Mouse Cafe
—Ace
Whew. Another week down.
Thank you all for your readership and commentership (?).
Stimulating Saint Bernards by letting them play at their chosen profession. (IG) Little beaver dances like the groundhog in Caddyshack. Here's the longer version of the Mouse commercial. I still don't know what the hell is even going on. Here's another longer version. Road Rage Turkey. (IG) Little dog in a bunny costume. The bunny costume allows him to channel Bunny Jumping Power. Doggy and ducky roughhouse. Teaching a puppy how to howl. Sounds cute now, but in six months, you will regret your folly. Dogs stealing candy from babies. Kitten is trying to break through a German shepherd's tough exterior. Rescued kitten and bird grow up together. A puppy is in howl training. ICYMI: This deer is judging you. Kangaroos lope across a lake at sunset. Continue reading
Golden retriever works on whale-watch boat barking at whales, just to let people know they're there. After 11 years of barking at whales, one finally came over
The Week In Woke
—Ace
Vegan "butcher" complains has her "vegan butcher shop" goes bankrupt.
Vegan 'butcher' unleashes as business dries up amid surprising new trend: 'We're out of money'The owner of a once bustling vegan butcher shop in Sydney fears her business will soon close amid an emerging trend away from meat-free products.
The shift has resulted in dozens of vegan restaurants closing, companies that made meat alternatives collapsing and supermarkets shrinking their vegan offerings - though those in the industry have struggled to put a finger on why.
Suzy Spoon has run meat-free butcheries that bear her name in the Sydney suburbs of Marrickville and Newtown for more than a decade but business is drying up.
'Woolworths has reduced our range dramatically and Harris Farm has quartered what they would buy from us before Covid. It's terrible for our business,' the entrepreneur told news.com.au.
'We're out of money. We're out of everything, we're tired.'
She said she has seen other vegan business making a shift to serving up some meat products.
'But I can't do that, because that's just not how I roll. That will never be what I do.'
A shift away from meat had been happening over the last decade. At its peak, one report found that between 2020 and 2023 there was a 47 per cent increase in plant-based meat sales - but over the last two years it seems the bubble has burst.
...
A quick browse of the Australian Vegan Reddit thread showed that its being noticed by those who adhere to the diet.
'What happened? For a little while it was awesome being vegan in Australia. But the last few years have been brutal,' one person said.
See if you can psychically divine what this "Suzy Spoons" pyrsyn might look like.
Do you have an image in your mind's eye?
Pete Hegseth fired Benghazi cover-up architect Susan Rice. As well as all the other leftists bitterly clinging to power in the DOD.
Why the hell was she still on "advisory boards" with access to Pentagon officials?
Breanna Morello @BreannaMorelloBREAKING NEWS
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ended the service of all committee members on DOD advisory committees.
This would include the seat held by Susan Rice.
Hegseth thanked the members for their work but said changes are needed to align with the department's new goals and to use resources more effectively.
You probably know that when the White House began investigating the leaks of top-secret information to leftwing "news" outlets, one group of suspected culprits were all the Obama/Biden appointees hanging on to "advisory" board positions.
They've now all been fired. Thank goodness.
Elon Musk @elonmuskGood move. There are thousands of committees that take up a lot of time without clear accomplishments.
A reset was needed.
Surprise! Adam Carolla was right when he said that California would slow-roll approvals for rebuilding the houses the city and state conspired to destroy, and Karen Bass and Gavin Newsome were lying when they said they'd accelerate the permitting process.
Months after the catastrophic wildfires that devastated large swaths of Southern California, Los Angeles--under Democrat leadership--continues to lag in its rebuilding efforts. Despite President Donald Trump's swift declaration of a national emergency and promises to waive federal red tape, city officials have only approved a fraction of the necessary rebuilding permits.Key Details:
As of late April, just 23 rebuilding permits have been issued in Pacific Palisades, where 5,619 structures were damaged or destroyed.
President Trump declared a national emergency within days of his inauguration and pledged to waive all federal permits to speed up rebuilding.
California Assembly Leader James Gallagher blames Governor Newsom and Democrat lawmakers for dragging their feet despite federal action.
John Cusack, who seems to be learning disabled, claimed that MAGA crucified Jesus or something.
John Cusack @johncusackHappy Easter - Christ was tortured and executed as a Political calculation by the Trumps of the Day...
Happy Easter
Does this developmentally-disabled adult know what "calculation" even means?
Terrorist propaganda organization the AP lost its motion to compel Trump to restore its previous unearned privileges.
A federal judge on Friday gave preliminary approval to a new White House press policy that downgrades The Associated Press to the same status as newspapers, eliminating the wire service's previously privileged access to the president.U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee who had earlier ruled that the White House unlawfully discriminated against AP for declining to use the term "Gulf of America," said the revised policy appears to be viewpoint neutral.
"I'm not inclined to see anything wrong with it," said McFadden during a Friday hearing.
The new policy places reporters from the Associated Press--along with those from Bloomberg and Reuters--on equal footing with newspaper outlets like The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. Under the revised rules, AP photographers will also hold the same status as other photojournalists.
AdvertisementAs a result, AP reporters will now join the rotating pool of journalists who cover the president's daily activities. With dozens of outlets in the rotation, this means AP will receive special access less than once a month, on par with the newspapers.
Ugly charisma vacuum Pedro Pascal once again showed that Disney allows leftwing firebrands to alienate as much as the public as they like while also firing Gina Carano for saying that the Nazis began their campaign of hatred by first normalizing the hatred of one neighbor for another.
That's not the real reason they fired her. They fired her because she wouldn't bend to the trans mafia and post her pronouns.
But Disney didn't want to admit that they fired a popular actress for not obeying the corporate line on constant promotion of transgenderism for children, so they claimed that Carano's warning about the Nazi campaign of hate was some kind of attack on the Jews.
Really.
Anyway, here's the guy who's about to lose his career after Fantastic Four makes $60 million in its opening weekend:
Pedro Pascal blasted author J.K. Rowling for her latest trans tweets, calling the author a "heinous loser" in a comment on Instagram.The Last of Us star was responding to a post by activist Tariq Ra'ouf, who criticized the author for celebrating the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom's landmark ruling last week that trans women should not be recognized as women and that "sex" should legally mean biological sex.
Rowling had posted, "I love it when a plan comes together," along with noting to a critic, "I get the same royalties whether you read [my books] or burn them. Enjoy your marshmallows!"
Wrote Pascal in the comment section of Ra'ouf's post: "Awful disgusting SHIT is exactly right. Heinous LOSER behavior."
In related news, Pedro Pascal's skin looks exactly like an aerial photograph of Dresden in June 1945.
BTW, Gina Carano is obtaining information about how much Disney pays Pedro Pascal. She wants to show the court how much Disney will pay someone for following their corporate political line.
Gina Carano is getting the salaries she's looking for.A federal judge has ruled that the mixed martial arts fighter turned actor will be allowed to see compensation information for other stars in the "Star Wars" universe on Disney+, including Pedro Pascal, Diego Luna, and Rosario Dawson.
The April 3 ruling came in a lawsuit Carano filed against Disney over her termination from the "Star Wars" spinoff show "The Mandalorian" after two seasons.
Disney announced in 2021 that Carano wouldn't return to the show for a third season after she had made social media posts comparing political conservatives in America to Jews in the Holocaust, questioning the results of the 2020 election and the use of masks during the coronavirus pandemic, and using the pronouns section of her Twitter (now known as X) page to mock transgender people.
Carano's lawsuit, which was funded by X owner Elon Musk, accuses Disney of violating California labor laws by firing her because of her political views. Disney says the company has creative control over which characters it discontinues as well as a First Amendment right to disassociate itself from Carano's views.
As part of the lawsuit, Carano's attorneys asked for salary information related to a constellation of other stars in "Star Wars" shows on Disney's streaming service.
They said the information was crucial for calculating damages if Carano were to win her lawsuit.
Carano's lawyers also argued Disney should be forced to disclose salary information for the lead actors of other "Star Wars" shows -- such as Amandla Stenberg and Luna -- because Carano had been set to star in a "Mandalorian" spinoff titled "Rangers of the New Republic" before Disney fired her.
US Magistrate Judge Steve Kim ruled in Carano's favor, ruling that Disney needed to turn over a spreadsheet or chart of the compensation Pascal, Dawson, and the costar Carl Weathers received for the first three seasons of "The Mandalorian," Dawson's salary for "The Book of Boba Fett" and the first two seasons of "Ahsoka," Stenberg's salary for "The Acolyte," and the compensation Luna received for the first two seasons of "Andor."
Remember, California passed a law to protect communists. The law says that employers cannot punish employees for political speech. If it protects dirty filthy communists, it also protects nice Catholic girls like Gina Carano.
Western Lensman @WesternLensman
The plan we're watching play out:Overload the country with as many unvetted illegals as possible, by any means necessary.
Know that mobilization of resources and enforcement operations to remove them would be extraordinarily daunting.
Rely on heavily funded leftwing legal groups and activist courts to delay, obstruct and impede deportations at every possible turn --
-- in an attempt to nullify the election result and override Americans' overwhelming desire for deportations, while looking to enshrine millions of illegals permanently into the country, reshaping congressional apportionment and securing future voter blocs for the Democrat party.
