul.

Hernandez was allegedly surrounded, physically assaulted, and shoved to the ground -- simply because she was identified by the defendants as a conservative journalist. That is NOT "peaceful protest." These deplorable actions as charged in the indictment will not be tolerated in America, and this Department of Justice will always punish unhinged acts of political violence.

The whole family -- the thug 250 pound father who brutally knocked the 110 pound girl in the back, the psychopathic daughter who repeated assaulted her by blowing a very loud whistle directly into her ear (yes that's assault, and the attack can have serious long-term consequences), and the mother too.

Lunatic Leftwing Fascists Melt Down as Florida's Assembly Speedruns the New Congressional Map Through Both Houses

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Cry Moar NPR:

Florida lawmakers have approved a new Congressional map that could position Republicans to win four additional U.S. House seats in the midterm elections in November.

The 21 to 17 vote for final passage in the Senate came just hours after the U.S. Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act in a decision on a Louisiana congressional district Wednesday morning.

Both developments will assist President Trump's national push to help the GOP in the midterm elections. With the Florida redistricting, the GOP likely gains an advantage of two or three new seats as Republican-led states have followed Trump's call and Democratic-led states have countered it.

However, control of the House will depend on the votes in November. Democrats have said the redraw in Florida makes several GOP seats more competitive, potentially leading to smaller seat gains if strong Democratic performances seen in recent special elections continue.

The bill now goes for expected signing by Gov. Ron DeSantis. He has argued that the state's rapid population growth requires redistricting. And he's urged the redrawing of districts that were drawn with consideration for preserving the voting power of minority communities.

Al Gore: All of My Predictions from An Inconvenient Truth About Greenland and the Arctic Completely Losing Their Ice Were "Proven Dead Right;" and BTW, Now I'm Warning About a Coming Ice Age (Which Will Also Not Happen)

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Everything he predicted twenty years ago were "proven dead right," except for everything he predicted.

And he's got a new grift: Global Freezing.

A lot of these rich nepo babies like Al Gore and Tuq'r Qarlson aren't nearly as rich as I'd assumed. They're still shilling and huckstering into their elder years.

Former Vice President Al Gore is still making climate doom predictions, 20 years after his warnings from An Inconvenient Truth proved false -- this time invoking the science fiction film The Day After Tomorrow for a rapt Hollywood audience.

Gore joined the first-ever Sustainability in Entertainment Honors event Thursday, organized by The Hollywood Reporter and the Sustainable Entertainment Alliance, for a keynote conversation with The West Wing star Bradley Whitford.

This idiot cuck again. I hate this guy. He's a dweeb so he plays "smart" characters -- by which I mean another dweeb, Aaron Sorkin, uses him as his puppet to ventriloquize his own personal stupid dweeb political propaganda -- and so he believes he's smart in real life.

Pretty sure Hugh Jackman doesn't think he's actually Wolverine in real life.

The pair reminisced about the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, conspicuously omitting its failed prophecy that Earth's ecosystems would reach a "tipping point" of no return, thanks to human industrial activity, in only ten years. That deadline that came and went a full decade ago.

...

In response to this doomsday warning, Whitford sets a more drastic timeline -- that if Gore's energy policies are not enacted, "we're in an ice age in, like, 10 years." However, Gore punts the prophecy's deadline much farther into the future, dodging any chance of accountability.

So note it is this actor dweeb who spent his grade school years getting stuffed inside lockers who advanced the ice age prediction-- but Al Gore then endorses it, while avoiding making a prediction about when this will come to pass.

Like all Doomsayers, his previous specific predictions have been proven dead wrong, so now he wants to keep things vague.

...

WHITFORD: And if there is a tipping point here where the gradual threat of climate change becomes immediate, where -- if that happens and the Gulf Stream ceases to exist as we know it, we're in an ice age in, like, 10 years.

GORE: No, no, no. It would take longer -- it, I mean, I'm not the expert-

WHITFORD: [Crosstalk] I wear makeup, Al.

GORE: But I've spent a lot of time with them. But it would be bad. It would be very bad and would be bad on a scale that is beyond our, anything we can compare it to today.

