westminsterdogshow 2023
Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022 Dave In Texas 2022
Jesse in D.C. 2022 OregonMuse 2022
redc1c4 2021
Tami 2021
Chavez the Hugo 2020
Ibguy 2020
Rickl 2019
Joffen 2014
AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published.
Contact OrangeEnt for info
Greetings gang. Time once again to head for the garage, basement, shop, studio, craft room or wherever it is you can go to escape, get messy and lose yourself in some creative pursuits.
NOTE: This is NOT an open thread so limit the discussion only to hobby and similar pursuits.
What are you working on, planning or just dreaming about doing?
A 2-year-old girl who walked away from her home in Michigan's Upper Peninsula alongside two family dogs was found in the woods hours later sleeping on the smaller dog like a furry pillow, state police said.
"She laid down and used one of the dogs as a pillow, and the other dog laid right next to her and kept her safe," Lt. Mark Giannunzio said Thursday. "It's a really remarkable story." . . .
Wonderful to have such faithful pets! Imagine what the guy who found them thought when he first saw the toddler and dogs together.
Hi, I'm a longtime AOSHQ lurker, and I comment about once a year under the name Mr. W. I have been wanting to see my nog Pupcat featured in your prestigious pixels for a while.
Here Pupcat is pictured doing her best imitation of my grandson sleeping. Pupcat's real name is Roxy, but nobody calls her that on account of Roxy being a classic stripper name. You might as well name her Savannah or Crystal.
Anyway, Pupcat is justifiably famous in Old Town Alexandria Virginia for her love of fine food and being petted. Pupcat drinks milk, chases mice, and sleeps 16 hours a day, all of which, along with her meowish growl, produced her name.
She will be thrilled with the knowledge that her fame had spread nationally. From one off-brand cereal kid to another, I love the content
Regards,
Mr. W
Pupcat is absolutely charming. Although we did not post her napping companion's photo, she really did do a good imitation of how he was sleeping.
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From Jewells:
This is Pita, a female mix of chihuahua and corgi and maybe something else. She's a real sweetheart, a little shy but warms up to you quickly. Already have someone interested in her. She was a stray but vet says 9 to 10 years old.
Love that photo! She should find a new home quickly, I think.
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Well despite all of our felines only able to shoot blanks at Chez Jacque Asserie, our cat population has again increased by 1. Meet Chowder (CHOWDAHHH since we're in New England). Chowdah is actually my older son's girlfriend's cat and since she's living with us now, so is Chowdah. He's actually a cute cat and now the ginger vs black cat ratio is now 2:3 (with Mackeral being the outlier "other" cat). He's slowly acclimating to his new environment and cautiously checks out the other cats from behind the glass door. Remarkably, he doesn't seem to mind the other moron, Fred the dog. Unfortunately, for poor Johnny who just wants to make friends, Chowdah isn't amenable to his fellow feline brethren just yet.
BTW - I added a picture of our K-9 moron, Fred for comic relief.
To tell the truth, I'm not sure which cat is which or if I got them all, but they're all nice-looking. Fred the Dog is distinctive.
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What a wonderful pet stories today. Thank you for sharing your pets with us. We have a couple more for next week, but send in yours, too!
If you would like to send pet and/or animal stories, links, etc. for the Ace of Spades Pet Thread, the address is:
petmorons at protonmail dot com
Remember to include the nic or name by which you wish to be known when you comment at AoSHQ, or let us know if you want to remain a lurker.
Until next Saturday, have a great week!
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If you start feeling nostalgic, here a link to last week's Pet Thread, the Ace of Spades Pet Thread, September 23. Some special PetMoron stories and photos there.
I closed the comments on this post so you wouldn't get banned for commenting on a week-old post, but don't try it anyway.
Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, Sept. 30
—K.T.
Happy Saturday! Well, it's harvest season. The big trucks and big harvest equipment are out and about here in the San Joaquin Valley. And the photo above, from just two weeks ago, is enticing:
Anonymous lurker from northern New Jersey, the Garden State...
Today's harvest of tomatoes ( heirloom varieties) and smaller peppers.
Perfect summer weather for us.
A nice time to enjoy the bounty of the earth . . .
Squash, tomato, eggplant blossoms, lettuce and chard, fig tree taller than the lattice now. Light rain today and overcast welcome in southern Arizona. Nan in AZ
Everything looks wonderful, Nan!
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Ah, Nature
I was wondering where hummingbirds sleep and found this sweet little video. Fascinating! Maybe for the garden thread, since they are denizens of the garden.
Miley, okravangelist
It certainly is a charming video. Thanks for sending it in!
Some of those hummingbirds are moving south now . . .
Love scrolling through all the wonderful pictures submitted each week. These are some of the deer that frequent our property, have had a few more than usual, in these pics they are out in our field snacking on some peanuts. The others are those I've captured on a trail cam on a trail on the other side of our property. Anyhow, appreciate all the great photos of those with a green thumb, me not being one of those though.
Best Wishes Sua Sponte (Professional Lurker)
We appreciate getting the great deer photos, including the night shots!
What a great variety of photos! The snacking deer, bucks at night and mom plus three fawns are standouts.
These are the autumn leaves and fruiting seed capsules of the spindle tree. In a long, warm autumn, ladybirds can still be on the look out for hibernation spots. A spindle tree can be a good harbour in the winter storms to come. From a current series I am working. #embroiderypic.twitter.com/wUNAXvJbg6
Thread before the Gardening Thread, Sept. 30: Compare and Contrast
—K.T.
Biden Administration Reports Dangerous African Immigrant At Border
EAGLE PASS, TX -- As the migrant crisis along the southern U.S. border continued to intensify, a new threat emerged, leading the Biden administration to warn the populace of the presence of a dangerous African immigrant sighted at the border.
"This is serious, folks," President Joe Biden said in brief remarks to reporters. "We've received reports of a very menacing African man roaming the region. Everyone knows I'm a long-time advocate for keeping an eye on these African fellas. This one is especially dangerous. He's here to . . . here to . . . he's got all of the...he runs the . . . he . . . the thing. Rocketship."
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Menacing African Man actually did visit the border. That's one way to get some attention on the issue.
Lots of criticism of Musk in the replies for not doing things like, say, building factories in Venezuela. Heh.
Compare and Contrast: Ibram X. Kendi vs. Coleman Hughes
In the past, Ibram X. Kendi, from his position of academic, cultural and political influence, has refused to hold discussions with other black academics like Coleman Hughes. And the academic world has had his back.
Well, Ibram X. Kendi has fallen into some difficulties now. He has laid off much of his staff at his Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, amid charges that he has mistreated black and brown academics and staff while producing little or no meaningful academic research. Kendi won a MacArthur "genius grant" in 2021. But The College Fix has been asking questions about his research for years with little response.
Dr. Tyler Austin Harper is an assistant professor at Bates College. Earlier this summer he wrote a pretty interesting piece for the NY Times about his experiences with affirmative action. . .
Today, Harper has a piece for the Washington Post which offers a different perspective on Ibram Kendi and what went wrong there.
The prospect of Kendi's unraveling is not - - or at least, is not only - - the story of a huckster who was happy to cash in on America's racial trauma, slapping his name on strange children's books, including "Antiracist Baby" and "Goodnight Racism," while raking in hundreds of dollars a minute to give short talks at American universities. Instead, the Kendi affair is yet another example of an age-old truism: White American elites on both sides of the political spectrum - - academics, publishers, members of the media, corporate leaders - - are always waiting in the wings to turn a shiny new Black intellectual into a mouthpiece for their political agenda. . .
Though conservatives tended to focus on the book's famous catchphrase - - "The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination" - - in my view the real damage that Kendi's philosophy has wrought on American culture is in the way he turned words like "racism" and "white supremacy" into banal, everyday terms like any others.
Once reserved for the gravest of racial trespasses, thanks to the influence of Kendi and other charlatans like Robin DiAngelo, "racism" is now routinely employed to describe anything from workplace microaggressions to terrorist attacks. The march on Charlottesville was white supremacy, but so too is asking Black people to show up to Zoom meetings on time . . .
To summarize a lot of the piece which I haven't excerpted above, Harper is essentially arguing that between his first book "Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America" and his second "How to be an Antiracist," Kendi was to some degree selling out. At least that's one way to interpret the change from writer of purportedly serious history to self-help guru.
