Wednesday Overnight Open Thread - December 10, 2025 [Frosty Rex]
—Open Blogger
Good evening Horde. The time has come for mid-week shenanigans of the post-cafe overnight variety.
Welcome to the Wednesday night ONT which means another edition of 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.
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Exciting Innovations in Photography Cafe
—Ace
Grand Central Station, 1929
The caption noted that this shot is no longer possible,
as tall buildings outside the station block the sun
Cutting edge baby photography.
Yesterday I posted a too-good-to-be-true video I was sure was AI. Today, I present one that's even more obviously fake as f***. I don't even need your help in finding the fakery and AI slop here.
High speed photographs of goofy dogs catching treats in dey moufs.
Firefighting helicopter drops water with laser accuracy.
Cute little lizard hides in water, using his own scuba tank.
Four day old giraffe is a shortie.
An "ice shove."
Big horn sheep butt heads.
Humpback mom and calf.
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The National Republican Senate Committee Tricked Jasmine Ratchet Into Running for Texas Senate;
Kumala Harris Still Wants to Run for President
—Ace
Marxist rag the New Republic reports on Republicans high-fiving each other for manipulating low-IQ narcissist into running for Senate. Apparently the Democrats were not polling to see how the plus-sized imbecile would do in a primary, so the Republicans did run one. And then they publicized the results when it showed her as a genuine threat to win the primary.
A source familiar with the process told NOTUS that GOP machinations to prop up Crockett's run first began in June, when Texas Democrats met to discuss 2026 midterm elections--and the firebrand Democrat wasn't invited, or included in any initial polls.In July, the National Republican Senatorial Committee published a poll that found that Crockett was the preferred candidate among Democratic voters. "When we saw the results, we were like, 'OK, we got to disseminate this far and wide,'" the source told NOTUS.
After the NRSC included Crockett's name in their poll, other surveys started to include her too. The source told NOTUS that those polls were then aggressively seeded into progressive digital spaces by NRSC allies to "orchestrate the pile on" of promising polling numbers and drive the narrative that support for Crockett was "surging."
The source dubbed the system of trying to pull in a weaker candidate who would lose to the Republican challenger as an "AstroTurf recruitment process."
This is a deception campaign that will go down in history as the greatest since the Allies convinced Hitler they would invade at Calais rather than Normandy:
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Fed Cuts Prime Rate 0.25%; Trump Pivots to "Make America Affordable Again"
—Ace
A big reason for the loss of support from independents is the persistent Biden inflation and not-yet-hot economy.
The Fed is resisting actually boosting the economy, making the smallest possible reductions in the prime lending rate incrementally to have the smallest possible positive impact on the economy.
The Federal Reserve on Wednesday announced its third interest rate cut of the year as policymakers moved forward with the cut to support the labor market despite elevated inflation.Fed policymakers voted to lower the benchmark federal funds rate by 25 basis points to a new range of 3.5% to 3.75%. The move follows rate cuts of that size in September and October, which were the first of the year.
Policymakers have been tracking economic data showing a slowdown in the labor market in recent months as companies adjust to shifts in trade and immigration policy. Meanwhile, inflation has trended higher as tariff-related price hikes filter through the economy.
Those dynamics have put the Fed in a difficult spot as it looks to fulfill its dual mandate goals of stable prices in line with the 2% long-run target for inflation as well as promoting maximum employment.
Trump has sensed the dissatisfaction and the complaint that he's too focused on foreign policy. He's now on tour pushing his Make America Affordable Again agenda.
President Trump began his affordability tour in northeastern Pennsylvania on Tuesday, telling supporters he's focused on one thing -- driving prices down nationwide. Steering clear of insider chatter about political fallout or what the pundits say Republicans "should" be worried about, Trump framed the stop as the opening salvo of a national push to restore economic sanity."I have no higher priority than making America affordable again," he told supporters, hammering Democrats for driving prices higher and insisting his policies are already reversing the trend. "They caused the high prices, and we're bringing them down. It's a simple message."
...
On energy, Trump pointed to what he called "the greatest amount of drilling" and fuel production the country has seen in years -- a supply boost he credits for driving oil prices down. "When energy comes down, your other prices come down," he said, arguing that lower fuel and shipping costs ripple across grocery aisles, construction, and manufacturing.
Trump also previewed what he cast as immediate relief coming on January 1, when key provisions from his Big Beautiful Bill take effect. "We're putting thousands of dollars in the pockets of hard-working Pennsylvanians," he said. "No tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security for our great seniors."
He blasted the "four years of disaster" under the Biden administration, reminding the crowd that inflation hit 9.1% on Biden's watch and insisting that Democrats have no credibility lecturing anyone about affordability. "When Biden and congressional Democrats had power, they blew up our economy, sent prices soaring," he said. "Now they want to take us right back to Bidenomics."
He also got the UK to drop artificial drug price controls, which will allow him in turn to reduce tariffs on imported British drugs, thus reducing some drug prices in America.
Under the terms of the deal, the U.K. will relax its artificial drug price controls, and in return the U.S. will refrain from imposing tariffs on British medicines, pharmaceutical ingredients and medical devices. That constitutes a win/win for both nations.For decades, America has led the world in drug innovation, accounting for approximately two-thirds of all new medicines introduced to the world annually. That's the direct result of our greater emphasis on free markets and protection of intellectual property (IP) -- patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets -- compared to the rest of the world.
Unfortunately, over time that has cultivated a "free rider" problem vis-a-vis the rest of the world.
...
Simply put, for too long Americans have disproportionately subsidized the world's drug innovation pipeline.
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Iran May Abandon Its Capital Tehran Due to Severe Water Shortage
—Ace
"I didn't do nuffin'," emails God.
