"I'm a [substitute teacher], and the most important thing we do is take roll, so the school gets paid" the teacher rants. "So, I'm looking at the seating chart as I'm going up and down the rows and marking who's here and who's not. I get to the third row and I hear this 'meow.' Uhhh, excuse me?"
The woman goes on to say that a little girl told her that the teacher needs to meow back because the boy identifies as a cat. The substitute jokingly asked if there was a litterbox in the classroom. The boy then stormed off, and the teacher barked at him.
She ends the video by stating that, when she went to the main office to check out for the day, she was told, "We no longer need your services if you can't identify with all the children in the classroom."
"I told the lady, I said, 'I didn't know cats were considered people. I thought they were pets."
Let me step off of the ledge for a second, take a breath and ponder. Am I being played? Is this complete bullshit/clickbait? Let us assume, for the sake of all of our sanity that it is. The fact that I had my initial reaction to it just underscores the fact that our society and culture have degenerated to such a degree that something I would have dismissed out of hand a few years ago is now within the realm of possibility. And not remotely either.
Two or three generations of children - and counting - year by year have been force fed higher and higher dosages of abject poison, until their brains and their souls were lost to us. Beyond the government, the courts and the bureaucracy, we find ourselves surrounded by far too many people who, as children, guzzled this Kool Aid brewed by fiends from Howard Zinn and Edward Said to Nikole Krylon Klown Hair and Ibram X. Krement. You'll find them behind a cash register, a Fryolator, the operating theater, an airliner cockpit and the C suite -- from Wall Street to Main Street (the bits that were not mostly peacefully looted and burned over the past 18 months) to even the pulpits of our houses of worship, and everywhere in between. Worse than useless pod people, they will denounce you as evil for not wearing a face diaper or getting shot up with Dr. Fauci's Gene-Altering Laudanum, to claiming that there are only two genders.
They say you have to work hard to get ahead, but some are finding that you can work very little and still do pretty well.
On Reddit, the "antiwork" subreddit is now one of the social network's most active and engaged pages, after seeing explosive growth during the [Chinese] COVID-19 pandemic. It currently has more than 1.6 million users, up from 180,000 in October 2020. People post epic text and e-mail screenshots of quitting their jobs, but the real heroes are so-called "idlers" -- those who stay in jobs doing the absolute minimum to get by while still collecting a paycheck.
"Those who stay in jobs doing the absolute minimum to get by while still collecting a paycheck" are otherwise known as government employees, usually found at the DMV or Postal Service. If only they did the barest of bare minimums at say the IRS or EPA.
She noted that the general idea behind the anti-work movement "is to reduce the coercive element of labor as much as possible by subverting capitalism," and said that those active on the page are mainly far leftists who support Bernie Sanders and AOC, and, often also identify as socialists, communists and/or anarchists. . .
. . . Some fear anti-workers could have far-reaching consequences for the economy. The Financial Times recently reported that Goldman Sachs was fretting that the movement posed a "long-run risk" to labor force participation.
It comes at a time where a record number of workers are quitting, a phenomenon that's been dubbed the Great Resignation. In November, 4.5 million Americans voluntarily left their jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.
So, what does the sub getting fired for refusing to meow back at a student have to do with this? Everything. The work ethic, that is, earning a living via hard work - whatever that work may be - is one of the pillars of of our nation and society. It is in many ways an essential component of freedom and independence. NB the reference to Sandersnista and Titty Caca and you'll see what I'm driving at. To them, self-reliance is like showing the cross to Dracula. Remember during the halcyon (by comparison) days of "recovery summer" when Malig-Nancy Pelosi crowed about how being unemployed liberated you from "job lock," so you can be free to pursue your dream to be a poet, painter, toe-dancer or whatever -- while being financed with free money from Uncle Sugar?
Of course, there is no free money. It is a Faustian quid pro quo. Eventually, when you're on the dole, you'll have to pay them back, especially when you waste so much time on your ass that you become unemployable. And then, they own you. Worse still is when corporatist cronies (for a multitude of reasons too extensive to go into right now) ship almost our entire manufacturing sector overseas leaving millions unemployed. Even more "worser-er" still is that as decades pass, skills like welding, carpentry, tool and die making, foundry work, etc. etc. are not taught because those with that priceless knowledge retire and die off and there is no job market to support those skills in the first place.
But work, money, a home and family, upward mobility and individual freedom are damned as evil by the acorns that fell from the poisoned tree of Bill Ayers and his acolytes. If we vest our hopes in just elections, or in a few people like Trump, DeSantis, MTG and a couple others, we've already lost. The rot is so pervasive, dark and deep and goes way beyond just government. There are positive signs out there such as the parents in Virginia, which I should think (and pray) is just the tip of the iceberg. That is where the battle is going to be won or lost. We are going to have to do everything we can to protect the hearts and minds of our children not yet poisoned by the Communists, and try as best we can to reach and win back the hearts and minds of those already in their clutches.
If we don't, you better learn to meow and put your heart into it.
"People post epic text and e-mail screenshots of quitting their jobs, but the real heroes are so-called 'idlers,' those who stay in jobs doing the absolute minimum to get by while still collecting a paycheck." (idlers are what we used to call government employees - jjs) "Anti-Work" Threads on Reddit Are Fueling the Great Resignation
Robert Spencer: "In light of what he did when he got here, Americans need an answer to those questions, but it is not likely that any will be forthcoming and the Leftist establishment media sycophants certainly cannot be counted on to ask any [junta] officials any probing questions. Why Was Texas Synagogue Jihadi Allowed Into U.S. Two Weeks Ago Despite "Long Criminal Record?"
". . . That's only one of many questions surrounding the Brit's attack on a Texas synagogue, but it's one of the biggest." (he didn't do what he did because he was a Brit, geniuses at the NYP!!! - jjs) Why Was the Dallas Synagogue Terrorist Allowed Into the US?
* * * * *
"The Boulder massacre took place less than a year ago. Why is it so difficult to remember?" Forgetting Jihad
CIVIL WAR 2.0: LEFTIST PERSECUTIONS, CAPITOL HILL BLACK WEDNESDAY PROTEST AFTERMATH, DEMOCRAT PUTSCH, AMERICAN DISSOLUTION
"A new book argues that the country's anger has spiraled out of control." America's Unruly Temper
"We are now living Barack Obama's 'fundamentally transformed America.' And we got here by way of a mostly peaceful insurrection that actually happened in early November 2020, not January 6, 2021." (he read my book! - jjs) A Mostly Peaceful Insurrection
"The executive order provides parents with the opportunity to decide whether or not to mask their child during school hours. Youngkin's executive order claims that incorrectly wearing a mask -- as many children do -- makes the benefits of masks largely ineffective." Northern Virginia School Districts Go to War With Youngkin Over Repeal of Mask Mandates
"Tablet Magazine's chief technology officer Noam Blum posted images of two posters put up in the Glover Park neighborhood of D.C. One of the posters features Biden with a halo of syringes with the slogan 'Good Kids Are Compliant Kids'. . . SABO's other [Chinese] COVID-related poster features a cranky-looking Alec Baldwin. The red and black poster combines Baldwin's shooting of the cinematographer from his latest movie and the wounding of the director with COVID mandates. The poster says, "Take the shot."