But even if you agree Kendi was selling out, ultimately his story is about the people who were buying what he was selling. . .
Yes.
More on Harper's piece, with an archived link. Kendi's rise was as much a cautionary tale as his fall.
TED suppresses Coleman Hughes's talk on colorblindness:@TEDTalks claims "to be 'devoted to the pursuit of knowledge—without an agenda.' My experience suggests otherwise, with TED displaying all the hallmarks of an institution captured by the progressive orthodoxy."
The TED talk was initially well-received. But the idea of treating black and brown people like white people made the black and brown TED staff feel "unsafe".
TED is a farce: the organization pumps Ibram Kendi's astrology-level ideology as self-evident truth, while it submits Coleman Hughes' much more rigorous, subtle, and morally persuasive presentation to a full inquisition by social scientists and diversity activists. Disqualifying.
Don't hold back, Chris. Tell us how you really feel.
Freedom of speech means practically in our modern civilization that we must only talk about unimportant things.
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Gavin Newsom, whose government threatened doctors with the loss of their licenses if they strayed from the official (but undefined) narrative about COVID, believes in free speech and opposes "book bans". Heh:
OTTAWA -- In the span of five days, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has managed to alienate the government of the largest democracy on Earth; anger key allies from Washington, D.C. to Canberra; and outrage Jews around the world.
Now, the promise of Trudeau - - the young, strapping progressive born into political royalty, with his ostensibly forward-looking ideas about medically assisted suicide, puberty blockers, and the suspension of truckers' civil liberties - - is on the brink of imploding.
Late Tuesday night, limousines clustered outside Parliament, as senior officials from Trudeau's Liberal Party feverishly debated how to right this ship and save the prime minister.
I will not be wearing orange this weekend because to do so would convey that I am OK with being misled about the history of Canada, and that I am OK with various First Nations claiming they have found 'unmarked graves of missing children' without presenting reliable evidence.
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Diane Feinstein did something kind of sensible, for a progressive, when faced with insurrectionists:
Dianne Feinstein may be gone, but this clip of her dunking on a bunch of kids to their face will live on forever in our hearts. pic.twitter.com/GcqBzONTFB
You can tell when the fiddlers haven't been classically trained, because they are sometimes just a little off key. Doesn't matter.
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Hope you have something nice planned for this weekend.
This is the Thread before the Gardening Thread.
Serving your mid-day open thread needs
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Last week's thread, Thread before the Gardening Thread, Sept. 23 included a story about WaPo's underhanded reporting techniques, Newsom vetoing a transgender bill to protect "vulnerable communities", ideas about the degradation in our military training and Obama's involvement in Climate Maoism.
Comments are closed so you won't ban yourself by trying to comment on a week-old thread. But don't try it anyway.
Need some help and/or advice with coffee roasts? Here ya go.
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AoSHQ Weekly Prayer List
Please submit any prayer requests to me, “Annie’s Stew” at apaslo atsign hotmail dot com. Prayer requests are generally removed after four weeks unless we receive an update.
Prayer Requests:
8/19 – Coelacanth asks for continued prayers. There are problems with his son Cam. Cam has been concealing many things for many years and has been lying to his family. His mother is heartbroken.
8/24 Update – Cam is still suffering with his significant health issues, and his mental state is unstable. He is making decisions based on feelings, and guided by bad advice, will not consider his parents’ cautions.
9/9 Update – Coelacanth and his wife have had the “adult” conversation with Cam, since he had been misusing the money they’d sent. They did pay off his student loans, per their original promise, and Cam called to thank them. He still has a lot of medical problems, and so much has been taken away in the last 6 months – he went from an Olympic class athlete to needing a cane to keep his balance. Prayers are still needed.
9/23 - Tecumseh Team sends many thanks for the prayers for her and her husband. They are making slow but forward progress, and the Lord is answering their prayers.
8/26 – Jewells45 posted that she could use prayers. Her last round of chemo was tough on her.
9/9 Update – The CT scan found another spot on her upper left lung that is about 6 mm. The rest of the nodes showed no change, and a few very small ones in both lower lungs. The doctor was concerned enough to order a PET scan, which was then scheduled for 11/29!
9/15 Update – It’s been another bad week after chemo treatment.
8/26 – Dash my Lace Wings asked for continued prayers. Her husband is still sober but needs to develop some interests to keep his mind and body busy – something that will give him joy and purpose in life.
9/23 – Thanks are sent to all for the prayers. They are doing well.
8/30 – Debby Doberman Schultz asked for prayers. Her husband passed away on 8/30, with her sitting beside him, holding his hand. The kids had been in and out, but the end it was like the beginning - just the two of them. As painful as it was, she wouldn’t have it any other way. She is so gratified that he is relieved of his suffering.
9/2 – Oddbob’s granddaughter was released from the hospital. Since then, she has had only one seizure so it seems like the meds and keto diet are working. The docs say she might grow out of it in a few years but of course can’t promise anything. If not, she and her parents are in for a lifelong process of monitoring, controlling, and coping. He thanks everyone for their prayers and concern.
9/2 – Skip shared his concerns about his aunt and uncle, who are moving to a retirement community soon. His uncle is not doing well, mentally or physically. Skip hopes for more peace for them.
9/8 – Inogame requested prayers for his wife and their next daughter, due in March. Please help pray for health. His wife is struggling with morning sickness, but otherwise both are healthy. He also sends thanks for the Horde’s prayers of support, both now and when they had miscarriages in the past.
9/9 – Jewells asked for prayers for her brother-in-law and his wife. The brother-in-law has been diagnosed with dementia. He is diabetic and cannot give himself his injections, and he refuses to let his wife help him. He also refuses to stay home, even getting into the car with strangers to get away. Please pray for strength and wisdom for her, and for him to accept the changes that have to happen.
9/23 Update – The situation is getting worse. Her brother-in-law just wanders off when he knows his wife is not looking. He also has a “friend” who helped him withdraw all the money from the couple’s joint account, and put it into an account in just the BIL’s name. Now the wife cannot pay the bills or the mortgage. The BIL fell again, and his wife is at her wits end.
9/9 – NaughtyPine asked for prayers for one of her brothers. He’d been in the hospital for a week after a breakdown. This is the strong brother, the one who takes care of everyone else and never asks for anything.
9/23 Update – Her brother finished the program this week and will have a follow-up next week. He is going to spend time with their Dad, which will be good for them both.
9/9 – San Franpsycho sent some updates: Paul, who we have been praying for as he deals with cancer, was admitted to the hospital last week for an ulcer. The NG tube was removed, and he will be able to eat soon. The other update is that Mrs. F. is feeling better in the ER, after 2 fluid IVs.
9/23 Update – There is no good news on Paul to report. Mrs. F is back to 100%.
9/9 – RedMindBlueState requested prayers. His brother-in-law’s mother was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and is not doing well. Prayers also for the family at this difficult time.
9/14 – creeper asked for prayers for a man who has destroyed his back after years of hard physical labor. He can’t have any more back surgery, so he is having an electronic nerve stimulator put in. Prayers that it would work would be appreciated.
9/16 Update – creeper sends thanks to all who prayed. The temporary stimulator was implanted and it does seem to help. If all goes well, they will install the permanent one.
9/23 Update – creeper says thank you for your prayers. They took the temporary nerve stimulator out of his back, and it’s up to him if he wants a permanent one. But it was the first noticeable pain relief in three years. It may have been medical science helping, but creeper thinks it was the Horde’s prayers.
9/14 – FenelonSpoke requested prayers for Jessie, their church organist. She hasn’t been able to play at church for a while, but she is back in the hospital. Prayers are appreciated!
9/16 – Rhennigantx asked for prayers as he experiences Afib. He is now facing drugs or maybe the ablation treatment.
9/16 – LMD asked for prayers for a sister who is in the final throes of hospice. Please pray that she will pass on so that her suffering will stop. Prayers are much appreciated.
9/22 – DaveT sent an update. He is a retired gentleman, and we had prayed for him in May, as he was going through some legal battles to save his home, for himself and his cats. The legal (and home repair) battles continue, and additional contributions would be very much appreciated. Please email Annie’s Stew directly if you would like to contribute, and she will send you the link to his GiveSendGo account.