In parallel, utilize that same set of lawfare groups and activist judges to fight any and all election security measures, such as implementing voter ID and stopping non-citizen voting.
And, of course, count on their legacy media PR arm to run information ops and secrete a never-ending deluge of propaganda to run cover for it all.
The end goal being: Single-party, permanent power.
If Kamala would've won, the borders would have remained open, and mass importation would've continued. Game over.
Because Trump won, and the border closed -- the judicial contingency has been implemented.
That's where we are now.
The plan stays in motion, as they attempt to run out the clock on Trump 47.
Firealarm-puller and antisemite Jamaal Bowman says that the NFL is rigged against black players.
BLM influencer calls for "hunting" whites and piling up their bodies on the floor.
An illegal alien captured, but then released into the country again by Biden, forcibly sodomized a 13-year-old boy. No big deal, just a kid exposed to AIDS who will have permanent trauma. I hope the somewhat-lower costs to trim the verge on your mansions was worth it!
Bill Melugin @BillMelugin_EXCLUSIVE: The families of two teens killed by an illegal alien who crashed into them while drunk, high, & speeding at 100 mph in OC in 2021 have been told by the state of CA that their killer will be released from prison early in July, just 3.5 years into a 10-year sentence for killing the teens, who both burned alive.
Oscar Eduardo Ortega-Anguiano, a twice deported Mexican illegal alien, had a lengthy rap sheet prior to killing 19-year-olds Anya Varfolomeev & Nikolay Osokin in the DUI crash on the 405 freeway in Seal Beach in November 2021. Both were US citizens, and they were dating. Ortega-Anguiano had several felony convictions, had gone to state prison, and had multiple convictions for driving without a license, but was still on the streets when he crashed into the teens' vehicle.
In spring of 2022, Ortega-Anguiano was convicted in OC of two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated for killing the teens, and a judge sentenced him to serve 10 years in prison for each count, but concurrently, meaning he would serve both 10-year-sentences at the same time.
The victims' families felt that was already a weak sentence, but they tell me they were notified by the CA Department of Corrections on Easter Sunday that Ortega-Anguiano is scheduled for an early release on July 19th, 2025, only a little more than 3 years into his sentence, leaving the victims' families shocked, and outraged given the seriousness of the crime and his prior criminal history. They provided us the CDCR document showing the July 19th release date.
The CA Department of Corrections wouldn't confirm the release date when I reached out, saying they "cannot provide information on an incarcerated person's release date or location in advance of their release." They added that "incarcerated persons may earn credits for participating in rehabilitative programming, which may move parole eligible dates to an earlier date.
ICE confirms to @FoxNews that they have placed a detainer on Ortega-Anguiano with the CA Dept of Corrections and intend to take him into custody upon his release. They hope the CA Dept. of Corrections will honor the detainer request and transfer him to their custody upon his release, which they often do. But the families fear, even if he is deported, he will just re-enter the US as a gotaway, as he's done twice before.
Noted Astronaut Katie Perry has hit the Demented Bag-Lady Madonna phase of her career faster than I ever would have guessed.
Continue reading
Fake News The Left Can Use: USAID Has Been Funding Leftwing "News" Agencies Around the World
—Ace
Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfalEXCLUSIVE - BOUGHT AND PAID FOR: HOW $472 MILLION BUILT A GLOBAL LEFT-WING MEDIA MACHINE
In February 2025, WikiLeaks pulled back the curtain on a government-funded media empire that's been quietly shaping what billions of people read, watch, and believe.
At the center of it all? A group you've probably never heard of: Internews Network. Funded mostly by USAID, Internews presents itself as a friendly nonprofit supporting "independent journalism."
But behind that noble-sounding mission lies a global operation that critics say is more about managing narratives than reporting facts.
The numbers are jaw-dropping.
Nearly $473 million--yes, that's nearly half a billion--has flowed to Internews from USAID and the U.S. State Department over the past 2 decades.
Add in millions more from billionaire-backed organizations like George Soros's Open Society, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and you've got a media Frankenstein stitched together with government cash and private influence.
In 2023 alone, Internews claims to have worked with 4,291 media outlets, produced 4,799 hours of programming, and trained over 9,000 journalists.
It also says it reached an audience of 778 million people worldwide. That's more than double the population of the United States.
But here's where things get murky. Internews isn't just giving media groups equipment and microphones. It's tying grants to ideological conditions.
In Hungary, for example, officials accused Internews of funding anti-government media under the guise of "media development." If you didn't toe the line, you didn't get the money.
In Ukraine, it funded 9 out of 10 major media outlets--almost all promoting pro-NATO, pro-conflict content during wartime.
And it's not just about news. In Kosovo, just months before major protests broke out in Serbia, Internews offered grants to reporters to write in Serbian.
The pitch? Promote "positive" stories about Albanian-Serb relations. Sounds harmless--until you realize this was a foreign-funded push to shape how people talk about sensitive ethnic conflicts.
Then there's Internews' Earth Journalism Network, which recently launched a $100,000 media grant focused on climate reporting in Asia.
Sounds great--except that the fine print gives Internews and its donors the rights to edit and publish all the content.
So yes, they're funding journalism--but they're also controlling the output.
Even advertising isn't off limits. Through its "Ads for News" program, Internews partners with GroupM, the world's biggest media buyer, to funnel ad dollars to "trusted" outlets. If you're not on the list, you get nothing. It's a digital loyalty program--except instead of points, you get credibility and cash.
Internews is led by Jeanne Bourgault, a former U.S. government official who made $451,000 last year. She previously worked on post-Soviet "transition programs" and oversaw a $250 million budget at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.
In 2023, she launched a $10 million media fund at the Clinton Global Initiative--a project backed by Hillary Clinton. The Internews board includes big Democratic donors and political insiders, and WikiLeaks says at least one of its six subsidiaries is based in the Cayman Islands, a notorious offshore haven.
Meanwhile, its headquarters in California? Reportedly an abandoned building still listed in official filings.
Let that sink in: a half-billion-dollar media empire, pushing narratives in dozens of countries, funded by your tax dollars--and run from a ghost office.
Internews says it's here to "support press freedom." But as one media analyst put it, "It's not about giving journalists a voice--it's about choosing which voices get heard."
So the next time you read a "fact-check" or see a story calling something "disinformation," remember: it might just be brought to you by the same people who paid $473 million to decide what the world thinks is true.
Sources: Anadolu Agency, Hungary Gov, Ukrayinska Pravda, KoSSev, Earth Journalism Network, TRT World, Concordia, Shore News Network
Meanwhile, the left authorized $4 trillion in taxpayer dollars for their own political warfare uses:
Insurrection Barbie @DefiyantlyFreeThis thread shows how $4 Trillion in Federal Funds Were Funneled Through Leftist NGOs to Enrich Activists, Mobilize Voters, and Power Anti-Trump Protests--With Receipts
This is maybe the most important thread I have ever done. It explains how the two biggest pieces of legislation from the Biden administration filled the coffers of all of these activist groups that have been engaging in the Trump 2.0 resistance. From GOTV efforts, to Anti-Tesla protests to the legal battles against Trump.
The Center for American Progress (CAP), founded by Clinton ally John Podesta, is more than a think tank--it's the strategic command center for the modern Left. Under Biden, CAP helped orchestrate the biggest activist cash grab in U.S. history: $4 TRILLION.
When Biden tapped Podesta to oversee implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act--a $369B climate fund--it wasn't just about energy. It was about control. Podesta's real mission? Redistribute billions to Democrat-aligned NGOs.But that $369B was just one piece. The combined total from COVID relief, infrastructure, and climate bills under Biden exceeds $4 TRILLION. CAP helped shape who got that money--and it wasn't the states. It was activist orgs.
Enter the Justice40 Initiative--designed to steer 40% of benefits to "disadvantaged communities." In practice, this meant bypassing elected officials and funneling funds directly to NGOs, most of them progressive-aligned.
These grants weren't just for "climate justice." They funded GOTV, "community empowerment," "trusted messengers," and "technical assistance." Translation: campaign infrastructure disguised as public service.
Organizations like Indivisible and the Sunrise Movement became major beneficiaries. Both have organized anti-Trump protests, Tesla shutdowns, and youth voter drives--and both have received massive indirect support through these federal programs.Indivisible used its gains to grow chapters in every swing state, launch digital voter targeting, and coordinate pressure campaigns against GOP legislation. Their footprint expanded after receiving funds through "equity" and "democracy advancement" grants.
Sunrise Movement, tied to "climate resilience" grants, led protests at Tesla showrooms and occupied congressional offices. In 2024, they claimed to have made over 4 million youth voter contacts, playing a massive role in Democrat turnout.Podesta and CAP created the policy architecture that made this possible. They advised federal agencies to embed "equity" mandates and prioritize "community-based organizations" (aka: progressive NGOs) in grantmaking.
In total, the Justice40 Accelerator--just one program--helped NGOs win $138 million in grants. That's just the tip of the iceberg.