This story has been brewing for a while. It's a glacially slow news day, so I'll post it.
Tehran may be forced to evacuate due to a severe water crisis, with experts warning that all taps in the city could soon run dry.Officials say that the Iranian capital is facing a Day Zero moment in the near future -- when all water supplies run out.
I like that, So Dramatic.
Iran has faced severe drought for six years, with Tehran's rainfall in the first two months of the current water year, which begins on 1 October, at near zero, leaving reservoir supplies at dangerously low levels.Officials in Tehran have undertaken a number of measures, including reducing water pressure, discussing rationing and imposing cuts. They have also suggested more radical solutions, such as evacuation or moving the capital if rain does not return.
"We are talking about a few days or even weeks of water left for Tehran," Kaveh Madani, director of the UN's University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, told Canada's CBC broadcaster.
"Day Zero, as we call it in the water sector, is near. It's a day that the taps would run dry."
In early November, Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian warned: "If it doesn't rain in Tehran by late November, we'll have to ration water. And if it still doesn't rain, we'll have to evacuate Tehran."
Typically, rain should start falling in Iran in autumn, following Iran's hot summer. But the September to November period just gone is the driest the country has seen in half a century, the National Weather Forecasting Centre has reported. Rainfall has been 89 per cent below the long-term average.
God is sitting back, filing His nails.
Mr Pezeshkian described the situation as "extremely critical", citing reports that Tehran's dam reservoirs have fallen to their lowest level in 60 years, some as low as 10 per cent of capacity. Officials say that in the east of Tehran, the Latyan Dam -- one of five key reservoirs -- is only about 9 per cent full. The Karaj dam, which supplies a quarter of Tehran's drinking water, is 8 per cent full.
This is interesting -- Tehran's reservoirs are apparently administered by LA Mayor Karen Bass. Who knew.
I've heard about a lot of Impending Disasters and most of them didn't pan out. So I'm not anticipating an abandonment of the capital.
Jewish Space Weather Control Lasers
Making the deserts bloom and making blooms into deserts for 60 years.
Justice Ketanji D-EI: The President Must Defer to the Unelected "Experts" Who Should Really Run Our Lives for Us
—Ace
Ketanji D-EI doesn't bother hiding her Marxist disdain for the popular vote, preferring all powers to be held by a, let's say, Revolutionary Vanguard of some kind.
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson used Tuesday's Trump v. Slaughter arguments to float a genuinely stunning view of executive power -- one where the president of the United States couldn't fire the very people serving inside his own government. The case itself centers on whether President Trump had the authority to remove former FTC commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a long-standing restriction on presidential oversight of so-called independent agencies.Jackson argued that scientists, economists, doctors, and other agency "experts" should be insulated from presidential authority entirely, claiming that allowing a president to fire them is "not in the best interest" of Americans.
Her exchange with U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer made her philosophy unmistakable. Jackson questioned why these agencies answer to the president at all, saying she didn't understand why they aren't effectively controlled by Congress instead. "Congress established them and can eliminate them," she said -- a remarkable suggestion that the legislative branch, not the president, should control vast stretches of the executive branch.
She then laid out the scenario she fears: a president firing "all the scientists, and the doctors, and the economists, and the PhDs" and replacing them with loyalists. In her view, that hypothetical alone justifies limiting a president's removal power across agencies that shape everything from transportation regulation to monetary policy.
Sauer pushed back, arguing that her position flips the Constitution on its head. Allowing unelected boards to operate beyond presidential control, he warned, "subjugates" the separation of powers. The president isn't a spectator -- he's the elected official charged with running the executive branch, not rubber-stamping decisions made by bureaucrats no voter ever chose.
I called this from before the election. The Democrats and media (but I repeat myself) began a propaganda campaign to convince the country that while the GOP won all three official branches of government, there was a Secret Fourth Branch of Government -- the permanent left-wing bureaucracy -- which Akshually had the power to overrule the other three branches of government and run the country.
Needing some power center in government, they're willing an independent, permanent, unelected, unaccountable fourth branch of government into existence.
We heard the same thing under George W. Bush. Locked out of the government, the communist Democrat Party and the media (but I repeat myself again) insisted that it was unfair of Bush to fire Clinton's US Attorneys because those Attorneys had a constitutional duty to check Bush's power. They also insisted the DOJ should be "independent" of the actual President and his appointed-and-confirmed AG.
It's always the same playbook. As soon as Democrats get a political rebuke, they assert that the unelected, nigh-unfirable federal bureaucracy is the Real Legitimate Government of the country.
There is no "fourth branch of government," as Gorsuch instructed Ketanji D-EI.
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Federal Judge Okays the Release of Epstein Grand Jury Transcripts
—Ace
U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman reversed his earlier decision to keep the transcripts sealed, citing the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was enacted last month, creating a narrow exception to rules that normally keep grand jury proceedings confidential, The Associated Press reported. The law requires the government to open its files on Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
Berman previously cautioned that the roughly 70 pages of grand jury materials slated for release are hardly revelatory.
The law requires that the Justice Department release Epstein-related records to the public by Dec. 19.
Based on the lack of earth-shattering disclosures so far, I think we're going to continue to not see earth-shattering disclosures. We will see the names of people we already knew were connected to Epstein, like Bill and Hillary Clinton and Clinton Energy Secretary and New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, and it will be good to have that official confirmation, but I do not expect we'll get confirmation of QAnon/Pizzagate/Tucker Carlson claims of an Israel-CIA pedophile blackmail operation.
Maybe we will. We'll see.
But a heuristic I apply without even thinking about it is noting the general "shape" of a theory that turns out to be true. The "shape" of a true story features drip-by-drip disclosures that, while maybe not proving the theory, nevertheless build confidence in the theory until, at some point, the theory is proven.