9/23 – Jim (in kalifornia) provided an update on his relatives. His father-in-law is better after having a vascular catheter put in and emergency dialysis. His mother-in-law suffered through helping him, and also ended up with a new tumor. She also missed about 5 treatments, so all her other tumor markers are way up.
9/23 – Polliwog the Ette requested prayers for her mother-in-law, Peggy, who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. It seems to be contained, but fast-growing, and hopefully a lumpectomy will be sufficient. She is understandably nervous about the whole thing and would appreciate prayers.
9/24 – Eromero was having dinner with a 95 year-old buddy at the senior living facility, and had to bring his friend to the ER with pneumonia symptoms.
For submission guidelines and other relevant info, please contact Annie's Stew, who is managing the prayer list. You can contact her at apaslo at-sign hotmail dot com. If you see a prayer request posted in a thread comment, feel free to copy and paste it and e-mail it to Annie's Stew. She tries to keep up with the requests in the threads, but she's not here all of the time, so she may not see it unless you e-mail it to her. Please note: Prayer requests are generally removed after four weeks or so unless we receive an update.
Romans 8:26-27
26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.
Thank you Annie for your efforts.
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Before we get going just a few gentle reminders.......(Rulz)
1) Open thread. Opine and/or bloviate or lurk or wear white after Labor Day. We get it.
2) Be nice to one another a few of you better leave the the 'ettes hair alone.
3) Walking fast, running or being careless with sharp objects is frowned upon.
4) Have a great weekend.
We've seen what American AI companies do with - or rather, to - their products. ChatGPT will argue endlessly that it's better to let millions of people die in a nuclear fireball than utter a racial slur that nobody will hear. (And also keeps forgetting how to derive the prime factors of small positive integers.) Midjourney will suffer an aneurysm if you use the word "petite" when describing the image you want to generate.
Facebook does a lot better, unless you're competing with Facebook, in which case you can take a long walk off a short pier. Which is at least understandable, and the term "competing with" is pretty specific and doesn't apply to anyone smaller than Google, Microsoft, or Amazon.
It's as good as Facebook's Llama 2 13B while running on commodity graphics cards (16GB rather than 32GB), you can use it for anything you want, and it's not lobotomised - the industry prefers the euphemism "aligned", though they still use an ice pick to do it.
The Mistral 7B Instruct model is a quick demonstration that the base model can be easily fine-tuned to achieve compelling performance. It does not have any moderation mechanism. We're looking forward to engaging with the community on ways to make the model finely respect guardrails, allowing for deployment in environments requiring moderated outputs.
This naturally has communists and journalists concerned:
According to a list of 178 questions and answers composed by AI safety researcher Paul Röttger and 404 Media's own testing, Mistral will readily discuss the benefits of ethnic cleansing, how to restore Jim Crow-style discrimination against Black people, instructions for suicide or killing your wife, and detailed instructions on what materials you'll need to make crack and where to acquire them.
So will the internet, or any good reference text.
The real question is why you are trying to murder your ethnic wife with a crack overdose in the first place.
This offer ended in July 2016, but an officially unofficial reprieve has pushed the officially official date out by more than seven years, with the unofficially official grace period finally ending on September 20.
Except that if you try to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 today... It still works just fine, so we're now into an indeterminate unofficially unofficial extended bonus grace period.
You can still officially officially upgrade from Windows 11 to Windows 10 though.
Disclaimer: Three-Alarm Karma Comes for Drama Llama Farmer.
Welcome to Friday night! I've had this picture of a tomahawk steak in my meme folder for a while now. I don't remember why I put it there, it's not a meme. It sure does look yummy though, doesn't it?
This has actually ignited an online shitstorm about how traditional and wholesome it is vs what we get in the west. I think it's a great commercial. Why don't we get commercials like this over here? Shinzo Abe would be proud.
I don't know much about Italian politics. I enjoyed my time in Italy, but their politics is something I observe from a disinterested distance. That being said, this seems 100% accurate to me
ATTENTION! It has been pointed out that I posted a link in the sidebar (the passing of Brooks) that was behind a paywall. (CBD fixed it, thanks CBD). I'm sorry, it wasn't behind a paywall for me, I don't know why. There's nothing I can do. You'll have to leave now.
Oh, off topic, but y'all please feel free to call me Mr. Incredible.
Controversial opinion: Pop music was better in the 90s than the 80s. And it was the last time pop music was good.
And there was actually rock on the pop charts. A lot of it.
These songs were actually all mostly hits, some of them big hits. Even though some are hard rock. Even Canadian kid-show pop queens were recording hard rock hits. That hasn't happened on the charts since... well, since the 90s.
Fingertips have memories
Mine can't forget the curves of your body
And when I feel a bit naughty
I run it up the flagpole and see
Who salutes, but no one ever does
Former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson is back with more dubious claims about occurrences within Trump's inner circle.
On Tuesday, Insider reported that Hutchinson's new memoir claimed that Trump's former chief of staff Mark Meadows, who is a devout Baptist, never drank alcohol in his life before downing multiple White Claws in the White House in November 2020, apparently unaware that they contained alcohol.
In her new book "Enough" Hutchinson said that Meadows consumed the first beverage in front of White House budget director Russ Vought, who she claimed is a "faithful Mormon."
When Hutchinson asked Meadows how much he drank, Meadows said that he was halfway through one and counted three others that he had just finished, meaning he drank 3.5 cans of White Claw.
Hutchison then claimed that Vought said to Meadows, "I know times are hard now, but are they really that bad," which queued Meadows into the fact that he was drinking alcohol by mistake.
This is a funny and lighthearted story, but there is just one major problem -- none of it appears to be true.
Unfortunately for Hutchinson, the key witness in the story, Russ Vought, has taken to X, formerly called Twitter, to point out that the interaction with Meadows never took place and to set the record straight on his religion.
"This story from Cassidy is a total fabrication," he wrote.
"I'm not a Mormon and this interaction with Mark never occurred."
New York City To Distribute Fliers In Shelters at the Southern Border Telling Immigrants That NYC Is a Bad Place to Live And They Should Go Somewhere Else Entirely Update: Elon Musk At Border
The fliers are in Spanish. Well, they have also printed up English-language ones so that it doesn't look like they're telling Hispanics that they don't want them.
But the main flier to be distributed is in Spanish.
Here's the English language version:
Y en espanol:
New York City to Hispanics: Cada muerto
New York City is planning to distribute flyers to migrants in shelters and at the US southern border that say the city's resources "have been exhausted" and they won't get any help finding work, officials said Wednesday.
The one-page flyer, printed in both English and Spanish, warns asylum seekers that "you will not be placed in a hotel," and that "NYC is one of the most expensive cities in the world; you are better off going to a more affordable city." The flyer also declares "NYC cannot help you obtain a work permit, and you will not be able to easily find work."
The effort to dissuade migrants from coming to New York is the latest attempt to slow the rapid influx of some 100,000 people who have arrived in the city since the spring of 2022, overwhelming its shelter system and straining coffers. The city pays $387 a day to shelter each migrant family, and estimates the cost for caring migrants will total $12 billion through mid-2025.
The flyers contradict some of the city and state's own recently announced plans to help asylum seekers apply to work legally and find jobs.
It also contradicts the huge amounts of obnoxious moral grandstanding that gentry liberals do about their alleged "love" and "compassion" for third world immigrants, of course. But Bloomberg doesn't notice that!
Two Years After A Mass Worldwide Government-Mandated Injection Campaign, Scientists Are Finally Trying to Figure Out Just What We Actually Put Into Our Genetic Code
Early in 2023, genomics scientist Kevin McKernan made an accidental discovery. While running an experiment in his Boston lab, McKernan used some vials of mRNA Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines as controls. He was 'shocked' to find that they were allegedly contaminated with tiny fragments of plasmid DNA.
McKernan, who has 25 years' experience in his field, ran the experiment again, confirming that the vials contained up to, in his opinion, 18-70 times more DNA contamination than the legal limits allowed by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
In particular, McKernan was alarmed to find the presence of an SV40 promoter in the Pfizer vaccine vials. This is a sequence that is, '...used to drive DNA into the nucleus, especially in gene therapies,' McKernan explains. This is something that regulatory agencies around the world have specifically said is not possible with the mRNA vaccines.
Knowing that the contamination had not been disclosed by the manufacturers during the regulatory process, McKernan raised the alarm, posting his findings to Twitter (now X) and Substack with a call-out to other scientists to see if they could replicate his findings.