(the ones in DC look like Peoples Cube style - jjs) Street Artists on Both Coasts Take Aim at Chinese COVID Authoritarianism and the Lefties Can't Cope
"'The client of the public schools is not the parent, but the entire community, the public,' the Facebook post pontificated. If you thought that message sounded familiar, perhaps it is because it is similar to what failed-Virginia Democrat gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe said on the 2021 campaign trail." Michigan Democrat Party Trashes Parental Rights in Education, Then Deletes Post and Backtracks
"Asking for and getting empty apologies has proven to be utterly useless. Symbolic acts, such as passing laws or issuing executive orders banning the teaching of critical race theory, don't accomplish anything. As long as the advocates of sex in the classroom and anti-white racism are working in the schools, they will always find a way to get around these laws or edicts. School boards that do bad stuff have to have their funds cut off entirely, immediately, and without mercy. Teachers and principals who teach their kids to hate whites need to be fired, now. Bad partisan organizations like the NSBA need to be rejected, forcefully." Pushback: For Calling Parents "Terrorists," National School Board Association Facing "Collapse"
"We have concluded that a properly regulated legal immigration system is in the national interest. Immigration is not a right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution to anyone in the world who thinks they want to come to the United States. Immigration is a privilege granted by the people of the United States to those we choose to admit. We are a country of laws . . . we disagree with those who would label any effort to control illegal immigration as somehow inherently anti-immigrant. Unlawful immigration is not acceptable. The commission finds no national interest in continuing to import lesser-skilled and unskilled workers in the most vulnerable parts of our labor force." Civil Rights Icon Barbara Jordan's Legacy, 26 Years Later: Protecting Americans from Mass Immigration
"The two bills will fail as they require 60 votes to pass through the Senate. From there, Schumer will attempt to pass the bills by bypassing the filibuster rule. However, bypassing the filibuster rule would require buy-in from all 50 Senate Democrats, and Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) have consistently rebuked efforts to nuke the filibuster." Senate Democrats to Push Voting Rights Bills by Trying to Break Filibuster
Former palace guard Paul Page said that Maxwell first became a regular visitor in 2001. "From the way she was allowed to enter and exit the palace at will, we realized . . . suspected, that she may have had an intimate relationship with Prince Andrew," Page told the documentary. "A colleague of mine remembered her coming in four times in one day from the morning till the evening -- she kept coming in and out, in and out." Upcoming Documentary Says Ghislaine Maxwell and Prince Andrew Were Dating While He Was Allegedly Having Sex With Epstein Accuser
"Begala made the remarks in response to comments from Arndrea Waters King, daughter-in-law to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who suggested to Politico that Biden was not putting the 'same power and passion' behind voting rights that he did in getting the infrastructure bill passed." (way to go Begala; insult and demean your base - jjs) XiNN Democrat Strategist "Forehead" Begala: Democrats Don't Have "Bad Leaders, They Have Bad Followers"
"Is it possible that deep inside the Joe Biden [junta] there is a conspiracy of cunning manipulators at the very center of the Deep State determined to completely discredit our current ruling class?" Joey 2022: The Worse the Better
"Until we find political leaders who appreciate the vitality of the political heritage they have repudiated or ignored, the politics of "systematic organization of hatreds" is all we will see." The Sorry Remnant of Joseph Biden
"A wide variety of little-publicized polls do show deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs young U.S. graduates seek. This opposition is growing, anti-establishment, multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, bipartisan, rational, persistent, and recognizes the solidarity that Americans owe to one another." Report: Black Americans Fleeing Democrat-Controlled New York, California
"The slow pace of births is causing the Chinese population to 'age' rapidly. The new data release showed 18.9 percent of the population is now 60 or older, while only 63 percent is 'working age,' meaning 18 to 59. As with many other industrialized nations, including the United States, China faces a declining number of workers paying benefits for a growing number of retirees." {good; now do jihad-loving Muslims - jjs) China Records Lowest Birth Rate in Modern History in 2021
"A proposed New York State evictions bill would lead to bad consequences for rental-property owners and tenants alike." The War on Landlords Continues
ACTUAL SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY
"Capitalism in space: Stratolaunch today successfully completed the third test flight of its giant Roc airplane, now being optimized to provide a test bed for launching hypersonic test vehicles." Stratolauch's Giant Roc Airplane Makes Third Test Flight
NOTE: The opinions expressed in some links may or may not reflect my own. I include them because of their relevance to the discussion of a particular issue.
ALSO: The Morning Report is cross-posted at CutJibNewsletter.com if you want to continue the conversation all day.
This is a story that is repeated everywhere, every day, a story I am dealing with myself right now: Big Tech handing down ultimatums to independent developers demanding that they immediately fix their apps but not providing any way to actually comply.
In this case it's an app originally in Dutch which Google itself mistranslated and then rejected from the Play Store on the basis of their own mistranslation. The app itself has translations by native speakers but Google is using machine translation, getting it wrong, and banning the app on the basis of its own mistakes.
They rejected the same app because the developer didn't provide a test login when the app doesn't have logins at all.
I'm personally dealing with another Big Tech company that insists I investigate an incident but is unable to provide me with any information about the incident.
Or get told there's no recourse and their account is permanently deleted beyond any home of recovery and then two weeks later everything is back again and the explanation is Oh yes, that happens.
As Lois McMaster Bujold wrote in Shards of Honor:
Put all the rotten eggs in one basket - and then drop the basket.
Way back when, Celerons overclocked extremely well because they didn't have an off-die L2 cache; there was just one chip with a "northbridge" interface running at an independent clock.
That's basically still true, plus the latest Celeron is only clocked at 3.4GHz on an architecture known to reach 5.2GHz at stock speeds, so it bloody well should overclock by 50%.
That's the chip on the Raspberry Pi Pico. It's a very capable little device - little being the operative word, because even on an old 40nm process they get over 20,000 chips from a single wafer - and they are churning out millions of them.
So that's one thing that's not in short supply right now.
Gluten free frozen food not so much. A third of such products listed for sale by the local supermarket are out of stock, even before you place the order and then don't get them. I may be forced to start actually cooking my food.
The reckoning begins in the House. We must have our vengeance, both to satisfy the reasonable craving for justice on the part of the base and to teach the Democrats that there is a price for crossing us. Kurt Schlichter
Quote II
"It's devastating and heartbreaking. People are saying let nature take its course, but when it's right in the middle of a city, in a public area, it's kind of a big pill to swallow, to just kind of let it go, that it's a normal, natural occurrence.Maryrose Carson
Quote III
“Their absence will be a significant loss to the mission of the Office of Attorney General,” Charlotte Gomer
We constantly hear about the need for masks, for social distancing and the various pricks when it comes to avoiding the Kung Flu. We certainly don't hear as much when it comes to treating the Kung Flu.
Doctor loses license, ordered to have psych eval for Ivermectin scripts, sharing Covid ‘misinformation’
A 25-year Maine doctor has had her license temporarily suspended and been ordered to submit to a psychological evaluation for the alleged offenses of treating her patients with Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, in addition to sharing so-called “misinformation” about the coronavirus and its associated vaccines.
The State of Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine issued the 30-day suspension (minimum) last Tuesday on the grounds that Dr. Meryl J. Nass’ medical services would constitute “an immediate jeopardy to the health and physical safety of the public.”
I hope Dr. Nass has a damn fine attorney on retainer.
A new investigation has identified a suspect who may have betrayed Anne Frank and her family to the Nazis.
The Jewish diarist died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945, aged 15, after two years in hiding.