Look at the theories that covid was man-made and specifically leaked from the Wuhan Covid Lab. (Giveaway right there, huh?) Every few weeks we got another bit of information that tended to suggest -- and sometimes strongly suggest -- that covid was man-made in the Wuhan lab. And that Anthony Fauci knew it, and bribed scientists to lie about it.
The theory did not sit for years and years with no confirmatory information being discovered.
In the case of a theory that does sit for years without actual evidence emerging to support it: I begin doubting that theory.
As Fermi said about aliens: If they exist, well, where are they?
And if this theory has actual evidence supporting it: Well, where is it?
They say an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence but.... come on, when people are digging for the evidence and not finding it, yeah, it is at least evidence that that evidence doesn't exist.
If you set out to prove dodos actually survived and spend years looking for dodos but can't find any, it does suggest that yeah, dodos probably did go extinct.
If there continues to be no evidence of the Strong Form of the Epstein theory, the claims that the CIA and a foreign state, sometimes unnamed but always believed to be Israel, engaged in a huge blackmail operation against the political leadership of the United States, at some point, we have to accept that this theory, while plausible and even attractive, just isn't true.
But that won't be admitted. We'll have Chromatic Aberrations all over again.
Well, they're hiding the documents that prove that, that information never came out during the grand jury investigation because Israel and the CIA warned the prosecutor not to "go there," etc.
As they say about capital C capital T Conspiracy Theories -- the unfalsifiable kind, the nigh-religious dogma kind -- lack of evidence of a Conspiracy Theory is just further proof of the how deep the Conspiracy goes.
I was completely willing to speculate about such a multinational conspiracy theory. I didn't dismiss it out of hand.
But at some point: We either need evidence for it or the people pushing it need to admit they don't care about evidence of the lack of evidence, and that in their minds, it's not a Conspiracy Theory. It's a Conspiracy Fact, period, and no contrary evidence can change that.
But like I said: We'll see. It could turn out that the transcripts do point to a much bigger operation going on on Pedo Island, beyond a pedophile making his young girls available to his politically-connected, financially-connected pals.
Update: It just occurred to me that people think about a foreign blackmail operation because they don't know how Epstein made his money or why he was so determined to cultivate pedo-friendships with people like Bill Clinton or Larry Summers.
Well, I just remembered, we know that every Congressman winds up a millionaire in five years from stock trading. Hillary Clinton made a fortune in cattle futures in the 90s, which she always lied about, claiming she made the picks herself just by reading the Wall Street Journal.
So: We know that the politically connected are routinely given non-public insider-trading information by industry insiders.
Couldn't Epstein's operation just be based on simple greed? He cultivated pedo pals who had access to insider information, which he then used for his own profit, while rewarding them with access to underage girls.
I'm not saying that's what was going on. I'm just offering that as a counter-explanation to the major foreign/domestic intelligence community blackmail theory.
In Astounding Coincidence the "Experts" Cannot Explain, US Oil Production Hits Record Highs as Gasoline Prices, Inexpicably, Fall to Lowest Levels Since the Chinese Engineered Bioweapon
—Ace
Natural gas production also hit record highs in August before slipping a bit.
NEW YORK, Nov 28 (Reuters) - U.S. oil production rose to a record high in September, data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Friday showed, despite oversupply worries.Oil production in the U.S. has continued to hit record highs this year despite a weak price environment, further weighing on global prices. Benchmark Brent crude was trading just below $64 on Friday, about 14% below the same time last year.
U.S. crude oil output rose 44,000 barrels per day during the month to a record 13.84 million bpd, according to EIA data.
In 2025, that all changed.
Oil output in New Mexico, the second-largest oil-producing state, hit a record 2.351 million bpd, while output from the federal offshore gulf region rose to 1.983 million bpd in September, the highest since February 2020.
Unaccountably, and probably due to Something The Democrats Did, gas prices are falling across the nation.
Well, not "across the nation." They're falling in red states while they remain high in Democrat-controlled states like California, Washington, and Hawaii.
Who can even guess why!
Even CNN has to acknowledge that gas prices are falling and so is inflation, therefore.
Just like Trump promised.
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Wednesday Morning Rant
—Joe Mannix
This week, there was a minor traffic accident in San Francisco. Two cars bumped into each other at low speed, and a third stopped for the accident and further blocked traffic. A mere nothing. This happens all the time, and we all know what happens next: the drivers exchange insurance information (and if they're thinking, they move their cars out of traffic first) and leave. Maybe they call the cops and file a report. But not this time.
This time, the three cars just sat there, deadlocked. Nobody moved, nobody talked, nobody took any action. This is because there was nobody to take action. No humans were involved. All three cars were autonomous vehicles operated by Waymo. Following the minor crash, none of them could figure out how to proceed and so just sat there, patiently waiting. They're good at that. Machines are very patient.
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The Morning Report — 12/10/25
—J.J. Sefton
Good morning kids. So, J.B. (Sitz-)Pritzker, the corrupt corpulent tyrannical 12-ton tick posing as an American governor along with his Democrat minions have issued some sort of edict dressed up as a law prohibiting the enforcement of legitimate law in arresting illegal aliens within 1,000 feet of any courthouse. What Donald Trump should immediately do, is station squads of ICE agents at every single Illinois courthouse, backed up by Federal marshals or National Guard troops if need be, perhaps with armored personnel carriers, given the proclivity of Democrat/Antifa/La Raza street goons to assault with everything from fists to bricks and molotov cocktails. What are the odds that Illinois State Troopers would dare get in the way of a few dozen AR-15s pointed their way?