Let's be clear: these aren't apolitical charities.* Indivisible was built to oppose Trump.
* Sunrise led sit-ins to demand Biden go further left.
* Faith in Action and EDF advocate openly for progressive legislation.
And they're all funded by your tax dollars--thanks to Podesta's CAP and their policy-to-grant pipeline. This is government-funded activism, hidden behind a green mask.
CAP didn't just lobby from the sidelines. Its alumni staff the Biden admin. Its reports became agency regulations. Its "equity" mandates were inserted into budget guidance.
This wasn't legislation. This was executive-branch capture. Voters never approved it. Congress never debated it. And now, the Left has permanent infrastructure--built and maintained by public funding.
Meanwhile, conservative groups get nothing. No parallel infrastructure. No grants. No embedded agencies. Just censorship, audits, and public smears.
This is what they mean by "saving democracy":
* Billions to leftist orgs
* Massive GOTV ops under federal cover
* Protest movements subsidized by taxpayers
* Power concentrated in NGOs that answer to no one
Final receipts:
*$600B+ allocated across 500+ programs (Justice40)
* $138M+ in direct awards via Justice40 Accelerator
* 4M+ voter contacts by Sunrise Movement
* Indivisible protest partnerships with House Democrats
* CAP's direct personnel pipeline into federal agencies
CAP built it. Podesta directed it. NGOs profited. And the Left now has a publicly funded political machine disguised as a climate plan.
The Trump administration MUST investigate this fully.
She included a lot of links with supporting evidence, which I did not copy and paste. You can see those here.
The Left Is Now Shrieking About a Right-Wing "Womanosphere," Even Worse Than the Manosphere, Because It Encourages Young Women to be "Thin, Fertile, and Republican"
—Ace
I mentioned this in last night's Quick Hits, I think.
Left-wing media has identified a dangerous new political archetype: the thin, fertile, Republican woman.Beware the burgeoning online "womanosphere" urging an audience of young women away from feminism and towards marriage, children, and being attractive, warns The Guardian. The outlet points to prominent conservative commentators such as Brett Cooper and Candace Owens, along with publications like Evie Magazine, as emblematic of this clunkily-named counterpart to the "manosphere."
These women are united by their "desire to return to a gender-essentialist worldview," according to The Guardian, which casts "women as submissive homemakers" and "men as strong providers."
Oh, the horror.
Hey I already said that.
"Gender-essentialism" refers to the outlandish belief that men and women are different. One is free to draw varied conclusions from this fact. The left has taken up a strange quarrel with the concept of biological sex itself, an argument which defeats itself at the outset. How can one analyze why female commentators specifically appeal to females without acknowledging the validity of the category?The outlet warns of "an organized effort" to create an "alternative rightwing media ecosystem targeting young female US audiences." One discerns the outlet's terror at the prospect -- no great wonder, given the much vaunted "podcast strategy" helped win over young male voters to Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
"Organized" is supposed to be a dirty word. It connotes an insidious masterplan to take women off birth control and put them on quick-slimming diets. But the legacy media, with its extreme left-wing bias, is surely no less organized and strident in its political and cultural prescriptions than the "right-wing media." Notice the asymmetry in terms. The New York Times and Netflix are simply media. They claim neutral ground. It's a powerful rhetorical trick. If they can successfully assert themselves as unbiased observers and artists, they fashion reality itself in their terms.
...
"Young women have been hailed as the saving grace of the Democratic party, the force that will deliver us from all those angry young men spending all their time listening to podcasts, but that's not a given," writes The Guardian.
Therein lies a sick admission. The Democratic Party prefers women fat, infertile, single, and unhappy. Why? Because those women make the most fervent ideologues. Leftism inverts natural hierarchies. It lofts the ugly and sick above the beautiful. It punishes any natural inclination towards the latter. This appeals to malcontents who depend on such an infrastructure to confer them status and meaning. Or a green card, as the case may be.
Who profits by a woman being thin and fertile? Why, only the woman herself, the young men interested in dating and marrying them, her future family, and all the rest of society by extension. The left's supposed concern for female "freedom" and "independence" is false. They'd just prefer women be dependent on the state, not a husband.
As I frequently say, the Democrat Party is the Husband of Last Resort for unmarriagable, miserable, mentally-ill women.
Here's a bit more from this deranged screed from The Guardian:
It's not only rightwingers who have gripes with contemporary feminism. Many on the left have been critical of shallow "girlboss feminism" (the bipartisan backlash to the embarrassing Blue Origin flight being a case in point), noting that impossible expectations are placed on women in a crassly capitalist society that offers little support for working mothers. According to a 2023 survey run by the non-profit Catalyst, four in 10 women said they felt they would need to change jobs in order to manage childcare demands, and the US is still the only rich country in the world without a national paid parental leave policy. Yet for this new womanosphere, the response is not advancing policies like paid family leave or affordable childcare, but to return to an idealized, illusory past where being a wife and mother was viewed as a woman's sole purpose.Young women are particularly vulnerable to these appeals. Like their peers in the manosphere, these commentators are capitalizing on a real crisis of loneliness and economic precarity facing gen Z. "Social media has truly given gen Z a warped sense of reality," said Cooper, who has described dating apps as "treacherous" and a "barren" landscape.
The alternative vision these influencers are proposing is scarily retrograde and would strip women of their freedom and economic independence. "You want to go back and sit in a cubicle when you could have this, like, beautiful amazing child that you've created with the love of your life?" Cooper asked rhetorically on a recent podcast appearance.
Instead of trying to have it all, women, she said, need to change their priorities because "if you aren't going to the gym, if you aren't taking care of yourself, if you don't like children, if you only care about your career, and you hate the patriarchy" then a desirable man is "not going to go for you".
The type of woman these commentators valorize is thin, straight, fertile, traditionally feminine, conventionally attractive to men and white -- though they try to avoid overt racism, instead opting for sentiments like, "as a minority woman, I'm here to say that you'll be happier and more fulfilled if you aren't consumed by thinking about your race." Anyone who falls outside of this narrow mold is subject to relentless mocking and disparagement. Though they have different tactics and tones, like their cohorts in the manosphere, they play with the idea that calling women fat or ugly is fun and transgressive -- framing it as part of a virtuous quest to rid society of woke, feminist ideals.
Young women have been hailed as the saving grace of the Democratic party, the force that will deliver us from all those angry young men spending all their time listening to podcasts, but that's not a given. While young women still went blue in 2024, Joe Biden's 35-point lead in 2020 dwindled to a 24-point lead for Kamala Harris. Other demographics, like Black and Latino men, broke with historical trends to shift to the right this election. Emily Amick, an influencer and political analyst who has been observing the trend on her Substack, said that people might underestimate the womanosphere's impact at their peril. "What we saw in the 2024 presidential election was that the manosphere had a lot more impact than a lot of people expected," Amick said. "I believe that the conservative movement is running the same play with women, and in 2028 we are going to see a massive impact of the messaging machines they have been building."
LOL. If only the left had such a network of propaganda nodes...
...In the past two decades, mainstream women's outlets have made attempts to emphasize overall wellbeing instead of outer beauty and valorizing thinness above all. Evie sees this as wokeness run amok. They want to bring back your mother's -- or your grandmother's -- women's magazine, in which it was OK to celebrate a certain body type over others. "When we encounter a heavily tattooed, blue-haired, obese, gender-neutral individual with a bull-ring, that person is communicating to us that they actively disregard the standards for normality that the majority of people agree on," read a 2021 piece titled Objective Feminine Beauty Is Not A Relic Of The Patriarchy.
...
Maggie Bullock, a women's magazine veteran who co-writes the Spread, a newsletter about the industry, said she saw outlets like Evie as trying to be something of a "gateway drug" into more extreme conservative ideologies. "Like, we're nice and we're pretty and we're not that radical, don't worry, we're just telling you the truth," she said. "It feels like a wolf in sheep's clothing."
What would we do without experts.
...
Evie's reach shouldn't be overstated -- it has 210,000 followers on Instagram, compared with Cosmopolitan's 4m, and has only put out three print issues in four years -- but they're increasingly finding new ways to garner attention.
The entire premise of this article, that the Womanosphere is a Great and Growing Threat, relies on overstating its reach.
But now, in paragraph 30, they tell you it only has 210,000 subscribers.
From Phyllis Schlafly in the 1970s, who helped mobilize young Christian women against the Equal Rights Amendment, to Ann Coulter and Moms for Liberty, women have long played a role in spreading conservative propaganda. But what sets these new voices apart is that they don't all market themselves as political commentators. In this sense, they are cribbing from the success of the manosphere, which won new Maga converts in part because most of its leading figures weren't explicitly partisan.
You mean how "journalists" pretend they're not partisan so that their clear partisanship passes under people's radar undetected?
If only the left had this sort of powerful messaging machine!
Multi-hours-long podcast episodes and Twitch streams from the likes of Rogan, the Nelk Boys or Theo Von are typically much more weighted to cover sports, gambling, drugs and dating than they are to talk about which bill is passing in the Senate.The leading voices of the womanosphere are using a similar strategy. As Brittany Hugoboom put it in an op--ed for the rightwing outlet Quillette: "Conservatives will never win if they imagine themselves as combatants atop defensive battlements, hurling abuse on the mass media. We need to involve ourselves in the creation of pop culture."