Her diary, published after her death, is the most famous first-hand account of Jewish life during the war.
A team including an ex-FBI agent said Arnold van den Bergh, a Jewish figure in Amsterdam, probably "gave up" the Franks to save his own family.
The team, made up of historians and other experts, spent six years using modern investigative techniques to crack the "cold case". That included using computer algorithms to search for connections between many different people, something that would have taken humans thousands of hours.
Van den Bergh had been a member of Amsterdam's Jewish Council, a body forced to implement Nazi policy in Jewish areas. It was disbanded in 1943, and its members were dispatched to concentration camps.
A fourth dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was insufficient to prevent infection with the omicron variant of Covid-19, according to preliminary data from a trial in Israel released Monday.
Two weeks after the start of the trial of 154 medical personnel at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv, researchers found the vaccine successfully raised antibody levels.
***
The ONT Musical Interlude
Born on this day: January 17, 1949 - Mick Taylor
Mick Taylor, guitar, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, joined The Rolling Stones in 1969 (aged 20), and left the Stones in 1974. He has appeared on some of the Stones' classic albums including Sticky Fingers and Exile on Maine Street and worked with Bob Dylan, Mike Oldfield, Jack Bruce and Ronnie Wood. via thisdayinmusic.com
&&&
On this day: January 17, 2016 - Dale Griffin
English drummer Dale Griffin died aged 67. He was a founder member of Mott the Hoople best known for classic tracks 'Roll Away The Stone' and 'All The Young Dudes'. The band who made eight albums during their five-and-a-half year existence, reformed to mark their 40th anniversary in 2009 - but Griffin was too ill to take part. Griffin also produced numerous BBC Radio 1 John Peel sessions from 1981 to 1994 including the first professional recording session for Pulp in 1981. viathisdayinmusic.com
***
The idea of a catheter makes me wince. The idea of expanding foam catheter makes me think Genius Award Winner.
HARD LUCK Man may never be able to use his penis again after bizarre DIY impotence treatment goes wrong
A MAN may never be able to use his penis again after an attempt to cure impotence went very wrong.
The US patient and his partner had been trying to have sex, before using a bizarre method to keep him erect.
Ottawa paramedics are thanking an eight-year-old boy for saving an elderly man who was almost completely buried in snow during a blizzard Monday morning.
In a tweet, the Ottawa Paramedic Service said Clayton McGuire had spotted the man near his home and immediately told his parents, who called 911.
"The gentleman was almost all covered due to the huge snowfall when Clayton spotted him," the paramedic service said.
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Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by High Wire Acts.
Notice: Posted with permission by the Ace Media Empire, its darling AceCorp, LLC and the prestigious legal firm of Dewey, Cheatem & Howe, SC.
From FenelonSpoke, a French bulldog insists on crowding up on a cat in a space that just isn't big enough for both of them. I like cats, but I do like videos where dogs finally get vengeance for all the bed-stealing.
Hunter Biden's Ex-Wife to Release Memoir Detailing Hunter's Drinking, Drugging, and Whoring; Media, Deep State Operatives, and Tech Monopolies Pre-Emptively Declare the Memoir "Likely Russian Disinformation"
—Ace
No they didn't but... I mean, would you put it past them?
If they could get away with it -- wouldn't they claim Hunter Biden's ex-wife was a likely RUSSIAN ASSET?
New blow for Hunter Biden: Ex-wife Kathleen Buhle will release damning memoir in run-up to midterms about breakdown of their 24-year marriage, his affair with Beau's widow and the 'heavy toll' of his sex, drugs and strip club addictions
Hunter Biden's ex-wife Kathleen Buhle will release a memoir in the run-up to the midterm elections about the breakdown of their 24-year marriage
People magazine reported Wednesday that Buhle has written a book that will hit bookshelves in June, less than five months before this year's midterm elections
The title is If We Break: A Memoir of Marriage, Addiction and Healing
The book will discuss the 'heavy toll' drug addiction takes on relationships
Hunter Biden spent the couple's money on drugs, alcohol, strippers and prostitutes, and engaged in an affair with his dead brother Beau's wife Hallie
...
Buhle accused Hunter of having an affair, being 'emotionally abusive' and using Viagra after she discovered his relationship with his brother's widow, emails obtained by DailyMail.com have shown.
She tried for years to try help him beat his addiction to crack cocaine and booze, before he found out that he was having a relationship with his sister-in-law Hallie.
...
By spring 2019, Buhle was dating again, and leaning heavily on her friend, former First Lady Michelle Obama, Page Six reported.
In a March 2019 text message, Hunter Biden wrote to his father that 'you guys are unreasonably scared of Kathleen.'
'She's done the worst she can do with no push back,' he added in text messages from his abandoned laptop verified by DailyMail.com.
I wonder what Hunter was considering as far as "push back" against his much-abused ex-wife.
Well, okay, that's fake news. What they mean is: Comparing the ratings for the week of January 6, 2021 to the week January 6, 2022 -- when CNN tried to recapture ratings magic by dedicating a full day to hyping the Fedsurrection -- CNN lost 90% of its ratings.
I'll allow this Fake News because we're talking about CNN, the world's most repulsive purveyor of Fake News, and also a Safe Space for p3dophiles.
CNN's ratings took a nosedive by a massive 90 percent both overall and in the all-important demographic coveted by advertisers in the first week of the new year.
The Jeff Zucker-led cable news network averaged just 548,000 viewers during the week of Jan. 3 -- a major drop from the nearly 2.7 million viewers for the same week in 2021, according to Nielsen ratings.
The year-ago ratings were jolted by the left-leaning network's coverage of the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol, which resulted in CNN having its most-watched day since Ted Turner launched the news outlet in 1980.
But on the one-year anniversary of the attacks, viewers flipped over to CNN's right-wing rival, Fox News, which topped the ratings for coverage of the event.
CNN and MSNBC spent over 1,600 minutes Thursday obsessing over the first anniversary of the January 6 riot on the U.S. Capitol, but it failed to translate into any success in the ratings department.
Thanks to early numbers from Nielsen Media Research, the Fox News Channel cruised to an easy victory in both total viewers with roughly 1.567 million and 245,000 in the 25-54 demographic.
According to a Fox News press release, FNC defeated CNN "in every hour across both categories" as the Jeff Zucker-led channel was only able to fetch 742,869 total viewers overall and 139,202 across Thursday in the demo.
...
And in the key 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. Eastern block during which President Biden and Vice President Harris delivered remarks from Statuary Hall, CNN and MSNBC still couldn't pull in a sizable audience.
Instead, Fox News still came out on top with America's Newsroom pulling in 1.58 million total viewers and 232,112 in the demo versus 1.083 million and 144,832 for MSNBC and 1.106 million and 190,613 for CNN.
CNN is a failed entertainment channel specializing in pornography for the sexless.
On average, Americans' political party preferences in 2021 looked similar to prior years, with slightly more U.S. adults identifying as Democrats or leaning Democratic (46%) than identified as Republicans or leaned Republican (43%).
However, the general stability for the full-year average obscures a dramatic shift over the course of 2021, from a nine-percentage-point Democratic advantage in the first quarter to a rare five-point Republican edge in the fourth quarter.
...
The GOP has held as much as a five-point advantage in a total of only four quarters since 1991. The Republicans last held a five-point advantage in party identification and leaning in early 1995, after winning control of the House of Representatives for the first time since the 1950s. Republicans had a larger advantage only in the first quarter of 1991, after the U.S. victory in the Persian Gulf War led by then-President George H.W. Bush.