Dan Bongino Flushed Deep State Leakers Out of the FBI By Using the "Canary Trap" Technique

—Disinformation Expert Ace

I don't know if it's really called the "canary trap." I just know that's what Tom Clancy called it. One finds a leaker by leaking particularlized misinformation to different people. Then you sit back and see what version of the misinformation winds up in the press.

Then you fire the person you told that piece of individualized misinformation to.

Tyrian Lanister used it in Game of Thrones, too.

Bongino used the same technique to separate real FBI agents interested in actaully doing their jobs from the treasonous Democrat "snakes" who infest American government to tunnel through it and collapse it.

Bongino said he was repeatedly assured certain individuals were trustworthy, only to suspect them of leaking shortly afterward.

"It happened a couple times where they'd say, 'Oh, you can trust John Smith.' And you trust John Smith, and then a week later you see a leak in the media and you'd be like, 'I'm pretty sure that came from John Smith,'" he said.

At that point, most bureaucrats would shrug and complain. Bongino did something smarter.

He set a trap.

To flush out leakers, Bongino began planting harmless, fake details--like an "innocuous" schedule item--and sharing them selectively with specific individuals. Then he watched. If that exact detail showed up in the press, he had his answer.

"It was like we would play this little game," he said.

Call it a game if you want. It was actually a classic counterintelligence tactic, and it worked. When the planted information surfaced publicly, Bongino confronted the source directly. No guesswork. No plausible deniability. Done.

Assassination-Prep Specialist Congressman Dan Goldman: The Person Responsible for Trump's Third Assassination Trump is Trump Himself

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Do you want to take this kinetic? Because this is how you take this kinetic.

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) didn't waste any time pointing the finger after Saturday's assassination attempt on President Donald Trump -- and he aimed it squarely at Trump himself.

...

Coates played a clip of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who called out what she described as years of escalating demonization of the president. "This political violence stems from a systemic demonization of him and his supporters by commentators, yes, by elected members of the Democrat Party, and even some in the media," she said. "This hateful and constant and violent rhetoric directed at President Trump day after day after day for 11 years has helped to legitimize this violence and bring us to this dark moment."

Goldman, who sits on the House Judiciary and Homeland Security committees and is a former federal prosecutor, of course, doesn't blame his party for the shooting.

When asked about the White House's response, Goldman didn't even pause. "I mean, it's pretty rich given that Donald Trump's rhetoric led to January 6," he said. "And we know what Donald Trump's rhetoric leads to because we know many times over how his followers use violence in -- when they follow him."

Yes, he literally blamed President Trump for the assassination attempt against him.

Meanwhile: Comey will be arrested by federal marshals.

Paul Sperry @paulsperry_

19h

BREAKING: An arrest warrant has been issued for former FBI Director James Comey for multiple federal grand jury charges in North Carolina related to an Instagram image he posted last summer allegedly threatening the president. US Marshals will execute the arrest. Comey publicly claimed at the time that he did not create the threatening "86 47" image but merely stumbled on it while walking on the beach and photographed it. It's not clear what he told federal agents who interviewed him about it.

I know this will shock you, but it turns out those "studies" claiming that there is more political violence from the right than from the left are lies.

They -- hold on to your seats -- excluded obvious cases of left-wing violence from the tallies but include drug dealers shooting each other if they happen to be white nationalists. The supposedly "libertarian" -- really corporate left-wing liberal -- CATO institute does not include 9/11 victims in the count.

The ADL just flatly defines antisemitism as "right-wing" -- even when left-wing Palestinians kill Jews, they claim that the Palestinians as "ethnonationalism" which is then defined as "right-wing."

Batya-Ungar Sargon's >analysis is here.

One of the major sources is the Prosecution Project, an initiative of the University of Cincinnati, which analyzes felony criminal cases involving political violence and sorts them by ideology. "The project examines criminal complaints, indictments and court records, looking for crimes that seek 'a socio-political change or to communicate' to outside audiences," per The Economist. "Its data show that extremists on both left and right commit violence, although more incidents appear to come from right-leaning attackers."

Yet if you pull up the data center yourself, you can see immediately that it is deeply flawed.

Share

The data set doesn't include either of the previous two assassination attempts on President Trump's life, as far as I can tell; a search for the time frame and the names of the would-be assassins turns up zero hits. Nor does it include the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The data set is based on prosecutions, which might explain the absence of Thomas Crooks, who died at Butler. But what explains the absence of Trump's other would-be assassin, Ryan Wesley Routh, or Tyler Robinson, who killed Charlie Kirk? I couldn't find Elias Rodriguez on the list either, who shot and killed two people outside the Jewish Museum in D.C. in May of 2025 to protest the war in Gaza.