...
The coalition drawn to fringe wellness ideas is multifaceted: from the "crunchy" moms frightened of toxic chemicals they believe are in our food and pharmaceuticals, to the chronic illness sufferers frustrated with a medical system they feel has let them down. Yet the savvy voices of the womanosphere have responded by weaponizing genuine anxieties -- which have complex roots and few easy answers -- and serving up far-right propaganda on a platter. "It's sneaky," Clark told the Washington Post. "I want to be seen as: Alex Clark, cool girl, loves health and wellness, happens to be conservative. I'm not trying to beat people over the head with that. I don't think that's persuasive."
You mean how celebrities attempt to leverage their fame and public goodwill into influencing people's political thinking?
If only the left had a network of propagandists such as these!
Oh, and I love how the left, which has for 60 years railed against artificial additives in food, are now positively in favor of adulterating food with as many unsafe chemicals as possible.
...
Clark's crusades against topics such as birth control -- that it "accelerates ageing", "induces abortion", causes cancer and fertility issues -- make more sense in light of the Trump administration's pro-natalist policy agenda, which organizations like Turning Point USA and Project 2025 have spent years crafting."It's all tied together with the goal of shaming women who have sex and who might get pregnant, and ensuring that they really are forced into the idea of this nuclear family because it preserves current power structures," said Dr Jennifer Lincoln, an OB-GYN in Portland, Oregon. "They come at it from this Maha angle of 'we have to protect women,' and then they legislate away people's choices to use these medicines that are literally life-saving for so many people."
Another expert weighs in.
Continue reading
The New York Times Whines That an Illegal Alien Was Deported After 21 Years (Cue the Violins) "to a 'Home' He Barely Knew"
—Ace
Their headline and propagandistic twitter post omitted a highly relevant fact: He was a drug dealer convicted of kidnapping. He then served 15 years in prison for that crime.
Via Twitchy, this is outrageous propaganda.
Twitter should limit the NYT's account to exercise some control over this Fake News Russian Disinformation.
Tricia McLaughlin
@TriciaOhioThe New York Times conveniently glossed over that this illegal alien, Nascimento Blair is a convicted kidnapper and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
In 2008, he was issued a final order of removal. Because of the Biden administration's open border policies, this criminal illegal alien was released onto the streets of New York.
The article does grudgingly admit his ticky-tack kidnapping conviction and the 15 years he served in prison. Though the Times insists that that conviction is in doubt, because, the Times says, this deportee "disputes" the conviction.
Ah, I see. A convict "disputes" his conviction. Well why didn't you say so? Obviously he's innocent because no convicted criminal would ever lie.
But most people aren't going to see the article -- they're going to see the headline, and the twitter post, and those claim that he's just a guy who got deported.
Nascimento Blair returned home in shackles.He landed in Jamaica in February, 21 years after he had abandoned the island, seated next to dozens of his countrymen who were also handcuffed. As he stepped off the plane at the seaside airport in Kingston and felt the scorching Caribbean sun of his youth, Mr. Blair, 46, was greeted with suspicion.
Still dazed, he looked out of place. He had on the same winter clothes -- a peacoat, turtleneck, gray suit and Chelsea boots -- he had been wearing when U.S. immigration authorities had abruptly detained him on a frigid morning in New York City weeks earlier.
He noticed his slightly Americanized accent as he sat through hours of interrogation by Jamaican authorities at the airport. And he felt like an outcast as Jamaican officials snapped his mug shot, took his fingerprints and asked about his past.
"They don't look at you like a Jamaican," Mr. Blair said. "They look at you like a criminal."
You are a convicted criminal. That's why they look at you like you're a convicted criminal.
Mr. Blair did not give them details about his past, an odyssey that began with a side hustle dealing marijuana in the New York suburbs as a 24-year-old Jamaican transplant, which led to a kidnapping conviction he disputed and a 15-year prison sentence he fulfilled.It was his criminal past that had gotten him deported from the United States, where he had been rebuilding his life and seeking redemption.
So it was his kidnapping conviction that got him deported, and not racism and/or "fear of brown people," huh?
He had earned two college degrees, started a trucking business, mentored people released from prison, cared for a fiancée with breast cancer, taken classes at Columbia University.
Oh wow he took classes at Columbia night school. He's a regular Maryland Father.
None of it would stave off deportation: He was among the first few thousand immigrants scattered across the globe during the early days of President Trump's deportation campaign.On paper, Mr. Blair fit the profile of the people Mr. Trump says he wants to deport: those with criminal backgrounds. In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security blamed the Biden administration for not deporting Mr. Blair sooner.
But to Mr. Blair and his supporters, his life story was one of rehabilitation, nuanced and filled with qualities that they believe Mr. Trump's deportation machine disregards as it flies out immigrants en masse.
LOL.
The article pushes the factoid that he was released from prison in 2020 -- the year of the covid crisis -- and Trump didn't deport him before he left office. The NYT seems to believe that if a president doesn't make it his top priority to deport you as soon as he can, then you are grandfathered into remaining into the country forever.
By the way, the NYT talks about this guy "living in America" for 21 years, as if he has squatters rights that kick in after that time period.
For fifteen of those years "living in America," he was living in federal cell because he's a drug-dealing kidnapper.
He kidnapped someone and was convicted of it within a few years of coming to America and enriching our precious diversity with his crimes.
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Trump Unveils His "Secret Weapon" to Bring Racist Universities in Line
—Ace
Deep State Media organization NPR:
President Trump on Wednesday signed a list of executive actions aimed at both higher education and K-12 schools.One of the actions takes aim at college and university accreditors, organizations the White House says have "abused their authority by imposing discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)-based standards."
Another promises new discipline guidance for K-12 schools, with the goal of "ensuring school discipline policies are based on objective behavior, not DEI," the White House said in a statement.
"Today's Executive Orders pave the way for critical innovations -- inviting more competition in the higher education accreditation system, ensuring transparency in college finances, supporting new technologies in the classroom, and more," Education Secretary Linda McMahon wrote on social media.
Sponsor MessageThe collection of orders aim to cement Trump's conservative agenda when it comes to education in America, including rolling back the policies from the Biden administration, bolstering workforce training, improving teaching about artificial intelligence in schools, and launching a new White House initiative on historically Black colleges and universities.
The order pertaining to college accreditation directs McMahon to "overhaul" the system. Accreditation is the process colleges are required to go through to receive federal financial aid, aimed at ensuring that a program meets an acceptable level of quality.Trump referred to accreditation on the campaign trail as his "secret weapon" in his efforts to combat what he considers ideological bias in higher education. The executive action aims to use the process as a way to hold colleges accountable for "ideological overreach" and to increase "intellectual diversity" on campus.
The action directs the education secretary to recognize new accreditors in an effort to encourage more competition. Trump has previously modified the accreditation system: During his first administration, he removed restrictions that forced schools to use accreditors based on their geographic region.
"Trump's goal is to manipulate accreditors in order to force colleges and universities to do his bidding and punish them when they resist," said Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors in a statement. "He is weaponizing the accreditation process to gain the leverage he seeks."
What a weird way to say "he's fighting blatant racial (and political) discrimination in taxpayer-funded schools."
Another executive action warns that federal grants for universities could be revoked if schools do not complete "full and timely disclosure of foreign funding."In a briefing announcing the order, White House staff secretary Will Scharf said, "We believe that certain universities, including, for example, Harvard, have routinely violated this law, and this law has not been effectively enforced."
Federal law already requires schools to disclose gifts or contracts worth $250,000 or more from foreign entities. In a statement, a Harvard spokesperson said the school had, for decades, been in compliance with the law.
On Truth Social on Thursday, Trump dug in on Harvard again calling the university "a Liberal mess" and "a threat to Democracy."
He also is revoking Obama's and Biden's executive orders which demanded that schools not punish black kids, and/or severely punish white kids to make up for the fact that so many black kids violate school rules.
In an executive action aimed at K-12 schools, Trump requested new federal guidance on school discipline. The measure calls for revoking previous policies by Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama aimed at reducing racial disparities in, for example, suspensions and expulsions. The new guidance would prohibit using "racially preferential discipline practices.""Trump's order empowers local school boards by encouraging real discipline," said Tiffany Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty and a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "By ending federal overreach, it frees educators to focus on teaching, not chaos, ensuring kids get a quality education."
But some civil rights activists disagree.
"These executive orders are another move to dismantle civil rights protections," said Judith Browne Dianis, who runs the Advancement Project, a civil rights nonprofit. "The Administration wants to rebuild the school to prison pipeline but civil rights law is clear: schools cannot punish students more harshly because of race, color, national origin, sex, or disability."
LOL.
Princeton University's President defiantly continues racist policies which other Princeton professors admit deliberately disfavor whites, Jews, and males of all races.