I hope team Trump will not try to seek redress in the courts, considering the judiciary is so utterly corrupt and stacked against him as well as the Constitution as founded. No, this quote-unquote "law" is a shot across the bow of the rule of a just and stable law as intended by the founders and demands only one response. A show of force that Prtizker, Johnson et al cannot resist. Along with the wielding of executive authority via the purse-strings to force them to cease and desist.
Pritzker’s signing of the bill comes after Illinois lawmakers passed the bill during the government shutdown, according to the New York Times. Under the bill, places like hospitals and daycare centers are restricted from sharing certain information with ICE agents.While the legislation has been praised by Democrat lawmakers in the state, Republicans in the state, such as Illinois state Sen. John Curran (R), have taken “issue with the law’s ban on civil immigration enforcement at state courthouses or within 1,000 feet of those courthouses,” according to the outlet.
“We’re pushing this more and more, with these prohibitions, into uncontrolled settings,” Curran said. “And with uncontrolled settings, there are heightened risks.”
During a press conference on Tuesday for the signing of the bill, Pritzker claimed that “the Chicago region has been subjected to a relentless campaign of cruelty and intimidation and abuse at the hands of ICE” under the Trump administration.
Well the fat sleazy bastard needs to be ejected and imprisoned. But he is correct when he declared “the Chicago region has been subjected to a relentless campaign of cruelty and intimidation and abuse..."
But not by ICE nor our President.
Chicago could lose federal funding after a 26-year-old woman was set on fire on the city’s train system in what the Trump administration described as a “preventable attack.”Federal Transit Administration Administrator Marc Molinaro sent letters on Monday to Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Democrat Governor JB Pritzker, directing them to immediately enhance safety on public transportation. Molinaro said that officials had failed to take the necessary steps to keep the public safe.
It's a waste of time, energy and paper, gentlemen. Just cut off the funds until they cry uncle. Seriously, Jonson and Pritzker should be sharing a cell in a federal lockup for criminal malfeasance, endangering the public welfare and the fomenting of insurrection in openly calling for law enforcement to be resisted and issuing edicts to interfere with the lawful enforcement of our federal laws.
An interesting angle on all of this can be found in this essay about the smear campaign against our fantastic Secretary of war Pete Hegseth. First and foremost now because he represents the tip of the spear in President Trump's war on drugs on the high seas via the obliteration and sinking of drug-smuggling boats with cargoes of enough poison to kill every man woman and child in the US, citizen and illegal alien alike perhaps 10 times over.
The modern expression of what psychiatrist Dr. Judith Orloff calls “toxic empathy,” is found in political terms, in order to express policy positions and actions that are suicidal in their effect. For example, “toxic empathy” includes protests and interference against officers tracking down criminal illegal aliens, and fabrications of charges and distortions of the law by the Dems, including military brass, attacking Trump and Hegseth. In other words, a partisan political weapon––one as narcissistic as virtue-signaling. . . This fantasy pretends that war can be something other than what Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest defined it: “War means fighting, and fighting means killing.” And what Abraham Lincoln called the “terrible arithmetic.”
The other reason to attack Hegseth at least in my view is that his is seen as a future MAGA leader who, in my estimation if he continues to burnish his credentials might have a real shot in the near-ish term for a Veep slot and then potentially a real shot to be POTUS and then continue the path charted by President Trump and please God whoever his successors may be, Vance, Huckabee Sanders, as both CBD and I would like to see as we have mused on recent podcasts, though YMMV or whomever. This of course notwithstanding the usual Democrat/Leftist criminality and election meshugas as well as the alarming trend towards socialism of the younger generations.
And speaking of podcasts, a new episode should be posting sometime around midday today so be on the lookout for that in the sidebar and the outlets listed below.
We'll just have to wait and see, as President Trump might say. Much rides on an improving economy that will be a crucial boost for the upcoming midterms and then two years from now to cap off the second half of Trump 2.0
Have a good day.
And lastly, a quick shout-out and 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
- How the Hegseth smear exposes a civilization that cries for killers and handcuffs its defenders.
Tears for Injun Joe
- Victor Davis Hanson: It is hard now even for Democrats to defend illegal immigration, given that the Biden junta allowed in more than 10 million entrants. Among them were an estimated 500,000 criminals. No one believes that was wise or should ever be repeated.
Citizens are fed up with Dem-invited migrants that have disdain for US law and culture
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Daily Tech News 10 December 2025
—Pixy Misa
Top Story- Australia is joining a wave of fascist dictatorships around the globe in regulating how kids spend their time online. (The Verge) (archive site)
I may have changed a word or two there.On December 10th, most major social media platforms will boot children in the country under 16 from their services. Under the law, social platforms will also need to implement a "reasonable" age verification method there - while critics argue kids will get around it anyway.
The critics are, of course, correct. The age restrictions are about as robust as The Verge's paywall.
And VPN providers are having a field day.
Maybe they put the idiots in Canberra up to it.
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Tuesday Overnight Open Thread - December 9, 2025 [Doof]
—Open Blogger
Howdy Hordelings! The Tuesday ONT is here, and so are you. Content to be read, comments to be posted. Some assembly required. Off we go!
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This Better Not Be AI Cafe
—Ace
Kristin_Mae photography
I'm pretty sure this must be AI, because it's so... perfectly contrived. But I can't really see any problems with the video. The human hands shown have five fingers. The sing-song narration might be the biggest tell that this is fake. Anyone see anything definitive?
The Kitten Always Knocks Twice.
Another lost dog surprises his family by finding his way home.
Kitten just wants to play.
Puppy never outgrows his love of cuddling with his mom.
Crow enjoys the see-saw.
Ultimate Fighting Championship: Bunny vs. baby goat.
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Gavin Newsom and Tim Walz Discuss the Fine Points of Being High-T Super-Masculine Mish-Slayers
—Ace
That video below the fold, from a great post about the radiating masculine energy of the Democrat Party by Beege Wellborn.