Most changes occurred in the independent leaners. As far as actual party identification, it's tied, 28% to 28%.
The numbers really began shifting in the fall and winter:
The third quarter saw a decline in Democratic identification and leaning, from 49% to 45%, as Biden's ratings began to falter, while there was no meaningful change in Republican affiliation.
In the fourth quarter, party support flipped as Republicans made gains, from 44% to 47%, and Democratic affiliation fell from 45% to 42%.
Gillibrand, however, apparently felt like some of her fellow New York Dems in thinking that maybe she was above the rules when she went to the Innovo Kitchen in Latham, NY on Friday maskless, despite the sign on the door notifying customers of the state's mask requirement regardless of vaccination status. The restaurant's owner and chef John LaPosta was furious when he found out about it, for reasons he explained in an interview:
"I'm in my office, and all of a sudden my manager comes back frantic," LaPosta said. "We have a very, very strict policy on masks. We are following the (state) mandate. ... The manager said (Gillibrand) blew past her and (she) didn't even have a moment to ask her to put her mask on.
...
It's not cool. I'm angry for my staff, who are in masks eight or nine hours a day.
...
She's part of the system that puts the rules in place. Do you not lead by example? It infuriates me."
When he posted the video, he'd written:
"The problem with NY politics in a nut shell. My Senator blowing past my manager before she can even ask her to put a mask on. Walking right past a really big sign that says 'masks required to enter' The masks are a mandate from the Governor. As good citizens, agree or not, we must follow our leaders. Her guest is graciously wearing one. I guess Senator Gillibrand thinks that the Governor is wrong or she is special and above the rules."
NEW: More hypocrisy. New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand thinks shes too good for New Yorks mask mandate and gets called out by the restaurant! Video and more here: pic.twitter.com/OFmUMRDP2E
Senator Manchin's job approval has gone up seven points to 59 percent.
I have no idea what Schumer's strategy was going into this Congress. It was obvious that he never had the votes for major, nation changing legislation from the beginning of the Congress, even with the pair of wins in Georgia. Publicly and loudly pushing BBB as THE agenda item of Biden's first term, a bill that was all but guaranteed to fail, was a curious choice.
On the one hand, this could have been a huge ploy to help prop up Manchin in WV, ensuring his re-election in 2024. However, if that were the case, then Schumer is just angering the progressive base while painting Biden as an ineffective failure of a master negotiator who knew Congress so well he could work everything. This will probably lead to a massively funded progressive primary in WV that will sap tens of millions of dollars away from other races in a presidential election year.
The other big thing is that Manchin was obviously operating as the scapegoat for several other Democratic senators up for re-election in 2022 who are facing challenging races. Kelly in Arizona, Warnock in Georgia, Masto in Nevada, and Hassan in New Hampshire probably don't want votes on their records for a massively unpopular piece of legislation.
However, no matter the intention, this makes Schumer and Biden look foolish and ineffectual.
All they've managed to do is show that fighting the Biden agenda is popular.
Biden, FBI: We May Never Know Why A Radical Muslim Made Anti-Semitic Comments, Took a Synagogue Hostage, and Demanded the Release of a Terrorist Called "Lady Al-Qaeda"
As usual: We may never know the motive, they vowed.
The Morning Greatness at American Greatness:
Some person did some thing this weekend at a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas. The person, who is NOTANISLAMICTERRORIST, took four hostages for 11 hours. The NOTANISLAMICTERRORIST who selected a Jewish venue on the Sabbath "demanded Aafia Siddiqui's release from jail after she was sentenced to 86 years in prison for plotting to murder U.S. military personnel." The FBI wants you to know this was "not connected to the Jewish community."
BREAKING: The FBI says the Texas synagogue hostage taker's demands were specifically focused on issue not connected to the Jewish community. https://t.co/PUxQkIwejx
-- The Associated Press (@AP) January 16, 2022
Nothing to do with Jews, Jewish people, Jewish community or the Jewish religion, understood? This attack might as well have been at a shopping mall, a Costco, a 7-11, a TJ Maxx or even a movie theater.
The NOTISLAMICTERRORIST was identified as a 44-year-old British national Malik Faisal Akram. He's dead now after the FBI extracted some agents from stormtrooping MAGA meemaws to free the synagogue hostages. USAToday reports the NOTANISLAMICTERRORIST's immigration status and history is "unknown." I'll bet, how did this guy get into the U.S.?
"President" (lol) Droolcup went out and claimed he could not even guess at the motive of the Islamic terrorist who was demanding the release of another Islamic terrorist by threatening to murder Jews.
Not terrorism. Oh no, not that. The FBI won't call that. The FBI is very determined to preserve its perfect record on preventing Islamic terrorism in America through its time-tested strategy of denying that all Islamic terrorism committed in America is Islamic terrorism and then saying "You're welcome, America!"
They reserve the "terrorism" word for parents objecting to the r@pe of their daughters by schoolboard-protected transsexuals.
But it will allow that perhaps this matter is... terrorism related.
Malik Faisal Akram, the British national who was killed Saturday night after allegedly taking four people hostage inside a Texas synagogue, spoke "repeatedly" about a convicted terrorist during negotiations with law enforcement, according to an FBI statement obtained by Fox News.
The statement, which was released late Sunday, does not identify the terrorist serving an 86-year prison sentence in the U.S. on terrorism charges, but may shed new light on a possible motive.
Akram could be heard on a Facebook livestream demanding the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist suspected of having ties to al Qaeda who was convicted of trying to kill U.S. Army officers in Afghanistan.
"This is a terrorism-related matter, in which the Jewish community was targeted, and is being investigated by the Joint Terrorism Task Force," the statement read.
#DEFUND.
I used to not be serious about this. Now I am very serious about this: Defund this agency.
Government officials, mostly but not exclusively Republicans, were apparently determined not to be caught governing in the face of this challenge. Any move or recommendation to mask up or, when safe and effective vaccines became available, to make vaccination a requirement of admission to public places and society in general was shouted down as an unwarranted imposition on individual freedoms.
Instead we were left to listen to various forms of foolishness and misinformation, promises of being rescued by everything from a bleach cocktail to horse dewormers to, most recently, drinking our own urine.
So now we are free all right. Free to fend for ourselves. To watch our children lose weeks, months or more of their precious educational opportunities. To wonder whether it is safe to go to work or to the store or to sporting events. To see businesses close for want of employees or lack of customers.
...
Not that Biden is blameless in all this. Seeing the obvious reluctance of so many people to get, or to require, vaccinations has only now moved him to push to make tests and the most effective kind of masks available to everyone. It's the right thing to do, but months late.
Utah House Speaker Brad Wilson Friday offered an absurd, and all too typical, defense of the government's failure to act.
"This pandemic has proven to be anything but predictable," Wilson said. "We all recognize that so we need to be very flexible and adaptable as we move through this current wave."
But the omicron variant now rippling through humanity was predicted. There is consensus among epidemiologists (long before COVID) that viruses tend to mutate into less potent but more easily transmissible variants, which is exactly what happened. And the challenge is the same as it was with alpha and delta: Most people weather it OK, but the serious cases are still enough to overwhelm hospitals.