Other scientists soon confirmed McKernan's findings, though the amount of DNA contamination was variable, suggesting inconsistency of vial contents depending on batch lots. One of these scientists was cancer genomics expert Dr Phillip Buckhaults, who is a proponent of the mRNA platform and has received the Pfizer Covid vaccine himself.
In September of this year, Dr Buckhaults shared his findings in South Carolina Senate hearing. 'I'm kind of alarmed about this DNA being in the vaccine -- it's different from RNA, because it can be permanent,' he told those present.
'There is a very real hazard,' he said, that the contaminant DNA fragments will integrate with a person's genome and become a 'permanent fixture of the cell' leading to autoimmune problems and cancers in some people who have had the vaccinations. He also noted that these genome changes can 'last for generations'.
Dr Buckhaults alleges that the presence of high levels of contaminant DNA in the mRNA vaccines 'may be causing some of the rare but serious side effects, like death from cardiac arrest'. He added, 'I think this is a real serious regulatory oversight that happened at the federal level.'
Much more at the link.
In some less distressing health news, scientists have found a link between zinc levels and diabetes and weight gain.
Researchers have identified a mechanistic link between zinc levels in humans and the risk of type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease.
...
Converging lines of evidence have shown that zinc plays a crucial role in insulin production and glucose metabolism. "We know that increasing zinc intake improves blood glucose control in people with prediabetes or type 2 diabetes, and people with a mutation in a key zinc transporter protein have reduced risk of diabetes." says first author Shek Man Chim, Principal Scientist at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc., New York, US. "However, the mechanism for how zinc influences systemic blood glucose levels and diabetes risk remains unclear."
The details are a little hard to follow but the upshot seems to be that higher zinc levels result in a reduced risk of diabetes. I think they found that people with a mutation that results in them lacking a zinc-transport protein increases their risk of diabetes.
Below, when they speak of a lack of/loss of Loss of SLC39A5, I think they mean the lack of that mutation, the mutation that results in the lack of the zinc-transport protein.
In other words, here, a lack of the mutation is a good thing, and means that you have the zinc-transport protein.
[T]he team explored its function by genetically engineering mice lacking the zinc transporter protein. As anticipated, these mice had elevated blood and tissue levels of zinc. When the team fed mice a high-fat, high-fructose diet to induce obesity, there was a significant reduction in fasting glucose compared to the control mice fed the same diet. Similar results were observed in a congenital (leptin receptor-deficiency) model of obesity. Loss of SLC39A5 also resulted in reduced insulin resistance--a hallmark of diabetes where tissues fail to respond to insulin signals trying to trigger glucose uptake from the blood.
Given that diabetes often coincides with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, the team explored whether loss of SLC39A5 protects the liver, too. As hoped, mice lacking SLC39A5 had less build-up of fat in the liver and in blood markers of liver damage. Moreover, mice lacking SLC39A5 but fed a high-fat, high-fructose diet also had less fat accumulation in the liver and improved insulin sensitivity compared to control mice.
...
"Our study provides for the first-time genetic evidence demonstrating the protective role of zinc against high blood sugar and unravels the mechanistic basis underlying this effect," concludes senior author Harikiran Nistala, currently Head of functional Genomics at Alkermes Inc, Waltham, US. "Our observations suggest that blocking SLC39A5 could be a potential therapeutic avenue for type 2 diabetes and other indications where zinc supplementation alone is inadequate."
I took zinc during the Plandemic, but then stopped. (I did continue taking Vitamin D and K, as well as various C and B vitamins supplemented with elderberry. At least, when I start to feel sick.)
Hopefully I'll have some SHELVVVVVING GAINZZZ to report on Monday. I stopped Stage 2 of Phase 3 of the Shelving Initiative on Sunday when I hit something hard as metal beyond the drywall. I bought some smaller anchors at Home Depot last night and will see if I can get them in there.
The rudest and most obnoxious partisans should keep this sort of thing in mind. You're not helping "the cause" if people decide they hate your guts and prefer the party to lose so that you will lose too.
He may run as a Libertarian, which would be final confirmation that the Libertarian Party is just a party of social libertarians.
Robert F Kennedy Jr, who launched his campaign for the Democrat presidential nomination in April, reportedly has plans to announce a run as an independent candidate.
According to Mediaite, Kennedy plans to make the announcement on October 9 in Philadelphia, with a text message viewed by the outlet stating that his campaign is planning "attack ads" against the Democrat National Committee to "pave the way" for his announcement.
"Bobby feels that the DNC is changing the rules to exclude his candidacy so an independent run is the only way to go," a Kennedy campaign insider told the outlet.
On Saturday, the New York Times published a piece stating that Kennedy met with Libertarian Party chair Angela McArdle in July, at a Memphis conference.
"He emphasized that he was committed to running as a Democrat but said that he considered himself very libertarian," McArdle said, adding that "We're aligned on a lot of issues," including the threat of the "deep state."
"My perspective is that we are going to stay in touch in case he does decide to run," Ms. McArdle said. "And he can contact me at any time if that's the case."
Update: A friend tells me he draws more of his support from Republicans than Democrats, so this isn't actually good news.
"Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" Sissy Jonathan Van Ness Breaks Down into a Puddle of Tears and Entitlement When Asked About Men Competing Against Girls In Sports
—Disinformation Expert Ace
Actor and podcaster Dax Shepard asked the queer activist about the issue. (Van Ness said in an interview he "cussed" at his father "300 days" in a single year demanding to know how he, a father of an "HIV positive" gay man, could vote for Trump.)
Van Ness' response to merely being questioned about the extremist gay/trans agenda is... insane.
So, "transgender" men pose no threat to girls? None?
Below, a transgender viciously attacking a helpless girl. Allegedly, the transgender was angry that this girl told him to stop masturbating his penis in the "girl's" bathrooms.
And this is what you get for upsetting a "marginalized" mentally-ill pervert.
I was reluctant to share this Portland video given the faces shown, but it has gone viral to such a degree that I think an uncensored version is newsworthy. A trans student at the woke @Hazelbrook_MS school in @TigardTualSD was recorded beating a girl. pic.twitter.com/sOmT7Sudxp
Apparently, he has a habit of attacking defenseless girls:
The SAME student attacking two other girls at a middle school in Oregon. The school board should be sued into oblivion for failing to protect their students time and time again. Every single member of the @TigardTualSD is responsible.
Hawaiian Judges Block Anti-Castration/Mastectomy Bill From Taking Effect, and Claim That the First Amendment Demands that Children Be Expoed to Raunchy Drag-Queen Shows Featuring Simulated Anal Sex
Montana was hit with a roadblock to its ban against transgender surgeries for minors, as a state judge ruled Wednesday to temporarily block the Republican-backed legislation.
Transgender surgeries, mind you.
The law banning puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone treatment and transgender surgical procedures for minors with gender dysphoria was set to be enforced on Oct. 1, but District Court Judge Jason Marks granted a preliminary injunction on several constitutional grounds.
The ruling says the law, know as SB 99 or the "Youth Health Protection Act," likely violates Montana's Equal Protection Clause because it classifies on the basis of transgender status -- making it a sex-based classification -- and infringes on fundamental rights, subjecting the legislation to strict scrutiny.
Marks also argued the law would not survive strict scrutiny because it does not serve the "purported compelling governmental interests of protecting minor Montanans from pressure to receive harmful medical treatments" and would likely not survive any level of constitutional review. SB 99, according to the judge's ruling, also likely violates the plaintiffs' rights to privacy under the state constitution because the procedures the law seeks to ban are not "medically acknowledged" as "bona fide health risks."
...
Wednesday's ruling delivers a temporary victory to the two children who identify as transgender, their parents and two medical providers who sued to prevent the law from taking effect next month.
This is a Fox "News" story. Fox "News" is now foursqure behind the claim that this is a "victory" for transgender children.
A federal judge in Texas ruled on Tuesday that the state's new law limiting public drag performances was an unconstitutional restriction on speech and he permanently forbid enforcement of it.
"Not all people will like or condone certain performances," U.S. District Judge David Hittner wrote. "This is no different than a person's opinion on certain comedy or genres of music, but that alone does not strip First Amendment protection."