As you know, Gavin Newsom sits in an extremely "cover your mish" way that makes people doubt the physical existence of his testicles.
Andrew Stiles has expert reaction to Newsom's "Crotch Clutch" manner of sitting.
Newsom baffled experts who assessed that his posture appeared to defy the conventional scientific understanding of the human form. Gender scholars were just as perplexed. Several noted that Newsom, despite being born a male, was exhibiting a form of self-compressed emasculation or "crotch clench," while conveying an unmistakably female-coded body language. Political historians argued that Newsom's unusual posture was characteristic of failed candidates and sniveling cowards. It was, these experts contended, the seated equivalent of former President Obama's obsequious bow.That is why American voters could never trust Newsom to stand up to "wide-stance" authoritarian rivals such as Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping.
He is certainly no match for Donald Trump, and no amount of snarky tweets is going to change that.
Did you hear the news? Super-masculine and Fiercely Heterosexual lisping theater kid Cory Booker got "married" to a "woman" he just happened to meet and fall madly, heterosexually in love with a couple of weeks after he decided to run for president again.
Must just be Fiercely Heterosexual Cupid timing things perfectly!
Andrew Stiles again breaks it down:
Cory Booker Obtains Female Wife in Boost to 2028 White House Bid Notorious bachelor ties the knot in 'private' ceremony shared exclusively with the New York Times
Cory Booker married a female woman over the weekend, closing the book on idle speculation about a man often described as "the Leonardo DiCaprio of American politics." The Democratic senator from New Jersey wed his recently acquired fiancée, Alexis Lewis, at an intimate ceremony in Washington, D.C., over the weekend. The move satisfies a major public relations need for Booker and arrives with exquisite timing as he prepares to launch his 2028 presidential campaign.The happy couple shared exclusive details about their relationship and "private" wedding ceremony with the New York Times. Booker, 56, and Lewis, 38, reportedly met in May 2024, several weeks after the senator pre-launched his White House bid with a record-breaking (and utterly pointless) filibuster that went viral on Bluesky. Most Democrats celebrated Booker's stunt even though they denounced the filibuster as a "Jim Crow relic" that should be abolished.
Booker, who has described himself as "Spartacus," met his future bride through a "mutual friend known for matchmaking." Knowledgeable sources tell the Washington Free Beacon that the mutual friend is Anna Wintour, the fashion maven and Democratic megadonor who orchestrated the brief "romance" between Bradley Cooper, the Hollywood beefcake, and Huma Abedin, the longtime personal servant of Hillary Clinton. Wintour also hosted an engagement party for Abedin and Democratic billionaire Alex Soros in 2024.
After their first meeting, the couple enjoyed a second date that Booker, a normal adult male, described as "magical."
Read the whole thing. Stiles is obviously impressed by the sheer force of Cory Booker's fiercely heterosexual desire for this rando woman supplied to him by a gay icon.
Again thanks to Tree Hugging Sister, gay magazine The Advocate reports on Democrat Senator Reuben Gallego accidentally telling the truth about Democrats' gender fluidity.
First-year U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona is facing intensified scrutiny after leaked text messages showed the Democrat deriding the appearance of women and men in his own party. The comments mirror far-right rhetoric about gender and deepen concerns about his recent repositioning on LGBTQ+ issues.
In the messages, first circulated by a conservative outlet and reported by People last week Gallego, who started his first term in the U.S. Senate in January after previously serving in the House, complained that Democrats are "not allowing men to be men" or "women to be hot," and wrote, "Dem women look like Dem men and Dem men look like women." He also lamented that Democrats had become "the not fun party" and no longer embodied "sex, drugs, and rock and roll."
No lies detected.
Below, two Men's Men talk about manly things like fixin' trucks and coachin' football and, of course, what men always talk about -- our gender identities.
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Trump Chief of Staff Suzie Wiles Promises That Trump Will Campaign In 2026 Like It's His Name on the Ballot
—Ace
Which it effectively is. Trump's impeachment begins one minute after a new Democrat House is installed.
President Trump is gearing up to storm the 2026 midterm map, with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles saying Monday that the president is preparing to hit the trail with the same force and stamina he brought to his 2024 comeback run. Appearing on "The Mom View," a YouTube show from Moms for America, Wiles said Trump is already laying the groundwork to help Republicans hold the House and expand their Senate edge -- and that he plans to do it the only way he knows how: by showing up everywhere."I haven't quite broken it to him yet, but he's going to campaign like it's 2024 again," Wiles said with a laugh, describing a president who remains the GOP's most powerful turnout magnet. "All these people that he helps -- he doesn't help everybody -- but for those he does, he's a difference maker, and he's certainly a turnout machine."
Wiles, who managed Trump's victorious 2024 bid, said the White House is deliberately rejecting the old playbook that urged presidents to stay out of midterms and let local candidates dominate the spotlight. Instead, she said, Trump will insert himself directly into the fight -- a sharp pivot meant to energize the voters who showed up for him last November.
"Typically in the midterms, it's not about who's sitting at the White House. You localize the election, and you keep the federal officials out of it," she said. "We're actually going to turn that on its head, and put him on the ballot, because so many of those low-propensity voters are Trump voters."
She pointed to recent Democrat wins -- capped by the shock election of socialist Zohran Mamdani as New York City mayor -- as a warning of what happens when Trump isn't out front driving Republican enthusiasm. "We saw what happens when he's not on the ballot and not active," she said.
Hopefully he'll deploy a "Morning Again in America" campaign of good news.