Christopher F. Rufo and Ryan Thorpe report for City Journal:
Amid the ongoing showdown between the Trump administration and the Ivy League, one university president has positioned himself as a leader of the academic resistance: Princeton's Christopher L. Eisgruber.Earlier this month, the Trump administration suspended hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded grants to Princeton as part of its investigation into racial discrimination and anti-Semitism at the New Jersey campus. Eisgruber, though, was defiant, telling the New York Times that he's "not considering any concessions" and calling for other university presidents to follow his lead.
This isn't Eisgruber's first bid for the spotlight. After the death of George Floyd in 2020, he declared that Princeton--where he has served as president since 2013--was guilty of "systemic racism." In a letter to students that September, he went so far as to claim that racism was embedded in the very "structures of the university itself."
Eisgruber was right to say that he presides over a system of racial discrimination--but not in the way he imagines. The university does not discriminate against "oppressed" groups, such as blacks and Latinos, but against those seen as "oppressors."
"At Princeton, it's totally common knowledge that there are favored groups and disfavored groups," one professor said. "And the disfavored groups are whites, Jews, males," and others commonly disliked by the Left.
A City Journal investigation confirms that Princeton has, in fact, entrenched a system of racial discrimination and segregation. We have obtained more than a dozen internal documents and conducted interviews with a half-dozen employees, who confirm that the university has flagrantly violated the principles of the Civil Rights Act in the name of "social justice."
The basic structure of this system is the university's "diversity, equity, and inclusion" bureaucracy, which has expanded dramatically under Eisgruber's tenure. An infographic circulated by Princeton shows at least 40 academic and administrative departments with established DEI committees, with the express purpose of adjusting the campus's racial composition. As Princeton's first annual diversity report noted, "Every administrative and academic leader is being held accountable for demographic evolution."
According to several Princeton faculty members, "demographic evolution" is a euphemism for racial quotas and outright discrimination in academic hiring. A 2021 internal report outlining best practices for faculty recruitment described how staff were trained to "increase the diversity of the applicants at every step in the process." The report advised search committees to discount negative references for minority candidates and to ensure that every shortlist included at least "two women and/or two underrepresented minority candidates."
The implicit message from Eisgruber and the administration: don't hire white men unless absolutely necessary. According to one professor, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal, this meant abandoning merit-based hiring in favor of race-based preferences--the only way, given the current pipeline, to accomplish Eisgruber's stated goal of increasing "by 50 percent the number of tenured or tenure-track faculty members from underrepresented groups over the next five years."
Though many of these policies relied on euphemism, some were openly and explicitly discriminatory. The university's Target of Opportunity Program, which was cancelled shortly before the 2024 presidential election, made funding available for departments to hire "candidates from groups that are underrepresented on campus." According to conversations with Princeton professors, this referred primarily to racial minorities and women. The program covered half of each hire's salary, allowing departments to bring on new faculty without bearing the full financial burden. In effect, the administration created financial incentives to prioritize hiring racial minorities.
Princeton also has an illegal policy to discriminate against white suppliers and vendors.
...
The reality is that Princeton has violated the principles of the Civil Rights Act. It may have gone further: in Morenoff's estimation, its contracting policy likely ran afoul of New Jersey civil rights law ("among the strongest, most sweeping non-discrimination statutes in the nation") and the Civil Rights Act of 1866. And its hiring preferences may have violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits racial discrimination in hiring unless the employer can fit one of a few narrow exceptions--which, Morenoff said, there is "good reason to doubt."While Eisgruber has remained publicly defiant toward the Trump administration, he seems to recognize his vulnerability. The university has been quietly scrubbing its website of DEI materials and recently updated its page to include a statement on Princeton's ostensible commitment to "equal opportunity and non-discrimination."
One hundred Yale professors signed a statement recommending that the school freeze all new hiring and conduct an investigation into its own hiring practices. This, they hope, will forestall a federal investigation.
The statement points out that faculty hiring has "stagnated" while "administrative" staff -- mostly in DEI make-work "jobs" -- has grown by double.
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Trump Just Wants to Sell Some Sweet Merch and the Left Is Freaking Out for Some Reason
—Ace
Sometimes you want to sell a hat with your name on it, followed by some random numbers.
What's the big deal?
The Gulf of America hat must be what's bugging them.
Is there anything to this apart from trolling? Steve Bannon keeps talking up running Trump a third time, but that's just silly unless there's a constitutional amendment.
When a president is a lame-duck, after the mid-term elections of his second term, he loses most of his political power, because members of his own party don't feel threatened by him any longer. Trump's power over his base will blunt that effect, but he will definitely lose some of his power to bully the RINOs and GOPers after November 2026.
Who knows, maybe Trump wants the idea out there that he's going to be president through 2032 just to keep the RINOs on-side.
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FBI Director Kash Patel Announces Arrest of Milwaukee Judge for Obstructing an ICE Raid
—Ace
Federal agents arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan on Friday morning for allegedly obstructing an ICE operation involving an illegal immigrant....
Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested Friday morning on charges tied to obstruction of a federal immigration operation, according to statements initially shared by FBI Director Kash Patel. In a since-deleted post, Patel accused Dugan of "intentionally misdirecting" federal agents who were attempting to arrest an undocumented individual, identified as Eduardo Flores Ruiz.
The arrest took place at approximately 8 a.m. inside the Milwaukee County Courthouse. Brady McCarron, a spokesman for the U.S. Marshals Service in Washington, D.C., confirmed the arrest to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and noted that Dugan is currently in federal custody.
The Journal Sentinel had previously reported that the FBI was investigating whether Dugan interfered with federal agents during an immigration arrest attempt last week. According to their report, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrived at the courthouse on April 18th to execute an arrest warrant on Flores Ruiz, who was scheduled to appear in Dugan's courtroom.
...
Patel also confirmed that Flores Ruiz is now in the custody of federal authorities. While the FBI has not yet issued an official public statement, Patel's remarks suggest the agency believes Dugan's actions directly enabled Ruiz to avoid apprehension during the initial attempt.
I'm not sure why he deleted the post. I guess so as not to comment on an active case.
The tweet was screencapped before it was deleted:
Hello, everyone. This will be my last day before a one week vacation. I hope you're all in as good a mood as I am but I don't see how that would be possible.
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THE MORNING RANT: Periodic Roundup of the EV Follies – 4/25/2025
—Buck Throckmorton
Wheels on the EV Bus Don’t Go ‘Round
Making school buses electric is an idea that is so stupid that only our “highly educated,” credentialed elites could have thought it would work out. Now that school districts are putting EV school buses into place, it is becoming clear just how awful an idea it was.
“Kansas school halts electric bus use over student safety concerns” [KSNT – 4/17/2025]
The Wabaunsee School District serves rural communities west of Topeka. After deciding to pull its Lion electric school buses out of service, its superintendent was quoted as saying, “While the buses showed early promise, we encountered ongoing operational issues that ultimately led us to pause their use. Out of an abundance of caution, and in line with our highest priority of student safety, we made the decision to remove the buses from active service while we work with the manufacturer toward resolution.”
Working with the manufacturer toward resolution will be difficult…
These are the same Lion EV school buses that have proved to be such a nightmare for schools in Maine, as I recently discussed. Lion has ceased production and has filed for bankruptcy protection, despite the Biden administration having funneled $160 million of taxpayer dollars to it.
Meanwhile, Blue Bird Corporation has fully mastered the corporate-communist business model, as I documented a few months ago. Blue Bird not only receives government grants to manufacture electric school buses, but the government also pays school districts to buy Blue Bird’s buses…or at least it did until Trump took office. Well, Blue Bird’s EV school buses are also not working out very well, either. This news just broke:
“Blue Bird Recalls Electric School Buses” [The Brake Report – 4/21/2025]
The issue came to light in October 2024 following two collisions involving Blue Bird Vision electric buses. Investigations revealed that a high-voltage system shutdown disabled the primary brake assist, and the secondary brake assist system was inoperative due to a blown fuse in one vehicle and a disconnected wiring harness in another. The lack of diagnostic warnings for these failure modes left drivers unaware of the compromised braking system, contributing to the crashes.
As much fun as I have mocking those people and institutions who believed the EV hype and have taken a financial hit for their foolishness, it is deeply disturbing that children are still being subject to the consequences of this awful episode. Every electric school bus is now a sunk cost that cannot be salvaged. It’s time to permanently shut down the EV school bus experiment and get the kids back on safe, reliable, petroleum-powered buses.
Plug-in Hybrids: A Solution in Search of a Problem
Not only are plug-in hybrids a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, they’re a dangerously bad “solution.”
As best I can tell, the only problem plug-in hybrids solve is that of virtue-signaling people who need the range of an ICE vehicle while still wanting the smugness that comes from driving a plug-in electric car. Unfortunately, plug-in hybrids simply create a very heavy, very inefficient car that is also subject to runaway thermal fires, just like regular EVs.
This is a lesson some Volvo customers are learning, as they are now being told NOT to plug in their plug-in hybrid.
“Volvo Tells Thousands Of Plug-In Hybrid Owners To Stop Charging” [Car Scoops – 3/26/2025]
Volvo is recalling thousands of plug-in hybrids in the United States as they could short circuit when parked and fully charged. This poses a serious fire risk and it could occur at night, when the vehicle is parked in your garage.That’s a scary thought and owners are being advised not to charge their vehicles until the recall has been addressed.