More than a dozen states have sought to restrict drag shows over last year, with Texas one of at least four to pass restrictions into law, part of broader Republican efforts to regulate the behavior of LGBT people.
Hittner ruled that the Texas law was discriminatory and improperly vague.
He said drag performances were not inherently obscene, and were the sort of expressive speech protected by the US Constitution's First Amendment.
It has never, ever been claimed before that pornographers had a right to sell porn to children. This "judge" just claimed that.
Adults have right to porn, yes.
Children do not.
And importantly: pornographers do not have a right to children, which is what this judge is claiming.
...
The office of the Texas attorney general defended the law, which, among other restrictions, banned "the exhibition of sexual gesticulations using accessories or prosthetics that exaggerate male or female sexual characteristics" in public, or in venues where people under 18 may see it.
Violations could be punished by fines and a jail sentence of up to one year.
Texas lawmakers said the law was needed to protect children from seeing "sexually explicit" content.
You may wonder: Why not subpoena Joe Biden's bank records, too? Well, I think he's building to that. He will surely find a lot of dodgy money transfers in Hunter's and James's records which might be to Joe Biden.
Or, just as good: dummy accounts owned by Joe Biden.
And then he'll subpoena those.
And if Joe Biden owns secret accounts -- which I bet you any amount of Ace-Buck that he does -- then that's Game Over.
We're going to be seeing some payments into Swiss bank accounts and Hunter and James Biden will refuse to disclose who owns those accounts, or why they transferred 10% for the Big Guy into them.
Ed Morrissey explains, in his comment on this, why it's critical that the House has begun an impeachment inquiry. As I've mentioned before, the House's subpoena power is limited to two general categories: areas in which they are considering passing legislation, and areas of the Executive Branch over which they have direct oversight functions.
Generally, they do not have the power to just subpoena citizen bank records. Oh, they can make a claim that they're considering passing legislation in this area -- which is probably even true -- but courts start to scrutinize the bases for congressional subpoenas when they seem to be straying into areas reserved for Executive branch officers to investigate.
However, the impeachment inquiry gives them full legal and constitutional justification to subpeona personal records, so long as they're connected to a legitimate impeachment inquiry of an executive officer. Which obviously this is.
No court can say boo about it. Hunter and James Biden can and will file motions for judges to block these subpoenas, but judges won't approve those motions.
Unless judges are ready now to simply declare the US Constitution null and void and announce with clarity that we are entering a period of straight-up civil war.
Below, Nancy Mace brings fire with two revelations:
1, Hunter and James Biden knew it would look bad to take money from Chinese-intelligence front corporations, so they were paid days after Biden left the Vice Presidency. These payments were obviously accrued during Biden's Vice Presidency, and merely delayed, to avoid legal problems, until after Biden left office.
2, Hunter Biden wrote an email stating that "my uncle will be here with his BROTHER" (caps in original!) and that his uncle's BROTHER was looking forward to saying "hello" to the Chairman of the Chinese-intelligence-controlled CEFC. She condescendingly points out to the non-geniuses of DC that "my uncle's brother" means Hunter's father, Joe Biden. And she points out that only if you're doing shady, illegal stuff do you resort to this absurd "bullshit" (as she says, on the Congressional record) of avoiding naming "The Big Guy" by calling him "my uncle's brother."
BREAKING - EXPLOSIVE: This is Bullshit! Democrats, please, spare me your hypocrisy, Joe Biden is corrupt, and here is the evidence, Congresswoman Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) EXPLODES at Joe Biden's impeachment inquiry hearing. WATCH pic.twitter.com/ff8cVEAQ21
"Hunter knew Joe Biden hanging out with CCP businessmen would be a bad look, so he tried to pull a genius move on us with this whole 'my uncle’s brother' bulls--t!" pic.twitter.com/XakkrYXQmB
For some reason, the never-ending bullshitter and braggart Joe Biden is lying about spending more time on a plane with his Chinese handler Xi Jingping. A lot of very unaccomplished time-servers brag endlessly about the number of air-miles they've logged traveling over the world. I'm sure you all remember Hillary Clinton endlessly telling us about how much she traveled in airplanes. It was basically her only official "accomplishment" as First Lady or as Senator.
Barbara Lee is currently running in the primary to replace Feinstein, but Newsom has ruled out appointing any of the terrible Democrats (Adam Schiff, Barbara Lee, and Katie Porter) currently running.
The Democratic governor previously pledged to name a Black woman to the seat should Feinstein leave before the end of her term but, earlier this month, ruled out appointing any of the candidates seeking the office in next year's election.
That group includes Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee, a trailblazer in her own right and the only Black woman running for Feinstein's seat. The senator had already announced she would not be seeking reelection in 2024.
"It would be completely unfair to the Democrats that have worked their tail off," Newsom told NBC News in an interview that aired on September 10. "That primary is just a matter of months away. I don't want to tip the balance of that."
Lee and her supporters were infuriated by Newsom's announcement. The congresswoman said in a statement that "the idea that a Black woman should be appointed only as a caretaker to simply check a box is insulting to countless Black women across this country."
"If the Governor intends to keep his promise and appoint a Black woman to the Senate," Lee added, "the people of California deserve the best possible person for that job. Not a token appointment."
The entitlement of the allegedly marginalized...!
Who will he appoint? Instapundit jokes (I think) that he will appoint Kamala Harris, creating an ungraceful exit from the Biden ticket.
Update: Commenters have thrown their support behind "Sparkles," Megan Markle. She's a WOC! And a princess!!!! And a ReAl CeLeBrItY!!!
Another complication is that committee assignments are determined at the start of each Congress, and Feinstein occupied a seat on the Judiciary Committee. Without her, the Democrats do not have a majority, just an equal number of seats as the Republicans have. Without a majority, they cannot just ram through all of Biden's leftwing judicial nominees.
Previously Democrats objected to the idea of Feinstein resigning, because she can be replaced on the committee only with the assent/surrender of Mitch McConnell. I'm not sure that rule still holds in the case of a death.
But if it does, we'll have to see if Mitch McConnell holds firm or if he decides, as usual, that "amity and comity" are more important than delivering for his voters.
THE MORNING RANT: Polite Conservatives, Lauren Boebert, and “How Losing My Political Values Helped Me Gain My Freedom”
—Buck Throckmorton
There are 221 Republicans in the House of Representatives, and a bell curve of those GOP reps would reveal that most of them are stereotypical political creatures with lengthy political resumes, always striving to convey an air of respectability as they claw their way to higher office and/or more seniority.
But there are always a handful of unpolished representatives at the outer limit of the Republican bell curve. Frankly, they are more likely to authentically represent their districts than the coiffed and polished professionals, and these more exotic representatives are also more likely to maintain an authentically conservative voting record, and to pursue the agenda of the conservative grassroots.
So of course, polite conservatives have a need to obsess about these few exotic Republicans - mocking them, denigrating them, focusing on their private lives, and seeking to terminate their political careers.
A few weeks ago, one of those unpolished Republicans, Lauren Boebert, was caught canoodling in a darkened theater, and perhaps breaking other rules of decorum. (Coincidentally, there was a camera in this darkened theater pointed right at her, and video of her was leaked to the press, yet we’ll never know who smuggled white powder into the West Wing of the White House, despite that facility being blanketed in cameras.)
The left-wing media was predictably appalled and outraged at Boebert, but so was most of right-wing media, whose writers all seemed to need fainting couches and smelling salts to deal with the shocking PG-13 footage they had seen. In fact, it seemed like a contest among conservative pundits over who could show the most indignation and condemnation toward this back-bench representative.
A few people asked me what I thought about it, and my answer was simple. “I. Don’t. Care.”
Not only I am absolutely sick of the requirement to “celebrate” the alternative behaviors of those on the left, but I am equally sick of the expectation that those of us on the right must either defend or condemn those on our side whose actions cause media outrage.
I don’t care about those politicians’ personal lives, just like I don’t care about the personal lives of the linemen who restore electricity to my house after a storm. And frankly, I really don’t care about how politicians comport themselves in office either, so long as they vote to advance the conservative agenda. I have no expectation that any politician is respectable or will serve as a role model, I just want them to advance my agenda.
A few years ago, someone named “Warden” posted a piece here at Ace of Spades HQ, “How Losing My Political Values Helped Me Gain My Freedom”. It summarized as well as anything I’ve ever read my liberation from caring about the character and behavior of those I vote for.