The national average for a gallon of unleaded gasoline slipped below the $3 mark this week, continuing a months-long trend that's easing pressure on drivers heading into the Christmas season. New data from GasBuddy shows the average price falling to just under $3, fueled by what analysts describe as broad declines across most regions of the country. The update notes the national average is down 17.6 cents from a month ago and 7.3 cents from this time last year, based on more than 12 million price reports pulled from over 150,000 stations nationwide. Diesel prices also dipped, dropping another 5.1 cents to $3.671.Patrick De Haan, GasBuddy's head of petroleum analysis, said Monday that the country is "now at multi-year lows heading into Christmas" and predicted prices will hold steady through the early weeks of the new year. AAA's latest survey reached the same conclusion, pegging the national average at roughly $2.952 on Monday -- down from $3.001 a week ago and $3.073 a month ago.
Drivers across the South and Midwest are seeing some of the steepest savings. Oklahoma's statewide average sits around $2.36, Texas is hovering near $2.50, and Missouri is clocking in at roughly $2.61. Florida, Alabama, both Carolinas, Ohio, Michigan, Virginia, and Montana have all fallen below the $3 line as well. But coastal blue states continue to stand out on the other end of the spectrum. California's statewide average remains an eye-popping $4.46 -- about $1.57 higher than the national price -- with New York, Washington, Hawaii, and Nevada all posting averages above $3.
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"Intentional Negligence"? FBI Had J6 Bomber's Cell Phone Putting Him at the Scene of the Crime... Five Years Ago
—Ace
If the FBI had cell phone records of 10,000 people's cell phones sending signals from near the RNC and DNC on the night the bombs were planted, I could understand not finding the suspect. With a suspect list of 10,000 people, I guess I could understand the claim, "We just didn't have the manpower to run down every phone."
Guess how many cell phones they actually had records of in the vicinity of the RNC and DNC at the time when the bombs were being planted?
Fewer than 200.
No, i do not believe the FBI "just didn't have the resources" to look into 186 suspects -- not when they showed they could mobilize every agent to track down every grandma within ten blocks of the Capitol on January 6th.
So was this a case of "intentional negligence"?
Miranda Divine:
Surely there's more to it than that. Director Kash Patel hinted Friday at a reason the FBI under Biden administration Director Christopher Wray may not have wanted to solve the case: "intentional negligence."'Corrupted' cell data
This, after all, was the FBI that managed to round up and charge 1,500 supporters of President Trump who set foot anywhere vaguely near the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, tracking them down through cellphone pings and video footage.
Yet with all its technical ability, Wray's FBI somehow missed the phone used by the suspect in the vicinity of the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee headquarters on the evening of Jan. 5 when the pipe bombs were planted. Surveillance footage shows the suspect, wearing a gray hoodie and COVID-style white mask, seemingly talking on the phone while walking around that night less than half a mile from the Capitol.
According to an FBI document presented to the DC District Court during his arraignment Friday, Cole's cellphone "engaged in approximately seven data session transactions with [his cellphone provider's] towers between 7:39 p.m. and 8:24 p.m. ... in the area of the RNC and DNC on January 5, 2021," locating him in the right place at the right time.
That information was obtained by the FBI within weeks of the discovery of the pipe bombs the next day. Investigators found 186 cellphone numbers "of interest" and 130 "devices of interest," according to the congressional report released this January by the chairmen of the House Oversight and Judiciary subcommittees, Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.).
By early February 2021, according to the subcommittees, FBI agents had been assigned to interview people associated with 36 of the 186 phone numbers; 98 still "required additional investigative steps." A further 51 phone numbers were identified as "not needing further action" because, curiously enough, the phones "belong[ed] to law enforcement officers or persons on the exclusion list."The FBI never told Congress what came of those leads.
They only bothered looking into 36 of the 186 phone numbers?
Let me guess - the 36 they looked into were Trump supporting Republicans, right?
Then there is the curious tale of the "corrupted" cellphone data that turned out not to be corrupted at all.
The story came from Steve D'Antuono, head of the FBI's Washington field office until his retirement in December 2022, who was in charge of the crucial first year of the pipe bomb case as well as the Capitol riot investigation, which has been described as the biggest in FBI history.
He was assigned to Washington one month before the 2020 election from his previous role in Detroit, when he ran the disastrous Gretchen Whitmer "fednapping" case that resulted in multiple mistrials and acquittals, amid claims of FBI entrapment of patsies.
D'Antuono, who has since found a job at KPMG, also led the controversial FBI raid on Trump's home, Mar-a-Lago, in August 2022. He claims he opposed the raid but was overruled by then-Deputy FBI Director Paul Abbate.
In any case, in June 2023, D'Antuono testified before Congress, claiming that the FBI had received "corrupted data" in the pipe bomb case from one of the three major cellphone carriers and that may have been the reason it couldn't find the culprit.
"We did a complete geofence. [But] there's some data that was corrupted by one of the providers, not purposely by them," he said."It just [was an] unusual circumstance that we have corrupt data from one of the providers ... I can't remember right now which one. But for that day, which is awful because we don't have that information to search. So could it have been that provider? Yeah, with our luck, you know, with this investigation it probably was, right."
Yet all three of the cellphone carriers contacted by Loudermilk's subcommittee confirmed that they "did not provide corrupted data to the FBI and that the FBI never notified them of any issues with accessing the cellular data."
It gets worse. The FBI didn't release any pictures of the suspect that could identify him -- and one investigator claims that the FBI deliberately blurred out the one part of his face that was clearly visible in the surveillance footage, his eyes.
Why would they do that, if not to conceal his identity?
I don't know if I'm ready to believe that. It's a claim made by someone looking at the video and determining that he sees "pixelation" added to the video to obscure Brian Cole, Jr.'s eyes. I remember other claims about "chromatic aberrations" not turning out to be true.
But I would like this investigated further.