We might have headed off omicron with a herd immunity-level of vaccinations, but that would have required a vaccination mandate, which our leaders refused. Instead, we get, "No one could have seen this coming." That is patently untrue. They were told what to do, and they refused.
Were Utah a truly civilized place, the governor's next move would be to find a way to mandate the kind of mass vaccination campaign we should have launched a year ago, going as far as to deploy the National Guard to ensure that people without proof of vaccination would not be allowed, well, anywhere.
But it may be too late for that, politically and medically.
In the meantime, get vaccinated. If you are sick, stay home. And let your elected officials at all levels know that you expected them to lead us out of this mess, not stand by and meekly express concern.
If the media is going to demand thuggishly authoritarian measures against the populace, perhaps the populace should begin debating thuggishly authoritarian measures against the media.
Total enrollment—which includes undergraduate and graduate students—dropped by 2.7 percent in fall 2021 compared with fall 2020, according to the clearinghouse report. Since the pandemic began in spring 2020, enrollment has declined by 5.1 percent across the board, with 937,500 fewer students enrolled at American colleges and universities.
As damaging as the high priests of Covid have been to liberty and the economy, they have inflicted some welcome collateral damage to the agents of institutional leftism, above else to the educational establishment.
Watching the university cartel commit suicide to show their fealty to Covid sharia has been very satisfying. This is now the 3rd school year interrupted by campus lockdowns, and colleges seem as committed now as they were two years ago to locking down. More please.
Some institutions that began the semester online are now pushing their return-to-campus dates further out in response to Omicron, citing spiking numbers and breakthrough infections.
If “remote learning” is still around in Fall of 2022, we will have had four-consecutive school years that involved classroom closures. (The last full “normal” school year was 2018 - 2019.) Again, this is a beautiful thing. We are getting further and further away from incoming freshman having a concept of what college was like in the pre-Covid days.
In an era when the education one gets from college can be obtained online for a fraction of the cost (or for free, actually) it is “the college experience” and associated networking that has kept the cartel in place.
With university administrators now acting like prudish church ladies who disapprove of any socializing or pleasures in life, colleges are killing off their primary selling point. Godspeed to them. Please keep it up.
A.J. Kay formerly wrote for Medium, but she had her entire catalog of stories pulled from Medium for expressing wrongthink about Covid and its impact on kids. Her child started college at an elite East Coast university, struggled with the lockdowns, and finally ended up thriving at a conservative Christian university that did not lock down. (I can tell from the picture in the thread that it is Hillsdale.)
A.J. is grateful that her daughter is getting a traditional, albeit somewhat conservative, college experience. Above all else, it is a blessing that Covid kept her daughter from ingesting the poisonous leftism of elite-college indoctrination. Here is Ms. Kay’s thread, extracted for easier reading:
In March 2020, my just-turned-18-year-old was told not to return to her ultra-liberal, elite, east coast university that she had worked her ass off to get into. She finished the semester online. In the fall of 2020, she took personal leave after learning the C19 restrictions…
…which included: - being socially isolated - living alone on campus - masks in and outdoors - no clubs or in-person events - online classes - mandated weekly testing - take-out meals only, and - harsh punishment and public shaming—including expulsion—for breaking C19 rules…
That’s not what college is about. College is about learning and growing and exploring and becoming more independent and dating and joining clubs and eating shitty cafeteria food *with* friends and all-nighters and moving forward…
So tried desperately to stay optimistic, hoping the hysteria would fade. She was so lonely. Come April, she’d decided on a fall return. Restrictions had eased w/ the vaccine rollout & the elderly faculty were now protected. And then her school mandated vaccines for students…
She thought they might rescind with pushback, but they didn’t. So she called her Dean & walked away from school - and a $75K/yr scholarship and 3.9 GPA. We got on a plane, retrieved her belongings from storage across from her dorm, & flew home w/ no idea what might come next.
She knew she wanted to go back to school so she began seriously looking for schools where life was normal & no one was forced to vaccinate. It was not an easy search but I was also so glad she didn’t give in. The mandates weren’t bringing back normal life, as promised.
We queried our many friends in academia. I put a call out on Twitter. We kept hearing one particular school named over & over. So we looked into it. It was an unexpected pivot but, the deeper she looked, the more she realized her values aligned with theirs. So she applied…
I was trepidatious. We are city people. This school was very rural. I’ve been a registered Dem my entire adult life and this school was decidedly conservative. Our family is not religious. There’s was strong faith-based component. And no full ride. Seemed like a stretch…
But this past Sat night, in the freezing rain, I got this pic of her as we walked the campus of her new school and just looking at it brings me to tears. She looks alive again. She’s been waiting 2yrs for her adult life to begin & it’s finally happening. She’ll be 20 in Feb…
As I type this, she’s in a big, beautiful house accepting a sorority bid and celebrating with her soon-to-be sisters. She had new student orientation earlier today & met transfers who landed there for the same reason she did. She’s not alone anymore. School starts Weds…
And because of that cognitive reframe, she’s *finally* getting back to learning, growing, exploring, becoming more independent, dating, joining clubs, pledging, eating shitty cafeteria food *with* friends, pulling all-nighters & moving forward…
I tend to believe that the college experience can have as many downsides as upsides, but at least this young lady is not getting anti-American communist indoctrination with her college experience. Any story in which a young person rejects a leftist education is a happy story.
If there’s one thing that the left-wing college establishment loves to do, it’s poke a finger in the eye of us stuffy old conservatives. We’re opposed to lockdowns, so they are locking down hard. Please, college administrators, keep teaching us a lesson with your rigid Covid obedience. You can make your point about how backward and bigoted we are by maintaining remote learning for a couple more semesters. Heck, if you really want to teach us a lesson, keep classrooms closed in perpetuity...until all viruses have been entirely eradicated.
“Zero classes until zero viruses” is a motto we can all embrace.
Good morning, kids. Start of a new week and for many a Monday holiday as we pause to recognize the birthday of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., which is funny because his credo of "content of character over color of skin" is completely antithetical to that of the Maoist cancer that has infected our society, to the extent that had he been assassinated today, the Monday holiday we have would be in honor of James Earl Ray, and not Dr. King. If you think that that's either outrageous or beyond the pale, then you've been in a coma for the past 10-50 years.
The jihadi who stormed the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, and took hostages Saturday, demanding the release of convicted jihad terrorist Aafia Siddiqui, is dead, and the hostages are safe. And now comes the real work: whitewashing, downplaying, and ignoring outright what took place, because it doesn't fit the establishment narrative.
FBI Special Agent in Charge Matt DeSarno got the ball rolling when he said, "We do believe from our engagement with this subject that he was singularly focused on one issue, uh, and it was not specifically related to the Jewish community, uh, but we're continuing to work to find motive and, and we will continue on that path . . . "
. . . So let's get this straight. A man enters a synagogue and takes hostages, and warns that if anyone gets too close, people will die. He demands the release of an al-Qaeda terrorist. The FBI then asserts that his actions were "not specifically related to the Jewish community," apparently because he was talking only about Aafia Siddiqui, and at least not reportedly railing against Jews and Israel. . .
. . . So why exactly did he do all this in a synagogue? He had the whole wide green world in which to take hostages; why did he choose Congregation Beth Israel of Colleyville, Texas? Once he had taken his hostages, why did he have one rabbi call another rabbi in order to demand Aafia Siddiqui's release? What does Congregation Beth Israel have to do with Aafia Siddiqui? What does its rabbi, or the rabbi whom the hostage-taker had him contact in New York City, have to do with Aafia Siddiqui?