Delving deeper into the matter, Volvo identified a “production deviation with the battery module” that could potentially lead to a thermal runaway event.
There is this one amazing trick that can ensure a car owner that he will never experience a thermal runaway event with his vehicle. Can you guess what it is?
Does Blowing up a Warehouse Full of Lithium Batteries Count as “Recycling”?
Facilities that collect used lithium EV batteries for disposal / recycling are effectively massive bombs with a fuse that’s waiting to be lit. And it doesn’t even take a spark to light the fuse, just a little instability.
Stories like the following are becoming so common that it is clear that there is no safe way to store used lithium batteries:
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The Morning Report — 4/ 25 /25
—J.J. Sefton
Good morning kids. Well it certainly looks as if the left is baying for blood, or yet another day ending in "Y." As CBD and I along with our fantastic guest Vox Clamantis discussed on the latest episode of the podcast (linked here and in the sidebar)
President Trump has very few options in standing up to what amounts to a coup being perpetrated on his presidency and the American people by a rogue judiciary, that in the cases of immigration law and deportations rests on the complete and intentional bastardization of the definitions of "Due Process," Over and above attempts to block executive actions vis a vis DOGE and the reining in of the bureaucratic state. Of course, this is but one front in the continuing Civil War against the Republic as founded. Whether this is version 2.0 or another chapter which began either after Aaron Burr murdered Alexander Hamilton, coinciding with the infamous Marbury v. Madison case that bears directly on said Judiciary, or after 1865, or with Wilson or FDR it makes little difference.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Chris Jansing Reports” that if President Donald Trump disobeyed a Supreme Court order, “extraordinary action will be necessary.” Jansing said, “The Supreme Court said the administration must facilitate the return of Kilmer Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador. That has not happened. Are we at the point, Senator, where you feel extraordinary action is warranted?”
Emphasis mine. And so, the question is how many divisions does the Supreme Court and Chuck Schumer have?
While plotting upcoming protests, Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., urged demonstrators to target congressmen at church.“Folks, colleagues of mine should not be able to go to church or to go to the neighborhood gas station — if they pump their own gas, because I work with a lot of billionaires,” Ramirez said. “They should not be able to, without seeing community asking them ‘What the hell are you doing [for] my Social Security? What the hell are you doing to protect my Medicaid? Why the hell are you not standing up to protect public education in this country?’”
On a more positive note, this actually happened:
Federal prosecutors have declared intent to seek the death penalty against Luigi Mangione, according to a court document filed on Thursday evening.The filing was obtained by Courthouse News Service on Thursday.
It comes a week after Mangione, who is accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was indicted on federal charges.
The court document argues that Mangione “intentionally” killed Thompson because of his position as the CEO of a health insurance company.
Of course with prosecutors like Alvin Bragg and judges like Boasberg, as well as John Roberts, and more crucially with an alarming percentage of the citizenry viewing Mangione as well as Hamas boosters and Islamic terrorists and Tren de Aragua gangsters as heroes,
Schumer's poisonous words as well as this filthy lying Shit-whore are a green light to commit acts of violence in the guise of personal and societal self-defense. How long before the jail housing Mangione will be targeted by Antifa goons in an attempt to break Mangione out. Of course the Hakeem Jeffries' and Titty Caca AOC's will be nowhere near the line of fire but manning the bullhorns and grandstanding in front of the CNN and MSNSDAP cameras while Banjo Boy and credibly accused intern-murderer Joe Scarborough describes the action as a mostly peaceful Warsaw Ghetto uprising moment or some such rot.
Speaking of Antifa goon squads, Jan Schakowsky, an evil bint congress vermin from Chicago has decided to not seek re-election, this good news comes on the heels of would be mass-assassin-linked Illinois senator Dick Durbin also throwing in the towel. As for Schakowsky, she and especially her husband Robert Creamer are directly linked with organizing mobs and goon squads to confront and assault Republicans and others they deem as political enemies.
While it's certainly good news that Durbin and Schakowsky are leaving the scene, or at least the spotlight, maybe it's too much to hope for that this might be a harbinger for a return to some sort of sanity for Illinois. Considering that the Left's bench is very dark and very deep, and that their unslakable lust for absolute power is insatiable, I won't hold my breath. Considering the above-quoted Delia Ramirez vermin is also from Illinois.
Elsewhere, I note with great sorrow the 110th anniversary of the Turkish Muslim genocide perpetrated against Armenia. Considering the nature of Islam, horrible and catastrophic as this event was, it was not and should not be viewed as an isolated incident, as Wednesday's observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day reminds us as well as the most recent slaughter of Hindus in Kashmir. And the over 100 million butchered in little more than a century, and counting (with places like North Korea, Cuba and Red China still racking up the body count), in the name of advancing socialism/communism.
Evil never rests, and neither should we. God bless the memory of all who perished at the hands of totalitarian evil in all its forms.
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.
Have a great weekend.
- ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
- The document also claims that the 26-year-old presents “a future danger” because he expressed intent “to target an entire industry, and rally political and social opposition to that industry.”
Federal prosecutors officially file intent to seek death penalty against Luigi Mangione
- Look, I don’t know if it’s having a certain level of ego or whether it’s pure stupidity — heck, maybe both — but the left in this country, or at least the freeloaders in our government who oppose cleaning up the swamp because it puts their cushy, accountability-free lifestyles at risk, are absolutely getting everything they deserve from President Donald Trump’s administration — or maybe they “deserve” more.
Independent journalist James O’Keefe’s O’Keefe Media Group (OMG) just released yet another undercover video exposing either an egomaniac or a guy just lying to impress his date. Either way, Nicolas Turza — the alleged Branch Chief for the Department of Defense (DoD) — said what he said.
Undercover Video Shows DoD 'Branch Chief' Deriding Trump: 'He's Illegitimate,' 'We're Going to Resist Him'
- Daniel Greenfield: Klaus Schwab steps down even as Davos is dying.
Mr. Globalism Goes Away
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Daily News Stuff 25 April 2025
—Pixy Misa
Top Story- Intel has officially announced its plans to fire all the useless freeloaders and force employees to actually show up at the office and do their jobs. (Tom's Hardware)|
Employees will be required to be in the office four days a week starting in September, a goal likely easier to achieve when the company is also expected to be firing 20% of its workforce.
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Faster Than A Speeding ONT
—WeirdDave
Greetings Horde! Say, didja see that Bernie Sanders and AOP are flying a private jet around the country to their “fight the oligarchy” events?
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Doggy Supermarket Sweep Cafe
—Ace
The Nile from space
I'm an astronaut now!!!
So are you!!!
Little dog shows he's totally ready to fight off a predator.
How can I miss you when you won't let me leave?
Puppy gets the last drop of a treat.
An old clip: Penguins just won't take the hint.
Dogs have differing energy levels.
He identifies as a human female, so.
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Quick Hits
—Ace
Florida's top Democrat state senator has resigned, declaring that the Democrat Party is "dead."
State Sen. Jason Pizzo said he was stepping down as the Florida Senate's Democratic leader -- because he is quitting the Democratic Party.Pizzo, who represents parts of Broward and Miami-Dade counties, made the surprise announcement on the floor of the chamber after the April 24 session. He'll remain a senator, but as one with no party affiliation.
For months, he had teased at a run for governor next year when Gov. Ron DeSantis will be term-limited.
"Here's the issue: The Democratic Party in Florida is dead," he told fellow senators. "There are good people who can resuscitate it but they don't want it to be me."
Former Republican congressman and hard-core NeverTrumper ne'er-do-well David Jolly is going to run for the Democrat nomination. He just made it official that he is in fact a Democrat, now registering with the party so he can run for office as a Democrat.
At least he's now forced to drop the "I'm a True Republican" hustle.
Last week David Hogg, a Vice Chair of the DNC, announced that the grifter group he founded would be spending $20 million to primary Democrats in favor of even more extremist progressives.
The DNC plans to pass a rule that no officer of the DNC can advocate for or donate money to any candidate in any primary.
Democratic party leaders Thursday morning admonished officers to not take sides in primaries, addressing a situation involving activist and Democratic National Committee vice chair David Hogg."Let me be unequivocal. No DNC officer should ever attempt to influence the outcome of a primary election, whether on behalf of an incumbent or a challenger," DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a press call. "Voters should decide who our primary nominees are, not DNC leadership. Our role is to serve as stewards of a fair, open and trusted process, not to tilt the scales."'
As of now, however, the DNC does not have the power to remove Hogg if he refuses to stand down on funding primary challenges through a separate PAC -- unless the body changes its rules, a senior DNC official told NBC News."Under the present bylaws, there is no action that can be taken against David Hogg without changing to the bylaws to extend that policy of neutrality to all primaries," DNC Finance Chair Chris Korge told NBC News. "There is no codified, legal way to remove an officer for doing what David Hogg has done because it only extends to the presidential race. "
Korge said that, as of now, the situation is to be addressed at a future meeting, likely in August.
A federal judge has blocked Trump's executive order requiring proof of citizenship in federal elections.