It's pretty easy to say that the violence is coming overwhelmingly from the Right if you overwhelmingly edit out any political violence from the Left.

The editing goes deep. During the summer of 2020, the George Floyd riots were in full swing. Political violence claimed the lives of dozens of Americans and caused $2 billion in property damage. Yet the data set from the Prosecution Project lists a grand total of five incidents "left wing" incidents that summer, two of them "eco-animal focused," meaning it counts just three incidents of left-wing violence during that time.

Compare this to a list compiled by Forbes of 19 people who lost their lives during the first 14 days of George Floyd riots. Why don't these people merit a mention in the Prosecution Project? They were killed during a politically motivated explosion of violence and rioting. These were, to cite the Project's own criteria, "crimes that seek 'a socio-political change or to communicate' to outside audiences." Yet they do not appear in the dataset.

Surely we can all agree that their omission massively skews the data.

Maybe you think that people murdered during political riots shouldn't count as victims of political violence. But what about a meth dealer who happens to belong to the Aryan Brotherhood? Should their meth dealing count as political violence?

The Prosecution Project thinks so! Among the Right-wing examples it makes sure to include, you'll find an Aryan Brotherhood meth gang that merited 10 entries for drug-related crimes. I'm no fan of the Aryan Brotherhood, but can you honestly say this is an example of Right-wing political violence? In what world does producing meth constitute "crimes that seek 'a socio-political change or to communicate' to outside audiences"?

You can also find people on the list who did things like vandalize an LGBTQ crosswalk--though not people who vandalized entire neighborhoods in 2020 in the name of racial justice.

Is vandalism political violence? I guess only if you're conservative.

IN EPOCHAL RULING, SUPREME COURT HOLDS, 6-3, THAT RACIAL GERRYMANDERS ARE UNCONSTITUTIONAL -- MUCH LESS REQUIRED BY THE CONSTITUTION

—Disinformation Expert Ace

I don't know if the southern states affected like this can impose an emergency redistricting double-quick for the midterms, but some analysts believe that this ruling will eventually flip 19 Democrat seats to Republican.

Huge. Just huge.

The Supreme Court just handed down one of the most consequential redistricting decisions in a generation -- and Democrats are not going to like it one bit.

In a 6-3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, the majority held that Louisiana's congressional map -- redrawn to include a second majority-black district -- constitutes an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the Fifteenth Amendment. The Court stopped short of striking down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act entirely, but it dramatically narrowed the ways in which states may use race when drawing congressional maps.

Zachary Donnini @ZacharyDonnini

52m

Kagan seems to be pretty damn sure that Section 2 is gutted in her dissent:

"The new Callais requirements will effectively insulate any practice, including any districting scheme, said by a State to have any race-neutral justification. That justification can sound in traditional redistricting criteria, or else can sound in politics and partisanship. As to the latter, the State need do nothing more than announce a partisan gerrymander."

Full decision here.

Wednesday Morning Rant

—Joe Mannix

There is a problem with high-stakes and costly agreements among many parties, whether those agreements are secret or open. They can hold up only so long as everyone involved is willing to hold the line and do what they agreed to do with the other parties. In order to accomplish this, there must be both incentives and long-term gain - and all of the parties have to participate and not fight each other. If the incentives change or become irrelevant, or if the playing field suddenly shifts and throws the old assumptions out the window, or there is major infighting, it creates a major stability problem.

This is a basic problem for cartels. In order for a cartel to work, it has to be able to fix price, and fixing price requires rigid control of supply. This can increase profits for the cartel's members, but it is a dangerous game unless there is absolute control (or, at least, near-absolute control) of supply, adequate incentive to not cheat and for members to not work against each-other. If any of this breaks down, cartel members will cheat or leave the game because it is no longer in the member's best interest to play by the rules or remain in the game. On a long enough timeline, this will always happen and it appears that it just happened with everyone's favorite cartel.

Mid-Morning Art Thread

—CBD

Mary Magdalene before Christ's Tomb
Francisco Ribalta