...But by the end of February 2021, according to Loudermilk and Massie's report, the bureau actively began diverting resources away from the pipe bomb investigation. At the same time, Wray and Abbate were ramping up resources to track down and aggressively prosecute trespassing J6 grandmothers.
Miranda Divine concludes that the political operators of the FBI didn't want to taint their Trump Did the J6 Insurrection narrative with any information that might undermine it, and started winding down the investigation when it looked like the main suspect was not a MAGA grandma.
ABC Bows to Woke Mob and Grants Jimmy Kimmel Another Year to Lose the Network Money and Prestige
—Ace
When ABC took Kimmel off the air for five minutes, woke leftists announced a boycott of the company. He was back within days.
So of course ABC can't just let him go now. The woke mob has spoken.
ABC has extended Jimmy Kimmel's show for at least one year after the late-night comedian was suspended in September for his controversial comments about Charlie Kirk's assassin, The Post has learned."Jimmy Kimmel Live!" will continue to air on the Disney-owned network until at least May 2027 under the new deal, a source told The Post.
Kimmel, 58 -- whose current contract expires in May 2026 -- told his staff on Monday that the show was renewed, according to Bloomberg, which earlier reported the news.
The agreement was reached months ago, but Kimmel and Disney held off making the announcement out of respect for late-night host Stephen Colbert, according to the report.
Oh, the agreement was reached during the woke freak-out? Not surprising at all.
CBS in May announced Colbert's show would end in May 2026, and Kimmel did not want to leave at the same time as Colbert, the report said.
...
His suspension came just a few hours after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr warned the network and Disney that "we can do this the easy or the hard way."
As I said at the time: Carr does in fact have the right to threaten that. There is a category of show called a "bona fide news program" which is allowed to be partisan without any "equal time" requirements. Any show that is not a "bona fide news program" cannot openly propagandize for a party without invoking the still-existing "equal time" rules.
Obviously Jimmy Kimmel (and The View) are emphatically not "bona fide news programs" so they either have to be balanced and avoid outright lying or else the GOP is entitled to run their own "equal time" propaganda shows on ABC's airwaves.
Speaking of unearned privilege:
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Paramount/Skydance Launches Hostile Takeover Bid for Warner Bros.
—Ace
For those just joining the story in progress:
David Ellison -- son of the Oracle founder and multibillionaire Larry Ellison, and himself worth millions -- owned Skydance, and then used that company to purchase one of the smaller major studios, Paramount.
Then he made a bid to buy Warner Bros. studios from Warner Discovery. That offer was rejected. Then Warner Bros. advertised that it was for sale and would entertain other offers.
Netflix made a bid to buy it, and this bid was accepted.
By management, I mean.
David Ellison still wants Warner Bros. So he's making a hostile takeoever bid. That just means that unlike the Netflix bid which was arranged with the current management of Warner Discovery and has their blessing, this bid is made against current mangement's wishes and so is "hostile" to their intentions.
But it's the shareholders who get to decide. Ellison is offering shareholders a competing bid.
Ellison's bid is $30 per share, in cash. Neflix's bid is for less cash per sale -- $27 -- but shareholders would also get shares in whatever spin-off corporation they create out of the the parts of Warner Discovery they don't want. Which is I think the "Discovery" part, all the cable channels like The Murder Channel (aka Investigative Discovery or ID).
Which is more valuable? I have no idea.
Both suitors will make the pitch to shareholders and await the shareholder vote.
Paramount Skydance is launching a hostile bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery after it lost out to Netflixin a monthslong bidding war for the legacy assets, the company said Monday.
Paramount will go straight to WBD shareholders with an all-cash, $30 per share offer. That's the same bid WBD rejected last week and equates to an enterprise value of $108.4 billion.
The offer is backstopped with equity financing from the Ellison family and the private equity firm RedBird Capital as well as $54 billion in debt commitments from Bank of America, Citi and Apollo Global Management, Paramount said in a news release.
A portion of the equity financing comes from outside Middle Eastern financing partners including Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, Abu Dhabi's L'imad Holding Company PJSC, and the Qatar Investment Authority. Another portion derives from Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners. Kushner is U.S. President Donald Trump's son-in-law.
Those partners have agreed to "forgo any governance rights," including board seats, as part of their non-voting equity investment, according to a Paramount filing. The modifications allow the deal to be outside of the jurisdiction of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or CFIUS.
Shares of Paramount gained 9% Monday. Warner Bros. Discovery's shares rose about 4% while Netflix was down 3%.
"We're really here to finish what we started," Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" on Monday. "We put the company in play."
There are antitrust questions about any mergers between tech giants, of course. I think the Netflix bid will face more scrutiny, because while Netflix makes movies, it makes movies for streaming, not for exhibition in physical theaters. Yes, sometimes it exhibits a movie in theaters but only in a small number of theaters and only for a weekend or two before it puts it on Netflix exclusively. (They chiefly show movies in theaters just to meet the minimum requirements for theatrical exhibition to qualify them for the Oscars and such.)
So what antitrust lawyers in the government will be looking at is not just the diminution in competition that will occur if one media company swallows up another one, but the real possibility that if Netflix buys Warner Bros. it will use Warner Bros. movie production to make movies for its streaming service, not for theaters.
And antitrust lawyers do not like it when a reduction of competition in one industry causes disruptions in another industry.
And yes, movie production is a separate industry form movie exhibition. In fact, it was antitrust action by the government that forced this separation -- movie studios used to own their own movie theaters and play their movies in their own theaters. But the government considered this illegal vertical integration and forced the movie companies to sell their theaters to independent owners.
I don't think Netflix will be necessarily blocked from buying Warner Bros. A common result in these cases is that the government approves the merger but extracts a promise from the merged company that it will not take certain steps. Like Netflix would agree that it would continue showing Warner Bros. movies in physical theaters.