Donald Trump's unilateral effort to reshape election processes is an attempt to "short-circuit Congress's deliberative process by executive order," a federal judge in Washington, D.C. wrote Thursday afternoon.In a 120-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly blocked the Trump administration from requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote and ordering that election officials "assess" the citizenship of anyone who receives public assistance before allowing them to register. She also barred the Election Assistance Commission from withholding federal funding from states that did not comply with the order.
"Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States--not the President--with the authority to regulate federal elections," she wrote. "No statutory delegation of authority to the Executive Branch permits the President to short-circuit Congress's deliberative process by executive order."
The Constitution says that citizens vote in our elections, not non-citizens. So this court is basically arguing that non-citizens can vote as they will and we need a special law, in addition to the Constitution's contemplation of only citizens voting.
These abuses will not stand and will not be forgotten.
The left-wing SCOTUSblog has been bought by the also left-wing Dispatch.
SCOTUSblog @SCOTUSblogAs one era ends, an exciting new one begins. SCOTUSblog is delighted to announce that it has been acquired by @TheDispatch and will help bolster their coverage of the Supreme Court and the rule of law.
Sean Davis @seanmdavRecall that The Dispatch colluded with Facebook to deplatform pro-lifers during the 2020 election by publishing fraudulent fact-checks knowing they would be used as a pretext for censorship. And when they got caught, they lied about it.
Which means that anyone interested in actual facts can now safely ignore everything published by SCOTUSblog from here on out.
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Whoa: President Trump Signs Executive Order Ending the "Disparate Impact" Doctrine
—Ace
This is huge.
The left is always attempting to "prove" racial discrimination without actually having to prove any racial discrimination. You will have of course noticed leftists side-stepping questions about proof of actual "white supremacy" in America, insisting that it is structurally white supremacist.
Where is the actual white supremacy they always claim lurks around every corner? They don't have to prove it. It's just "in the air we breathe."
There's so much white supremacy in America that it's impossible actually point to any white supremacy.
Where's the white supremacy? You're soaking in it, Bigots!
A very similar legal doctrine has claimed that you don't have to prove a law or company's policy was enacted to racially discriminate against anyone. All you have to do is prove that the measure has "disparate impact" on a "historically marginalized community."
So, for example, if blacks have lower high school graduation rates than whites, you're not allowed to require a high school diploma in hiring. You just say "this has a disparate impact on black applicants." You don't have to prove the company intended any discrimination. Intent is not an element of the crime, as they say. If it has "disparate impact" on a minority, you're guilty, period.
But now Trump signed an executive order forbidding the government from "disparate impact" analysis. Meaning the government can only attack policies as racist if there is an actual, provable racist intent.
Wokal Distance @wokal_distance
This is the most important executive order Trump has signed thus far.Ending "disparate impact liability" is the first step to destroying the DEI ideology that the left installed in Government.
Disparate impact in the United States refers to practices refer to rules that adversely affect one group of people more than another, even if the rules applied are neutral.This means disparities in outcome at the group level can be taken as evidence of discrimination...
This means even if the rules are neutral and applied fairly to everyone, if a group is underrepresented that group can potentially sue for discrimination.
This is the anchor at the core of civil rights law that allows woke activists to engage in legal warfare.
Because disparities are taken as evidence of discrimination, it opens up companies to discrimination if any rule they have is thought to have a "disparate impact."For example, if the rule is overtime is done on sundays, Christians can sue because they don't work sundays...
And can't get overtime, and will earn less than their counterparts.
To avoid disparate impact liability, companies do DEI training and hire DEI officers so they can deminstrate a commitment to non-discrimination, and thus sheild themselves from accusations of discrimination.
The result of this is that inorder to avoid getting sued for civil right violations you have to either:
1. Hand out opportunities to such that each group gets opportunities in exact proportion to their numbers in society.
2. Do constant DEI training/cunsulting.
Regardless if which you do, you end up feeding the beast of DEI.
If you do option 1 you are in effect doing affirmative action, if you do option 2 you end up handing large sums of money to DEI grifters and activists...
The case that enshrined disparate impact into law was Griggs v. Duke Power Co.
The court said a neutral employment policy that disproportionately impacts a particular group may be unlawful even if the employer did not intend to discriminate against that particular group...
Disparate-impact is not actually enshrined in the civil rights act, it's a product of a court ruling, and this executive order shows the Trump administration is seeking to have the doctrine of disparate-impact liability overturned.
If that happened it would be a HUGE victory.
The entire industry of DEI exists because companies use DEI as a way to shield themselves from disparate-impact liability. By doing DEI they hope to show they are actively not discriminating.
That's why DEI training is now corporate best practice.
If disparate-impact is overturned the corporate and business justification for DEI trainjng and DEI officers evaporates.
This is a VERY big deal.
Now, it isn't the end of the road yet. Griggs v. Duke Power Co. still needs to be overturned at the Supreme Court. But...
This executive order shows where the Trump administration is headed on this issue, and if they challenege doctrine in court and win then it would be a knife through the heart of the DEI industry, and a huge blow to the woke-industrial-complex.
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Treasury Secretary Bessent: We Have the Opportunity for a "Beautiful Rebalancing" of Trade With China; Tariffs Could be Lowered to 50-65%
—Ace
Those tariffs are still beastly for China.
Trump talked about cutting the tariffs "substantially" down from the current 145% level.
US President Donald Trump has signaled a potential U-turn on his trade war with China amid continued market volatility, saying the high tariffs on Chinese goods will "come down substantially, but it won't be zero."Trump's remarks, made at a White House news event Tuesday, appear to mark a rhetorical climbdown after weeks of tough posturing and tit-for-tat retaliation that sent tariffs on China beyond a staggering 145%.
"145% is very high and it won't be that high," Trump said in a question-and-answer session with reporters in the Oval Office. "It won't be anywhere near that high. It'll come down substantially. But it won't be zero."
Trump made the comments when asked about Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's remarks earlier in the day that the high tariff rates between the United States and China have effectively embargoed trade between the economies.
Bessent said at a private investment conference hosted by JP Morgan Chase that the trade war with China is unsustainable and he expects the battle to de-escalate in the very near future, a person familiar with the matter confirmed to CNN.
Instead of a hard break or complete decoupling between the United States and China, Bessent told investors that the goal is to have a rebalancing of trade, the source told CNN.
...
Trump's shift in tone also went viral on the Chinese internet. On Wednesday, the hashtag "Trump chickened out" was trending as a top topic on social media platform Weibo, racking up more than 150 million views.
This is CNN so of course they're promoting Chinese communist propaganda about the US president.
China insists it's not even negotiating with China, and won't negotiate until Trump cancels all tariffs on China.
Trump rejects that, for obvious reasons.
China has called on the US to cancel its sweeping tariffs on Chinese goods entering the country as a sign that the President Donald Trump is serious about resolving the trade war between the two countries.A Chinese official said there had been no trade talks with the US, despite suggestions otherwise from the Trump administration.
The trade war between the world's two largest economies has been escalating, with China sending back Boeing planes it ordered from the US in its latest retaliation over tariffs.
But Trump has appeared to soften his stance on China, saying that the taxes he has so far imposed on Chinese imports would "come down substantially, but it won't be zero".
A trade war between China and the US is in full swing, with Trump imposing import taxes of up to 145% on Chinese goods coming into the US, and China hitting back with a 125% tax on American products.
In one of China's strongest statements yet over the tariff war, Commerce Ministry spokesman He Yadong said the US should remove all "unilateral tariff measures" against China "if it truly wanted" to solve the issue.
"The person who tied the bell must untie it," he added.
Separately, Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said China and the US had "not conducted consultations or negotiations on tariffs, let alone reached an agreement".
He added that reports to the contrary were "false".
Trump previously said negotiations between the countries were "active" - but this was also contradicted by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who said on Wednesday they had not yet begun.
Bessent added that there was an opportunity for a "big deal" between the US and China on trade.
He has previously said he expected a de-escalation of the "unsustainable" trade war, and said the current situation was "not a joke".
Watch: Trump insists the US and China are having trade talks
Trump hints at softening China tariffs and says no plan to sack Fed boss
At a glance: Trump's tariffs on China, EU and rest of the worldTrump said on Tuesday that he would be "very nice" in negotiations with Beijing in the hope of securing a trade deal.
But following China's latest comments, he said on his Truth Social media platform "Boeing should default China for not taking the beautifully finished planes that China committed to purchase".
"This is just a small example of what China has done to the USA, for years," he added, before repeating accusations that synthetic opioid fentanyl "continues to pour into our country from China, through Mexico and Canada, killing hundreds of thousands of our people".
The boss of plane manufacturer Boeing revealed China had sent back aircraft it had ordered from the US as part of its retaliation to tariffs.
Treasury Secretary Bessent seems to believe China will negotiate.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said there is "an incredible opportunity" for the US and China to achieve what he terms a "beautiful rebalancing" on Wednesday, at an event held by the Institute of International Finance Treasury.Bessent spoke more about his call for a course correction for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank and the "back to basics" approach Trump wants for the international economic order.