The answer to both questions is: nothing whatsoever. The hostage-taker chose the synagogue over any other possible target because of the widespread belief in the Islamic world that the Jews control the world through various surreptitious means, as Jordanian professor Ahmad Nofal articulated last April. . .
. . . If the "global news agencies" are really in the hands of Zionists, they're doing a remarkably poor job in telling Israel's side of the story, but never mind. The hostage-taker chose the synagogue because he clearly believed that the Jews, and perhaps only the Jews, held the power to secure Aafia Siddiqui's release. The synagogue in Colleyville, in his febrile imagination, would be directly connected to the Jewish power brokers who could be compelled by his hostage-taking to do his bidding.
The FBI should know all this, but it doesn't. Early in the Obama administration, it scrubbed all counterterror training materials that made any mention of Islamic texts and teachings, and severed ties with all the independent contractors (including me) who were teaching agents about the beliefs and goals of jihad terrorists. Islamic anti-Semitism is yet another forbidden area for today's FBI; they can't investigate anything that might appear to be "Islamophobic." So Matt DeSarno is operating out of the willful ignorance the FBI chose as policy years ago. This time, the agency's woke idiocy is actively misleading the American people about what happened in Colleyville.
Appearing on MSNBC on Saturday afternoon, about an hour after it had been reported that the attacker was demanding the release of imprisoned terrorist Aafia Siddiqui, Nessel said her "biggest concern" was that the attack was a "hate crime" or "domestic terrorism," pointing to "white supremacy organizations."
"We have seen an incredible rise in rhetoric that is anti-Semitic being trafficked all around the country," Nessel said, noting "an exponential rise in the formation and the membership of these extremist organizations, many of which are white supremacy organizations, and they traffic in hatred against Jews and other minorities."
"If it does turn out that is the motivating factor here, it would hardly be a surprise," Nessel said.
Aside from being an insipid, transparent fraud who helped seal the steal in 2020, she does garner a lot of support from such patriotic towns as Dearbornistan and Boko-Haram-tramck. So her idiotic statement such as it was makes perfect sense.
The current situation is not completely the fault of Joey Soft-Serve and his handlers. In the wake of 9/11/01, itself the culmination of a decade or more of ignoring the unchecked immigration/infiltration of hundreds of violent jihadists and thousands of their supporters (silently or otherwise) who not only rejected assimilation but sought the conversion of America into an Islamic state, what did George W. Bush do? Stared at his navel and joined the Greek chorus of Leftists who prostrated themselves and begged forgiveness for our supposed aggression and oppression of Muslims. Mostly for our alliance with Israel, among other things.
He also opened the floodgates for massive immigration of equally anti-western dark age throwbacks while stomping around in Iraq and Afghanistan with no other purpose evidently than to boost the shares of Raytheon, General Dynamics, Grumman, Boeing and all the rest of the military industrial complex. I assume the contractor that makes military spec steel coffins also made a killing (pun regrettably intended). Bad enough, but the beast that is more and more at our throats is the Dept. of Homeland Security. Along with the FBI/DOJ, they're out to catch terrorists, nudge-nudge-wink-wink.
The Texas synagogue siege Saturday highlights the risk to Americans of the Biden [junta's] singular obsession with targeting Trump supporters as domestic terrorists.
Thankfully, the FBI hostage rescue team did a stellar job rescuing the hostages, with the only fatality being the hostage-taker, a recently arrived Pakistani-born British Muslim demanding the release of a jailed anti-Semitic terrorist, dubbed "Lady al Qaeda."
It is a shame that their great work was immediately overshadowed by the absurd, PC pronouncement of senior FBI officials and President Biden that no one knew the motive of the terrorist, Malik Faisal Akram. . .
. . . Biden last week called such Americans, even senators who oppose his party's power grab on election laws, "domestic enemies," and likened them to slave owners and segregationists. From his first day in office, he has labeled Trump supporters "white supremacists" and "domestic terrorists." It appears to be his only animating ideology.
But now he has tasked the FBI to chase down conservatives, it is not unreasonable to ask if the organization has taken its eye off the infiltration into the country of a terrorist like Akram. When the feds are busy rounding up MAGA grandmothers and Capitol paraders, are they paying attention to the potential terrorist magnet provided by the porous southern border?
We know that at least two Yemeni nationals on the FBI's terrorism watch list were apprehended in separate incidents last year after illegally crossing from Mexico into California, and that Yuma Sector Chief Border Patrol Agent Chris Clem in December announced the apprehension of a "potential terrorist" from Saudi Arabia who had illegally crossed into Arizona. So the threat is still real.
As polls keep plummeting in this first anniversary week of Biden's presidency, instead of easing voter fears about border security, inflation, [Chinese] COVID, crime, and even the basic competence of the administration, Democrats are strategically preoccupied with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
From the partisan congressional committee investigating Jan. 6 to the Department of Justice targeting parents at school board meetings as "domestic terrorists," the narrative that conservatives are an existential threat is the Democrats' only blueprint for success in 2022. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has described Trump and GOP lawmakers as "enemies of the state." The DOJ's new domestic terrorism unit, which was revealed last week during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, targets people who are anti-authority. . .
. . . This is how the Democrats plan to win the midterms, by demonizing and intimidating their political opponents with government power while attempting to mess with voting rules.
I remember in the aftermath of 9/11/01, the usual clueless, bleeding heart idiots kept asking "what did we do to make them angry enough to do this?" Might it be too much to ask the Left to ask that question, not about phony "riots" or hate crime hoaxes, but just in ordinary political discourse, insofar as why those who merely disagree with you and your beliefs do so?
No, of course not. We're an evil that is to be eradicated by any means necessary. Insane.
"War is a useful tool both for failing governments and wannabe totalitarian governments. . . Spoiler alert: Nothing catalyzes governmental, economic, and social change in a country quite like military defeat. So an urgent message to those still with a shred of patriotism in our leadership: You do not want to go to war under the banner -- or at the direction -- of this repugnant [junta]." Watch for War
"In the aftermath of the pandemic, hard questions will be asked about the origins of the virus, the integrity of the social media censors, the 'snail speed' at which the [junta] pursued anti-[Chinese] COVID therapies, and the future of all the controls promulgated in the name of necessity. And what people learn may not exactly please them." The Post-Pandemic World
"Those who have been irrationally peddling fear about the virus are finally losing credibility fast. But significant and lasting damage to the country may have already been done." Our Post-[Chinese] COVID Loss of Liberty
"The politics of 'diversity, equity, and inclusion' include plenty of room for brutality." Woke Capital's Modern Slaves
Victor Davis Hanson: "Conspiracy projection has split apart the country. The Left has fought efforts to learn the full truth, as they project conspiracies to disguise conspirators." Conspiracies as Realities, Realities as Conspiracies
"Unlike the Internet, the dawning digital environment promises autonomy from the physical world." Enter the Metaverse
Robert Spencer: "The jihadi who stormed the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, and took hostages Saturday, demanding the release of convicted jihad terrorist Aafia Siddiqui, is dead, and the hostages are safe. And now comes the real work: whitewashing, downplaying, and ignoring outright what took place, because it doesn't fit the establishment narrative." Clueless: Woke FBI Downplays Anti-Semitic Aspect of Hostage-Taking at Texas Synagogue
CIVIL WAR 2.0: LEFTIST PERSECUTIONS, CAPITOL HILL BLACK WEDNESDAY PROTEST AFTERMATH, DEMOCRAT PUTSCH, AMERICAN DISSOLUTION
"The attempt to disqualify Republicans as 'insurrectionists' sees leftists copying the tactics of King George III and Parliament -- tactics the Founders despised." The Democrats Are Attempting a Coup By Lawfare
"The circumstances surrounding Epps' involvement in January 6 beg for a serious inquiry." Is Ray Epps the Key?