(Though that's hard to police -- Netflix could just move a lot of Warner Bros. production to the Netflix production side of things and just produce few official "Warner Bros."-branded movies.)
I think the NFL's monopoly on professional football was allowed only because the NFL agreed to never schedule games on Saturday when college teams were playing, to avoid using the professional football monopoly to damage the college football market.
This is a very perilous time for theatrical exhibitors. Hollywood is producing crap movies and consequently exhibitors don't have much product to show that the public is willing to pay for. Any reduction in the number of movies going to physical theaters could, possibly, kill the industry, or cull half of all movie theaters.
I don't know what the government will decide.
David Ellison is reportedly trying to induce Trump to block the Netflix buyout by promising that if he gets hold of Warner Bros. -- and its failing "news" channel CNN -- he'll remake CNN into a fair and balanced network.
Paramount CEO David Ellison assured Trump officials that if the government OKs his company's acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) he would overhaul the president's media arch nemesis -- CNN.Netflix announced last Friday it reached a deal to acquire Warner and HBO properties for $72 billion - but Paramount immediately launched a hostile counterbid, taking its case directly to shareholders.
The Netflix-WBD merger is facing a stiff challenge from Paramount, whose majority shareholder is the billionaire Donald Trump ally, Oracle founder Larry Ellison.
On Monday, Paramount made its move, offering $77.9 billion in all-cash and urging Warner shareholders to reject the Netflix deal.
On a recent visit to Washington, DC, Ellison's son David told Trump's team he would impose sweeping changes at CNN if he purchased its parent company WBD, sources told the Wall Street Journal.
David's father Larry discussed firing hosts like Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar - figures Trump dislikes - with White House officials during takeover bid talks last month, the Guardian reported.
Is that true? No idea. I do know that if you really were making this offer you would want to do it privately, not publicly, with the Wall Street Journal notified. Because the president isn't supposed to approve or nix mergers based on his personal or political self-interest. By making this supposed offer so public, it basically stops Trump from even considering taking the alleged "deal."
It could be that Netflix, not Ellison, is pushing this story out there to pressure Trump to approve their own bid.
Leftwing movie review Grace Randolf claimed that Warner Discovery shareholders are faced with two repellent options -- accept Netlix's deal and "kill the theater business," or accept Ellison's deal and (horrors!) put two movie studios under the control of a "conservative" man friendly to Trump.
The fact that she sees each of these possibilities as equally calamitous is what makes me think it's plausible that members of the left will just lie to stop Ellison from acquiring Warner Bros., and push Fake News stories about Ellison offering to fire Kaitlin Collins if Trump blocks Netflix's bid and approves his own. The left was horrified that Paramount was bought by (horror!) a conservative. It is offended and horrified that the much-bigger Warner Bros. might be purchased by the same conservative man.
Any thoughts? Do you buy this very-public offer of bribery to Trump from David Ellison?
I don't know about you, but if I were bribing the president, I would probably do it quietly.
Through a trusted intermediary.
Such as... well, as the article noted, Jared Kushner is part of the group putting up billions to back Ellison's bid.
So instead of just quietly telling Kushner to carry that message to his father-in-law, everyone blabs about it to the Wall Street Journal?
Seems unlikely to me. Sounds more like political partisans or Netflix executives trying to poison Parmount's pill so that Warner Discovery can't swallow it.
No Shock: Tech Company Offers $60/Hour Coding Job with Proviso: "No US Citizens" May Apply
—Ace
Immigrants are doing the jobs that Americans just won't do are illegally blacklisted from.
The job post for LanceSoft, an IT staffing firm committed to "diversity, equality, and inclusivity," began innocently enough.The $60-per-hour role would be based in Santa Clara, Calif., focus on "technical support," and entail a 3--10 p.m. shift. Posted on Nvoids, an IT jobs aggregator, the ad described LanceSoft as an equal opportunity employer and said that the firm, one of the largest staffing agencies in the country, strives "to be as diverse as the clients and employees we partner with."
"We embrace people of any race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender identity, and sexual orientation," the Nov. 25 post read.
This particular job, however, would not be open to a very large group of people: citizens of the United States.
In a section titled "Visa requirement," LanceSoft recruiter Riyaz Ansari wrote that "candidates must hold an active H1B visa"--and stated explicitly that American citizens need not apply.
"No USC/GC for this role," Ansari wrote, using the acronyms for U.S. citizens and green card holders. He added that "LanceSoft is a certified Minority Business Enterprise"--a status the firm has used to secure public contracts--and touted the company's "diversified team environment."
Federal law bars employers from discriminating based on citizenship status. But in the industries most reliant on the H-1B program, which provides visas to more than 700,000 immigrants, advertisements like LanceSoft's litter online recruiting boards.
The Washington Free Beacon identified over two dozen job postings since 2024 that appear to bar applications from U.S. citizens. The posts were made on a variety of platforms, including Glassdoor and LinkedIn, and typically indicate a preference for H-1B visas, though some allow for other visa types as well. Several of the firms are minority-owned businesses, meaning they receive preferential access to government contracts even as they exclude U.S. workers.
The posts illustrate what Trump administration officials say is a common form of hiring discrimination that has long been underpoliced. They come as conservatives are debating the merits of the H-1B visa program, which some argue has been abused by employers to hire foreign workers--especially Indian outsourcers--at the expense of American ones.
"A shocking number of covered entities, especially recruiters, continue to express explicit preferences for visa guest workers," said Andrea Lucas, the chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). "In the shadows of under-enforcement, this type of discrimination has festered."
Read the whole thing.
Trump needs to put together a squad of employment-discrimination Untouchables and begin suing these companies into bankruptcy.
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