"The U.S. does not have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem," Bessent told Tim Adams, president and CEO of the Institute of International Finance (IIF) Global Outlook Forum.
...
[BESSENT:] Alternatively, what I have said previously, there is an opportunity for a big deal here that the U.S. is looking to rebalance to more manufacturing. The identity of that would be less consumption. If China is serious, on less dependence on export-led manufacturing growth and a rebalancing toward a domestic economy. I think they use the term dual circulation. Well, it's right now it's really singular circulation. And if they want to rebalance, let's do it together. This is an incredible opportunity. And I think if the Bridgewater founder, Ray Dalio, were to write something, he could call it a beautiful rebalancing indeed.
Bessent agrees that one factor driving our trade deficits are our budget deficits -- we're always printing and spending more money than we have, which creates a "demand suck" bringing in imports.
He also talks about the dollar's position as the world's reserve currency driving up the value of the dollar and therefore raising the prices of US exports as well as creating that "demand suck" for foreign imports. See the link for that. (He doesn't want to give up the dollar's position as reserve currency.)
ADAMS: So you're already taking on the task of China, more consumption, less investment, dealing with their manufacturing excess capacity. Europe's a great opportunity, the U.S. rebalancing here, including on fiscal. So what do you want the IMF to do? What would you like to hear from Kristalina over the next couple of days or the board in a new direction? Again, back to factory settings direction. What do you want to hear from them?BESSENT: Well, again, I think it's just been mission creep. And occasionally you have to trim your garden when the weeds grow. And I think that it's back to basics. What are our priorities and how are we going to judge success? And the World Bank, you discussed about graduating the medium-sized countries that should have graduated some time ago, that changes the commercial model of the World Bank. But obviously, you think that's important. They need to be graduated.
This is a good point:
ADAMS: Yes. I mean, it's just as President Trump says, it's common sense that you can't have the second largest economy in the world and... I applaud their rapid growth, but you don't get both. It's like the teenager who sometimes wants to be treated like a child, sometimes wants to be treated like an adult. And I got one of those, too. And it's an adult economy.
He means that small economies routinely have big trade surpluses (relative to their tiny size, I mean), but large economies tend to be more balanced as internal consumption catches up with exports for foreign markets. But China is manipulating things to keep pumping out exports like an undeveloped country while actually having the world's second-biggest economy.
I can't find a print article stating this, but Megyn Kelly claims that Trump is considering a cutting the tariffs to 50 or 65%. He also floated a scheme in which imports that don't threaten national security will be taxed at 35%, while those that do will be taxed at 100%.
Media Claims That Trump Backs Tax Hike on Millionaires as Part of His "Big Beautiful Tax Bill;" Trump Says "No, I Don't"
—Ace
I don't know if this was a real trial balloon or just another completely fabricated Democrat op.
Fox is claiming that "White House aides" floated the idea of creating a new highest income tax bracket for the wealthiest tax payers of something like 38%.
Rep. Dan Meuser, a Pennsylvania Republican, is supporting the White House's proposed tax hike for people making more than $1 million."I believe we must help the President deliver on his promise of a tax and regulatory plan that supports pro-American economic and manufacturing growth, and delivers for the vast majority of Americans -- while creating savings and promoting fiscal responsibility. Any adjustments in taxes to accomplish these goals should be considered," Meuser told Fox News Digital in a statement on Tuesday.
Last week, White House aides began quietly floating a proposal to House Republicans that would raise the tax rate to 40% for Americans making more than $1 million, sources told Fox News Digital about the preliminary discussions. The plan would shore up income to fund President Donald Trump's ambitious campaign promises to eliminate taxes on overtime, tips and Social Security.
On Thursday, Meuser said on "Mornings with Maria" that he suggested a less than 2% tax hike for the "wealthy, high-end income" tax bracket months ago. He noted that Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act lowered the top tax rate from 39.6% to 37%, so raising it to 38.6% would still keep it below the pre-TCJA level by nearly one percentage point.
I don't know if support that or oppose it. I'm always against taxing "The rich" more, as they already pay the bulk of taxes.
But then, the rich keep voting for Democrats and keep voting against America and against American citizens, so sometimes I think: You want Democrat levels of taxation? You got it.
But we don't have to have this debate because Trump says he doesn't back any increases in taxes for any American citizen.
President Donald Trump appeared to rule out a proposal to raise taxes on millionaires, arguing they would flee the country over the policy."I think it would be very disruptive because a lot of millionaires would leave the country," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on April 23. "You'll lose a lot of money if you do that."
Trump allies such as Steve Bannon have supported raising taxes on the rich, but the president hadn't taken a position. Trump has suggested tariffs could potentially replace the income tax, even though economists warn that tariffs raise far less revenue and fall harder on lower-income households.
Some of you young readers may, like myself, not remember the Reagan Administration, because all of us 29-year-olds weren't born back then and wouldn't be born until the year 2000 or whatever.
But the Reagan White House, especially in its first few years, was a place of intrigue, as different factions attempted to hijack the Reagan agenda for themselves. Back then, it was mostly left-leaning Rockefeller Republicans who were attempting to restrain and contain Reagan and do some unauthorized policy freelancing.
The same thing is going on in the Trump White House, but there are fewer liberal Republicans, of course. It's a fight between Disruptors and Gradualists, the softer MAGA types who want change but who cringe at the thought of actually burning everything down.
And while I get the idea of punishing the rich, who largely don't vote with us any more, I'm a little concerned about where all of this ends up. Do we want to drive away all old-school Republicans? Do we really want to completely swap the old Republican base for the old Democrat base?
That does seem to be the plan pushed by some. But you know, as much as I get frustrated with scaredy-cat, smugly complacent old Republican base, I never loved the Democrat base all that much, either, and I'm not looking forward to the kinds of soft socialist policies we'd wind up pursuing if the party because majority working class Democrat.
New Evidence Released Proves That "Maryland Father" and "Oriole State Husband" Kilmar Abrego-Garcia Is Definitely a Human Smuggler
—Ace
Gee, why did the cops think that Abrego-Garcia was a human smuggler when they pulled over his car, loaded to the roof with immigrant men, none of whom had any luggage?
It wasn't just those circumstances, which are already highly suspicious.
It also turned out that Abrego-Garcia was driving a car owned by a known human smuggler used for human smuggling.
Who Abrego-Garcia admitted was "his boss."
Reported El Salvadoran stopped in car owned by alien who pleaded guilty to human smuggling chargesThe owner of the car in which Kilmar Abrego Garcia was stopped by police is Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, who pleaded guilty to smuggling illegal aliens into the United States in 2020, two years before Garcia's deportation. Reyes himself was deported after the guilty plea and returned to the country illegally.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the deported El Salvadoran at the center of the Trump administration's immigration battle with the courts, was stopped by police in an SUV owned by a man who was himself deported after pleading guilty to smuggling illegal aliens in 2020, according to court and Homeland Security Department intelligence documents reviewed by Just the News.
These new details follow Just the News reporting last week that Abrego Garcia was flagged in 2022 by the Biden administration as a "suspect alien" who was possibly involved in "human smuggling/trafficking" after a traffic stop in Tennessee raised the suspicions of a state trooper, according to internal Homeland Security documents.
The Trump administration alleges Abrego Garcia is a member of the notorious El Salvadoran gang MS-13 based on Maryland police identifications and deported him last month back to his home country.
Family and lawyers deny any connection to the gang and are fighting the deportation, arguing it violates a 2019 order that protected Abrego Garcia from being sent back to El Salvador. Meanwhile, a growing body of evidence suggests the illegal immigrant wasn't the peaceful, law-abiding father "from Maryland," as his wife and lawyers have claimed in the news media.
When Abrego Garcia was stopped in 2022 by the Tennessee state trooper, Homeland Security intelligence created a record of the encounter, Just the News reported. The El Salvadoran was driving a black 2001 Chevrolet Suburban and said he was transporting his passengers to Maryland from Texas for construction work, although the state trooper found no luggage in the SUV.
Just one of those spur-of-the-moment Maryland-to-Texas group taxi rides.
Homeland Security documents identified the owner of the vehicle as Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes. Abrego Garcia told the state trooper that the owner was his boss. However, that SUV was flagged separately by the Homeland Security Investigations Baltimore field office as belonging to a target they suspected of human trafficking or smuggling, the documents show."Vehicle is used by HSI Baltimore target in human smuggling/trafficking operation. Vehicle makes trips to southern border to pick up non-citizens," the record reads. The memo says the Baltimore HSI case agent should be notified if the vehicle is encountered.
The car itself was on the DHS "watch list" for vehicles used in human smuggling.
It was just a misunderstanding, could've happened to anyone! Anyone!
I don't know whose crack this is. Someone must have put this crack in my crack-pipe, officer, because I've never seen this crack before.
Why do I have a crack-pipe? Funny story. I got sick of restaurants making you use those paper straws and so I thought, "Hey, a crack pipe is shaped like a straw." So that's why I have it. For drinking soders. Caffeine free soders.
But there's no crack in this crack pipe, except whatever crack someone else put in it.
I bet it was the same guy who smuggled Hunter Biden's cocaine into the White House. Maryland is near DC, you know.