"Hardly a week goes by without some 'expert' telling us we're on the literal brink of armed conflict, and only a miracle can save us. . . It's not impossible to imagine hundreds of thousands of citizens fighting each other for control of the country, but it would take a social or economic cataclysm to make it happen. More likely would be sporadic but still deadly small-scale violence against red or blue forces." In the News: Civil War Is Coming . . . Again . . . or Not
Brian C. Joondeph, M.D.: "The ostensible purpose behind vaccine mandates is to make all society safer but reliable new information indicates that this may never happen." Big Pharma CEO Blows a Hole in Vaccine Mandates
"The Right must not merely remove the barriers to human flourishing that already exist, but must also use the power of the state to reverse the damage." OSHA Ruling is Too Little, Too Late
". . . the good news, though, is that there is nothing that stops workplaces from voluntarily putting these requirements in place. In fact, many have done so already. A third of the Fortune 100 companies have put these in place, and many more outside have." Surgeon General Murthy: SCOTUS Vaccine Mandate Block a "Setback for Public Health"
"Marshall's bill, called the Financial Accountability for Uniquely Compensated Individuals -- or FAUCI Act -- will require that the Office of Government Ethics provide a list of all confidential filers within the government whose financial disclosures are not public." Sen. Marshall to Introduce the "FAUCI Act" After Doctor Called Him a "Moron"
"Omicron is looking like the game-changer many experts predicted it would be based on initial data from South Africa. It is time our public health and political leaders start acting like it is. Ending the mandates and emergency powers would be a great start." Two Omicron Studies Are Fantastic News That Should End Mandates and Restrictions
"Munchausen Syndrome is deadly. And now the highest levels of our government are shot through with it." Munchausen's White House
Union Pacific PR Dir. Adrian Guerrero: "While we understand the well-intended social justice goals of the policy, we need our justice system to support our partnership efforts with local law enforcement, hold these criminals accountable, and most important, help protect our employees and the critical local and national rail network." Union Pacific Official Blames L.A.'s Far-Left Policies For Massive Train Thefts, Considers Leaving L.A.
"Miyares announced on Twitter his intention for his office to investigate scandals involving the Virginia Parole Board and Loudoun County schools, and that some of these investigations have already been opened." New Virginia AG Fires 30 Staff Members Prior to Taking Office
"What are these elected chief prosecutors thinking when they unilaterally decide not to enforce the law? And why, even as murders increase in the big cities they police, do they continue to support these policies without shame?" Cracking the Case of the "Woke" Prosecutor
"It's sickening to watch these teachers -- activists, really -- manipulate children to support their positions. And it doesn't help that powerful Democratic political leaders bend the knee and kowtow to the teachers, placing enormous pressure on the school board to give in." (attractive, bag-able chick in the picture; too bad she's a freaking criminal Marxist - jjs) Why Do Chicago Teachers Always End Up Getting What They Want?
THE 2020 ELECTION HEIST AND AFTERMATH
"A bill initially written to give authorization to NASA lease its property to others and and passed by the Senate has been stripped entirely of that language by House Democrats and replaced with their proposal to federalize elections nationwide. . . Since this tactic is a direct attack on the filibuster, and if successful would forever make it null, we must wonder if Senators Kysten Sinema (D-Arizona) and Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) will vote against it. If they don't, their high-minded claims that they will not end the filibuster rule will be proven to be empty words." House Democrats Attempt End-Around of Filibuster to Pass Election Rigging Law
"Now that unbribed, unintimidated voting no longer serves the purposes of one American political party, the secret ballot seems as dead as the whistle-stop campaign." What Americans Lost When We Abandoned the Secret Ballot
"A federal court refused to grant a request by Marc Elias, the Democrat operative who helped run the Russia collusion hoax, to rescind their sanctions against him for deceiving judges in his attempts to fight Republicans in Texas who pushed back on bad election practices by banning straight-ticket voting in the 2020 election." Federal Court Won't Back Down After Sanctioning Russia Hoax Lawyer Marc Elias For Deceiving Judges
OFFICIAL DEMOCRAT PARTY/LEFTIST-ENDORSED ANTI-SEMITISM, ANTI-CHRISTIANITY
BIDEN CRIME FAMILY REVELATIONS, AND OTHER CORRUPTION
"Although the book remains under a strict embargo, the publisher states that the six-time New York Times bestselling author and his team scoured 'a massive trove of global corporate records and legal filings to uncover the hidden transactions China's enablers hoped would never see the light of day.'" Red-Handed Contains 1,093 Endnotes, No Unnamed Sources
OTHER DEMOCRAT, LEFTIST AND RINO SCANDALS, MESHUGAS, CHUTZPOCRISY
"Northam pardoned Democratic state senator Joe Morrissey, 64, who was charged with having a sexual relationship with his 17-year-old, part-time receptionist and pleaded guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor in 2014. After serving a three-month jail sentence, Morrissey had a child with the victim and the couple married when she turned 18." Gov. Blackface Pardons Perv: Northam Absolves Democrat Jailed for Underage Sex Crimes in Final Act as Governor
"Donald Trump hasn't lost his touch. Not only can he still attract a crowd -- 15,000 supporters attended his rally in Arizona Saturday night -- but he also pulled no punches during his fiery speech." Trump Destroys Biden, Says He "Humiliated Our Nation"
Roger Kimball: "Will the country be able to survive three more years of a deep state conspiracy presided over by an angry, incompetent, and increasingly senile puppet?" Joe Biden: Deep State Puppet
"Joe Biden's [so-called quote-unquote "presidency "] is shaping up to be a historical disaster." Failing as Predicted
". . . when Democrats are losing badly, the first weapon they deploy against Republicans is the 'Hitler card.' It never works, of course. First, many younger voters have little or no idea who Adolf Hitler was. They might have heard of him, but who he was and what he did is a mystery since Hitler's crimes can't be reduced to 144 characters." Democrat Candidate for FL Governor Says Ron DeSantis Is Like Hitler "in a Lot of Ways"
"After the last week, maybe [so-called quote-unquote "president"] Biden and [so-called quote-unquote "vice president"] Harris should start making plans for an extended trip to Australia -- because by any objective standard this has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week." Biden and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week
Robert Spencer: "Biden's lapses have become too numerous and frequent even for his supporters (all 81 million of them, we're told) to ignore. Although, given how Kamala Harris has torched her own reputation in the last year, his supporters will continue to ignore them as long as they possibly can." Biden's Latest Rousing Speech: "Uh, Uh, You Know, Ugh"
"She has set up a zero-sum game where the worse [Biden] does, the better she does, because she's positioned herself as the Democratic alternative to Biden. Not just to Biden, but to the extreme left in the Democratic Party," [Dick] Morris said. Ex-Clinton Adviser Says There's a "Good Chance" of 2024 Hillary/Trump Rematch
Thad McCotter: "The singular thing those possessed of a survival instinct never do is embrace the wave. Yet, the Right seems bent upon being the compliant architect of its death." The Right: Bumbling Beneath Tsunamis
"Someone who can raise hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars with a few phone calls will harbor loyalty to D.C. interests, not to Wyoming voters." Liz-ard Cheney's True Constituents
FIRST AMENDMENT ISSUES, CENSORSHIP, FAKE NEWS, MEDIA, BIG BROTHER TECH
"New York is one of the most reliably Democratic states in the United States and New York requires people to request absentee ballots, just like the new Georgia law does." CNN Skewers Biden's Voter Suppression Lies. Yes, CNN.