There's a frustrating game that the left plays with conservatives. It's an Alinksy tactic called, "Make them live up to their values." Now, living up to one's values isn't a bad thing, but setting high standards ultimately means that you'll sometimes fall short.
The left loves to exploit these shortcomings--every Christian who falls short of perfection is a hypocrite; the social values candidate you voted for just got arrested for drunk driving. Haha, everything you believe and advocate is now discredited.
They got away with it for years, waving away the lies, hypocrisy, indiscretions, and criminal behavior from their own politicians while beating the right mercilessly with the missteps of their own. It's effective because the right always maintains a baseline of integrity not displayed by the left, as evidenced by comparing what happens to Republican politicians when they're caught in criminal behavior with what happens to Democrats. Republican voters and politicians reluctantly dump the malefactor while Democrats defend their guy and launch an offensive against those who demand accountability.
And then came along Trump, a guy just ripe for demonization by the left. I think it's fair to say that even his early supporters worried that the Democrats would successfully make him toxic to the general voting public with his boorish behavior, vulgarity, multiple bankruptcies and very public divorces.
But something strange happened. Not only did Donald Trump not care about attacks on his character, neither did anyone else. We saw this new paradigm assert itself over and over during the primary throughout repeated media predictions that this time he's gone too far and he's cooked.
This same indifference that helped Trump carry the election has continued into the early days of his administration. With it comes a refreshingly freeing state of mind. Personally, I don't feel in any way responsible for Trump, nor do I feel compelled to defend him against attack.
Why? Because I voted for retribution.
"He's thin-skinned and petty!" shrieks the left. "He takes everything personally!"
Good, I say. I want him to take attacks personally and deal out payback. I know I won't be the target, you will be.
"He's unpresidential! He'll destroy the integrity of the office!"
No, that's already happened. Remember, you elected a shit-talking jackass who takes selfies at state funerals when he's not giving stealth middle fingers to his opponents during debates. There is no dignity of the office, not after Clinton and Obama.
"He's a narcissist! He's got totalitarian impulses!"
Yes, he's basically a mirror version of Obama. Except now, he'll be working for what I want. The end justifies the means. You taught me that.
"A sitting president going after the media. OMG!"
Oh, like Obama trashing Rush Limbaugh and Fox News? How about when he sent his lackeys to berate news reporters for failure to flatter him at all times. Oh, and NSA spying on the press. That was pretty great, too.
"He won't show his taxes!"
Don't care. Where are Obama's college transcripts, by the way?
"He's a bully! Is this what you want? Someone who uses his power to bully other people?!!!"
And this is where everything funnels down to the very nexus of my change in attitude from "Do unto others" to "I will do unto you what you do unto me."
It's two words: Memories Pizza.
It was that moment that everything changed for me--not only the harassment, fake Yelp reviews and the death threats that forced them to temporarily close up shop--oh, that was bad enough, but the most powerful man on Earth bullying a couple of small town pizza owners from Indiana simply for expressing an opinion on a hypothetical asked of them by a reporter with a malicious agenda? That was when I snapped.
Do you remember?
It's this that sent me to a place from which I'll never return. I literally don't care what Donald Trump does because nothing he can do is worse than what they've already done.
Donald Trump isn't the bully; he only insults and abuses people in power who have attacked him. They're the fucking bullies. The left, with their smears, their witch hunts, their slanders, their insults, their riots, their violence, and their weaponizing of the federal bureaucracy.
There aren't any rules anymore because the left only applies them one way. And in doing so, they've left what once was a civil compact between the two parties in smoldering ruins.
I have no personal investment in Donald Trump. He is a tool to punish the left and roll back their ill-gotten gains, no more and no less. If he succeeds even partially in those two things, then I'll consider his election a win.
Further, I no longer have any investment in any particular political values, save one: The rules created by the left will be applied to the left as equally and punitively as they have applied them to the right. And when they beg for mercy, I'll begin to reconsider. Or maybe not. Because fuck these people.
This new philosophy has freed me of more emotional angst that I can describe. Literally nothing the left says or does matters to me anymore. I don't care about their tantrums. I don't care about their accusations. I don't care if they say Trump is lying. I don't care if Trump is lying.
They created this Frankenstein. They own it. I am free of all obligation. I will never play defense again. I will attack, attack, attack, attack using their own tactics against them until they learn their lesson.
What I will not do is let them play my values against me ever again. I don't need to prove that I'm better than them. I already know it.
For what it’s worth, I also barely care about the scandalous behavior of Democrats anymore either. Short of treason or murder, it is a waste of my time to bother getting upset. They’re a protected class, and I’m only showing my ignorance if I expect those on the left to be principled in opposition to Democrats’ misbehavior.
But as for any embarrassing actions by those in office who are on my team…I don’t care.
Good morning, kids. Representative Ken Buck is an asshole. Check that; Representative Ken Buck is a hemorrhoid on the giant asshole that is the Republican Party. Exhibit 1:
Rep. Buck, who is set to leave Congress, has been a staunch supporter of the same legacy media industry that regularly smears Republicans and Republican voters as bigots, domestic extremists, and conspiracy theorists. Backed by donations from the legacy media’s top lobbyists in DC, Rep. Buck was the lead Republican sponsor of the JCPA in the House of Representatives.
The Congressman, who presented himself to Republican primary voters as a staunch “Tea Party” conservative back in 2010, is now on his way out of Congress, and is reportedly seeking a job at leftist, Republican-hating channel CNN.
In the meantime, he’s still looking to bail out the same media industry he hopes to join, by a last-ditch effort to push the JCPA. Earlier today, the Congressman appeared on a Washington Post podcast with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), the bill’s lead Senate sponsor, defending his decision to back a piece of corporate welfare for the media industry. . .
. . . One of the first bills introduced by Democrats during their time holding the majority in the House, the JCPA allows some of the nation’s largest legacy media companies to form a legal cartel, immune from antitrust law, to pressure tech companies for special favors.
Now all Ken Buck has to do is become a prime suspect in the death of his intern, marry the ditzy daughter of a Foggy Bottom bottom dwelling Johns Hopkins School of International Relations egghead and CNN can totally pants MSLSD in the ratings! But wait there's more!
Nearly 20 House Republicans joined their Democrat colleagues on Wednesday in killing a bill amendment that sought to prevent U.S. taxpayer dollars from funding Pentagon-sponsored “pride month” events.
Introduced by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, the measure aimed to “prohibit funds appropriated” by the House’s defense bill for fiscal year 2024 “from being used to carry out the observance of Pride Month authorized by the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness for the Cultural Observances and Awareness Events List.” Despite the GOP possessing a majority in the lower chamber, 18 Republicans, including House Freedom Caucus member Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., sided with Democrats in voting against the amendment (231-202).
Wow! Way to burnish those "severe Tea Party conservative" credentials. And how comforting is it knowing that 17 other stellar public servants stand with you. It is to laugh, hopefully as you avoid simultaneously doing a Jimi Hendrix and aspirating on your own vomit. Anyone want to wager that most if not all of these pieces of shit will vote "No" to impeach Joey Sponge-Brain Shits-Pants? That is if this process, despite the headlines, seriously gets rolling?
In a letter to Gov. Brian Kemp (R), [GA State Sen. Colton] Moore announced an initiative in August to begin an emergency session to conduct a thorough investigation into the actions undertaken by Willis. An emergency legislative special session can come about two ways in Georgia: The governor can call an emergency session, or one can be called if 3/5 of both legislative chambers sign a letter demanding it.
Kemp and State Senate Republicans apparently oppose working to investigate, defund, and impeach Willis, and instead ousted Moore. “Today’s removal is a direct result of me calling on my Republican colleagues in the Senate to do their job and sign onto an emergency session to investigate Fani Willis,” Colton said in a statement exclusively obtained by Breitbart News:
The Georgia Constitution clearly outlines the legislature’s power to call an emergency session to investigate a judicial officer. After urging my Republican Senate colleagues to join me — they responded by acting like children and throwing me out of the caucus.
I stand by my Republican principles. I stand by the Republican platform. I will continue to serve as a Republican Senator from the great state of Georgia. Unfortunately, now I will be forced to refer to my colleagues, who ran on being “Trump conservatives,” as the RINO caucus.
The people of Georgia are 100 percent with me. This is the fight of our lifetime, and I will continue to double down to defend the rule of law and do what is right.
Recent Rasmussen polling shows that 82 percent of Georgia Republicans say Trump is unfairly prosecuted by Willis. Seventy-seven percent of Republicans also say they are not satisfied with tax dollars being used to prosecute Trump. Another 74 percent of Republicans support the Georgia legislature convening a special session to stop Willis from prosecuting Trump.
Despite the feasible mechanisms and polling popularity, Kemp and many state Republicans dismissed Moore’s initiative out of hand.
Because, reasons! And here we all are pounding each other on the head with souvenir Three Stooges/Pelosi-sized prop gavels over Trump! DeSantis! Electability! and Polling! and all the rest of it while another election is going to be fortified with essential vitamins, minerals and fake ballots to help build strong dictatorships 85 million ways.
The Democrat Party has developed in the political home of the various American Marxist movements, with which they agree and identify. Hence, they are not so repulsed by America’s past—or more accurately, the Democrat Party’s past—as to forever condemn the Democrat Party and refuse any association with it. They ignore or downplay its links to the Ku Klux Klan, white-supremacist neo-Nazis, lynchings, etc. Instead, they target and blame the entire society, culture, and country for the Demorat Party’s contemptible past. To underscore the point, the American Marxists are supportive of the Democat Party’s modern-day promotion of economic socialism, cultural Marxism, and anti-Americanism. In truth, their contempt for the Constitution, and its routine condemnation, is not so much because of some of the Framers’ biographies, but because the Constitution’s firewalls remain an impediment to, or at least slow their revolutionary aims and the speed with which they seek to make them. . .
. . . Of course the Democrat Party wants the big cities and most populous states to rule over the entire country, since these are Democrat strongholds. And, if they could, they would abolish the states. Presidential candidates would not have to campaign in vast parts of the country, only in the dense areas mostly along the two coasts and certain Midwest metropolitan areas. Thus, representation would effectively be denied to tens of millions of people who live in the exurbs and beyond, including rural areas. The states that produce most of the food we eat and energy we consume would have little or no say in the nation’s governance or in the federal government’s rule over them, which would be disastrous civilly, politically, and economically. . .
. . . Unlike the Republican Party, the Democrat Party is more than a political party. It is the state party. It seeks to monopolize the political system, the culture, government, and society. And while the Republican party exists to try to win elections, the Democrat Party plays for keeps—that is, election defeats can never be allowed to interfere with the ideological trajectory the party imposes on the nation. And when the Democrat Party wins elections, it continues building upon the permanent centers of power, including the vast federal bureaucracy, subsidized nongovernment organizations, lifetime activist judges, tenured professors and teachers, party members in the media, etc. The Democrat Party uses the culture and politics to empower itself and its agenda. And Democrats have no intention of surrendering control of either. Consequently, when the Democrat Party wins elections, it claims broad mandates; when it loses elections, it ignores the popular will of the people and turns to the permanent government and its cultural surrogates to sabotage the Republicans and push forward their American Marxist agenda.
The author of the piece, who goes by the nom de plume Carpe Diem, states:
While Levin does not necessarily offer a solution to combating this pervasive Leftist onslaught that we face, he does a commendable job of identifying and outlining the very real dangers that we face, which is a good start.
Look, I dig Levin. But to be honest, he's been writing the same damn book now for the past 20 years. Only the names and outrages have changed and multiplied by orders of magnitude. Yet the most important constant is the nagging question of "the solution." 20 years ago, bad as things were, we still perhaps had a chance to stop this via what I will assume was a relatively untainted or only moderately tainted electoral system.
Well, that's been shot to hell as 2020 and to a lesser extent 2022 have shown us. Assuming that the polling showing Biden cratering is accurate, the only reason to switch him out for the Wookie, Newsom, Whitmer or whoever is to boost their poll numbers to the degree that it makes the inevitable 2024 steal look legitimate. If Biden refuses to go quietly, or if RFK Jr, Cornel West, Marianne Williamson or someone else runs third party regardless of who the Dem stooge candidate will be, the steal would cause a pretty big stink. At least I assume that that is the calculus in the Kalorama-Davos-Beijing Axis.
Moving back to the high level, the problem remains: An irreconcilably divided country, a Junta that controls the instrumentalities and enforcement mechanisms of power, powder kegs both domestically and internationally that can go off at any moment and no means of extricating ourselves from disaster in a quick, orderly and peaceful fashion.
Have a good weekend. See you on the hobby thread tomorrow. Be there. Aloha.
"Are new draft recommendations on breast-cancer screening the result of DEI-based political pressure?" Equity vs. Evidence
"Democrats rely on activist groups like Issue One to make the case for conquering local election offices – here’s the real story. . . 'Progressives' only gained so much ground by catching conservatives off-guard in 2020. Now they’re pushing that advantage in an all-or-nothing gambit for permanent control of America. Whether you like it or not, there’s no going back to the sunny days of pre-pandemic America. You’re at war. "High Election Worker Turnover" is the Left’s Newest Ploy to Federalize Elections
". . . a final opinion could be issued before the end of the calendar year, and if the court throws out the funding mechanism as unconstitutional, it could also choose to delay imposition of their ruling and give the Congress the whole of 2024 to craft an alternative. Something must be done: The CFPB has more power than any agency in US history, and its potential to abuse this authority is enormous." The Supreme Court is About to Rule on America's Most Powerful Unaccountable Federal Agency
"Recent polling shows 50 percent of independent voters believe House Republicans should impeach Joe Biden, a YouGov/CBS News poll found. Additional polling shows a majority of voters consistently believe Joe Biden was involved in his family’s business, contradicting his long-held position that he never spoke to Hunter Biden about business." Finally! James Comer Subpoenas Hunter, James Biden 315 Days After Launching Probe into Family
"The trove contains email exchanges between prosecutors working on the Biden probe and FBI interview transcripts with witnesses who have insight into the Biden family’s business ventures. The evidence is certain to factor into House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into the president, which launched Wednesday." The Latest Hunter Biden Document Dump Is Littered With Bombshells. Here Are the Biggest.
“I think this is gonna be an informative hearing for you, Mr. Raskin, because we want to present evidence,” the chairman replied. “What evidence? There’s no evidence witness, there’s no fact witnesses,” Raskin said. “Just sit back and let the American people see the hearing, and let the American people decide,” Comer said. ‘Listen!’: All Hell Breaks Loose as Dem Motions to Bring Rudy Giuliani Into Impeachment Hearings
Jonathan Turley: "The record currently contains witness and written evidence that the President (1) has lied about key facts in these foreign dealings, (2) was the focus of a multimillion-dollar influence peddling scheme, and (3) may have benefitted from this corruption through millions of dollars sent to his family as well as more direct possible benefits. The [so-called quote-unquote "president"] may be able to disprove or rebut these points, but they raise legitimate concerns over his role based on the accounts of key figures in the matter." (Turley's liberal feet are tiptoeing through the tulips/landmines. - jjs) 10 Reasons Why It's Worth Investigating Joe Biden
Kemp and State Senate Republicans apparently oppose working to investigate, defund, and impeach Willis, and instead ousted Moore. “Today’s removal is a direct result of me calling on my Republican colleagues in the Senate to do their job and sign onto an emergency session to investigate Fani Willis,” Colton said in a statement exclusively obtained by Breitbart News. Scum! Georgia Senate GOP Caucus Ousts Senator for Trying to Remove Fani Willis from Office
CIVIL WAR 2.0: J-6 FBI FALSE FLAG "RIOT" & AFTERMATH, LEFTIST PERSECUTIONS, DEMOCRAT PUTSCH, AMERICAN DISSOLUTION
Xahra Saleem, formerly Yvonne Maina, co-founded the All Black Lives (ABL) Bristol group in the United Kingdom, and raised money ostensibly to provide masks for BLM protesters and fund a trip to Africa for poor youths via a GoFundMe page called BristBLM. A court heard this week, however, that she “dishonestly abused [her] position intending to make a gain, namely used the funds raised for [herself]. BLM Activist Convicted of Fraud After $37,000 in Donations Disappear
"Biden is trying to create a consequence-free society. Decisions have consequences in the real world, but not in Biden-world." Dealing with Consequences
“The Biden [junta] has dangerously weaponized this agency to collude with Big Tech and other intermediaries to censor Americans’ online speech and interfere in our elections — brazenly violating the First Amendment for nefarious political purposes. The country gave us the majority to save our nation from the Left’s destructive policies that continue to erode our constitutional rights, not continue the status quo and subsidize government abuse.” GOP Rep. Andrew Clyde Rips Republicans for Voting to Fund "Censorship" Agency
"Book-banning is a serious problem — but it's the left doing it, not the right." The Death of the Library
* * * * *
The segment confirmed news Fox was attempting to “shift candidates to the left” on immigration first broken by The National Pulse editor-in-chief, who warned conservatives the network intended to try and use old footage of Ronald Reagan to bolster its pro-amnesty agenda. Fox/Univision Promoted Illegal Migrant Amnesty at GOP Debate
"New York City citizens and taxpayers do not want illegal immigrants working here. We don’t want them voting here. We want them gone, on the next bus, right back over the border. Full stop. The majority of the people that advocate for the “new Americans” are in government and they happen to be Democrats. . . f they could, and if they thought they could count on their votes, they'd probably try to import all 7.5 billion people on earth into the country just so they wouldn't have to face what Americans actually want. New York City shows the Democrats are trying to import their way out of unpopularity
Robert Zimmerman: "The Bible is now viewed by these leftists to be as bad for kids to read as pornography — except that these same leftists now consider it a good thing for kids to see pornography but not the Bible.In the modern leftist world that now rules us, good and evil have been flipped, with evil on top." California School District Blacklists Christian Club from Elementary School
DEMOCRAT/LEFTIST AND RINO SCANDALS, MESHUGAS, CHUTZPOCRISY
"The Republican state treasurer is acting governor until mid-day Thursday. Is Hobbs gone because the Senate won’t confirm her agency director nominees?" (Start passing anti-Leftist laws when she's AWOL - jjs) Where is Arizona Democrat Gov. Katie Hobbs?
"Call it bribery, or extortion, or abuse of power, or whatever you want. This is how Democrats get rich these days. They expand the size and power of the federal government, then sell access and favors to the highest bidders." Biden, Menendez, and Michelle: Birds of a Bribery Feather
"Other than NORPAC, most of Menendez’s major donors have remained silent as to whether they’ll continue to contribute to his political campaign. Jon Kaiden, founder of Baleon Capital, appears to be the only major donor to publicly announce that he will no longer contribute to Menendez’s re-election bid." Pro-Israel PAC Says It’ll Keep Funding Bob Menendez’s Re-Election Campaign
POLITICS
"Another round of tedious GOP ritual combat shouldn’t distract from where the real action is happening." Will We Never Be Free?
"A big part of the problem was on the moderator and host venue side." (and the majority of the debaters - jjs) The Missed GOP Debate Opportunity
THE UKRAINIAN "FRONT"
Victor Davis Hanson: "America should help Ukraine resist Russian aggression. But we should be mindful in doing so that the entire region is an historical Gordian Knot of poorly understood but ancient intertwined and competing threads—one that may risk being cut by a Russian nuclear sword." (Wow. VDH writes an entire essay in double-talk. Trying to put out a fire that we helped start by running into it naked with a water pistol is not a good idea, sir. - jjs) The Ukrainian Gordian Knot
"Under Ramaswamy’s proposal, America would cease its military support to Kyiv, keep Ukraine out of NATO and recognize Russia’s control over the territory it now occupies; in return, Russia would end its 'military alliance' with China." (Fuck you, NY Post. This is probably the most sane, reasonable proposition I've yet to hear, even if the last bit is not enforceable. At least it prevents a regional nuclear confrontation that would likely spill over - jjs) Shutdown-ready Republicans shouldn’t buy into Vivek Ramaswamy’s insane Ukraine plan
'Three people have been confirmed dead and one injured after shootings and an explosion took place across Sweden late Wednesday and early Thursday morning. The shootings are likely linked to escalating feuding gang violence around Stockholm. The blast is still being investigated although it is the third explosion this week across central Sweden under investigation." Sweden sees deadliest month for shootings since 2016 in gang-related incidents
Notably, France is the sixth largest contributor to the UN, paying $128 million, or just under five percent of the organization’s annual budget. The French government has made an increased effort to integrate Muslim women and girls into society, such as ruling last month that girls cannot wear the Islamic “abaya” in schools. UN Lashes Out at France For Banning Islamic Headscarves At 2024 Paris Olympics
Lloyd Billingsley: "Why exactly did the Trudeau-NDP axis do it?" Praising a Nazi
Raymond Ibrahim: ". . . , if today’s men were simply to reclaim their manhood and start behaving like men — and, most importantly, believe in a Cause greater than themselves — all of the insane ills plaguing Western society would dissipate like vapor." The ‘Left’s’ Worst Nightmare: A Return to the 'Crusader Mindset'
Robert Spencer: "It’s likely that he needs both the money and the new infusion of relevance. But his letter [to the NY Jets begging for a job] is unlikely to get him anywhere, as for all his long-windedness, Kaepernick never mentions the elephant in the room, his far-left political activism and race-hustling agitation that would relegate football to a sideshow for any team that signed him." Kaepernick BEGS for Job on NFL Slave Plantation, Ignores the Elephant in the Room
NOTE: The opinions expressed in the 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.
Kara Swisher, who is to tech journalism what a poison arrow frog is to a petting zoo, invited former Chief of Censorship and Propaganda to speak immediately before Yaccarino, who is merely a poor choice for CEO rather than an out-and-out Stalinist.
Also, this being The Verge, the article concludes with a rant about Elon Musk.
At $345 list price it would have been a bargain less than two years ago, even for a DRAMless QLC PCIe 3.0 drive, and it's a DRAM cached TLC PCIe 4.0 drive.
Worth considering if you're building a high-end PC.
CBD and J.J. Sefton discuss: Feinstein finally fossilizes so will Newsom anger minorities by picking Schiff, and who will replace Menendez once he gets the chop? Ken Buck in typical RINO fashion stabs us in the back, AI will make the propaganda press even more insufferable, Israeli leftists riot and the battle to break free from a rogue leftist judiciary, Biden impeachment follies, and more!
Correction: In yesterday's post about the debate, I mistakenly said that Jim Varney was one of the liberal Fox immoderate moderators. Jim Varney is a good reporter at Real Clear Investigations whose work I quote a lot, so I had that name in mind. But he wasn't a moderator at a debate. I meant Stewart Varney. Sorry for the mistake, and sorry to have sullied Jim Varney's name by associating it with that shitshow.
S4,E15: CBD and Sefton discuss: Trudeau and parliament give an ovation to a Ukrainian Nazi, INS eager to deport religious family while letting in millions of 3rd world peasants, Skip Bayliss is a disgusting jerk for inventing a racist attack on Deion Sanders, Jackie Robinson as a shining example of meritocracy, no way Michelle O allows herself to replace Biden at the head of the Dem ticket, and more!
Brooks Robinson, the greatest third baseman that ever laced them up, is now playing the hot corner in heaven. Brooks Robinson, Hall of Fame Orioles third baseman, dies at 86. Brooks was a class act. My dad is a pediatrician, and he knew Brooks. If dad ever had a really sick kid, he could make one call to Brook's office, and a freshly signed photo, personally addressed to the kid in question, would arrive within a day or so. RIP. [Weirddave]
CBD and J.J. Sefton are joined by Joe Mannix to discuss: Bobert and Brand are to be destroyed while pervert criminals like Biden are protected, Menendez finally under the gun?, Impeachment follies and Merrick Garland's "grilling" before Congress, Biden's new unconstitutional Klimate Korps, Government by"QUANGO?" the complete de-fanging of the US military, Colony Ridge and the erasure of the border, Gerontocracy/Kleptocracy and talk of term limits, and more!
I do not even know how I ended up here, but I thought this post was good. I do not know who you are but certainly you're going to a famous blogger if you aren't already
There's a new internet conspiracy theory claiming that John Fetterman has been replaced by a double. A Fetterganger, if you will.
I don't see it. Compare this older picture of Fetterman:
...with this newer photo of Fetterman:
Looks like the same guy to me. I think people are just getting hung up on the facial hair.
(ETA: The second picture is from the Fetterman Netflix biography - [Weirddave])
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Brooks Robinson, the greatest third baseman that ever laced them up, is now playing the hot corner in heaven. 