"Newly unredacted court filings show that Google may have leveraged its end-to-end control over the auction-driven display advertising market to unfairly funnel revenues away from publishers and competing advertising exchanges, and back to itself, to the tune of $250 million in annual revenue dating back to 2013." How Google Allegedly Swindled Publishers and Competing Ad Exchanges
Thad McCotter: "The Chinese regime has taken to heart the Leninist slogan,'The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.'" "Quiet Men" and Bamboo Cages
"Within the Kremlin, it's a 'winner takes it all, loser has to fall' proposition but Putin has sized up the international opposition." Putin's Dangerous Ukraine Gambit
"My conclusion therefore is that climate realists should not be too keen on seeing Boris ousted any time soon. The argument is moving in our direction and Boris is losing the authority and perhaps the desire to halt or reverse that." How Do You Solve a Problem Like Boris?
"The underwater Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano violently erupted just three days ago on Friday, sending tsunami waves barrelling towards the isolated island nation and putting the entire Pacific rim on tsunami watch." (ignore that giant cloud of smoke and ash; SUV's, red meat and air conditioning are killing the planet!!! - jjs) Second Major Eruption Detected at Undersea Hunga Tonga Volcano
DOMESTIC AFFAIRS, WASTE/FRAUD/ABUSE, THE COURTS
"Over 2,700 flights were canceled and more than 1,500 flights were delayed. Nearly 95% of the flights scheduled to depart from the Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina were canceled due to the extreme weather conditions, Reuters reported." Severe Winter Storm Slams the East Coast Causing Over 200,000 Power Outages
"The excess cash is also from tax collection and post-lockdown consumer spending, and governors of both red and blue states are directing funds to improve protection from extreme weather, which Democrats and the press blame on human activity and fossil fuels." Green New Steal: Governors Using Federal Coronavirus Funds to Fight "Climate Change"
"Space tourism will considerably expand the number of space travelers. Medical screening of future astronauts and space tourists might benefit from a preflight profiling of globin gene and modifiers. Post-landing monitoring should cover conditions affected by anemia and hemolysis. Monitoring individual astronaut's levels of hemolysis during mission may be indicated to reduce health risks." Study: Weightlessness Might Produce Long-Term Anemia
"Freedom carries great opportunity. It also carries great risk. For those who invested in Virgin Galactic and did not sell right after its one and only suborbital tourist flight in July '21 (as did the company's founder Richard Branson), it appears they are about to experience the latter." Virgin Galactic Wants to Borrow $500 Million From Investors to Stay Afloat
FEMINAZISM, TRANSGENDER PSYCHOSIS, HOMOSEXUALIZATION, WAR ON MASCULINITY/NORMALCY
"How is it that injecting cattle with hormones is evil, but injecting kids with hormones to obscure their true sex is the new frontier?" Transgenderism Destroys the Family
"We must fight graceless wokeism. We fight it with the truth, by continuing to stand firm for what we know is right. We must demonstrate why Judeo-Christian and American values are the ideal -- even though we fall short of them from time to time. We have to show why liberty and grace are the best qualities for everyone to exhibit in their lives." Wokeism Is a Religion Without Grace
Next time some leftist on cable news or in the national papers makes one of those trite declarations about how, 'We're all trying to get past this pandemic, but..." or, 'No one likes wearing a mask, but...' just think back to what New York Times TV critic James Poniewozik said this month." New York Times Writer Worried About Lack of Pandemic Drama in TV Shows
HITHER & YON
"Unfortunately for the entertainment value of The Girl from Oslo, the kidnap victim here doesn't have Liam Neeson for a father." Taken by ISIS
NOTE: The opinions expressed in some links may or may not reflect my own. I include them because of their relevance to the discussion of a particular issue.
ALSO: The Morning Report is cross-posted at CutJibNewsletter.com if you want to continue the conversation all day.
The other server was down for a few hours overnight my time. I blame volcanic activity in the server room. Or possibly the server burped at 2AM and when I fixed it I forgot to restart the cache service and then it filled all its RAM with Sendmail instances trying to notify me of this failure.
The country's satellite links are also being blocked by the volcanic ash cloud meaning that communication with the rest of the world currently consists of SPEAKING VERY LOUDLY.
Australia and New Zealand sent survey planes today to assess the damage and work out the best way to deliver aid - particularly tricky given that the volcano is still active. The first relief flight out of Australia is planned for tomorrow.
The Big Tech of the 19th century has just now noticed that socialism has failed every time it was tried:
"Criminals are caught and arrested, turned over to local authorities for booking, arraigned before the local courts, charges are reduced to a misdemeanor or petty offense, and the criminal is released after paying a nominal fine," said the letter. "These individuals are generally caught and released back onto the streets in less than 24 hours. Even with all the arrests made, the no-cash bail policy and extended timeframe for suspects to appear in court is causing re-victimization to Union Pacific by these same criminals."
At some point, when a person or a state is utterly determined to self-destruct, you have to be prepared to walk away.
This isn't an issue with laptops or tablets, but on their servers, workstations, and desktops, they are locking the CPUs so that they can't be used in anything but Lenovo hardware.
Someone should sue them under California law for creating avoidable e-waste.
And we complained when the 3090 was originally priced at $1499.
Party Like It's 1980 Video of the Day
We don't need no indirection
We don't need no flow control
No data types or declarations
Hey! Hacker! Leave those lists alone!
All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
Disclaimer: This blog made with double certified 99% pure stuff.
Utah's Largest Newspaper Calls For Unvaxxed To Endure Draconian Lockdowns Enforced By National Guard
SUNDAY, JAN 16, 2022 - 01:07 PM
The editorial board of Utah's largest newspaper - the Salt Lake Tribune - which is controlled by the family of former Governor Jon Huntsman Jr., has called for the deployment of the National Guard "to ensure that people without proof of vaccination would not be allowed, well, anywhere."
On Saturday, a man believed to be Muhammad Siddiqui took hostages at Congregation Beth Israel Synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, during Shabbat services. Siddiqui claimed Aafia Siddiqui, who was convicted in New York of trying to kill U.S. military personnel, was his sister.
According to a tweet from White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, Biden “has been briefed about the developing hostage situation in the Dallas area. He will continue to receive updates from his senior team as the situation develops. Senior members of the national security team are also in touch with federal law enforcement leadership.”
I guess I was wrong. It wasn't Muslim vs. Jew hate. The FBI says so.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) claimed Saturday that an attack and hostage-taking by an armed Islamic terrorist at a synagogue near Dallas, Texas, was “not specifically related to the Jewish community,” prompting criticism online.
The terrorist burst into the sanctuary during a Sabbath service at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, and took several members of the community hostage, including the rabbi, before being killed by the FBI in a raid Saturday evening.
***
Paul Joseph Watson takes a look at The Decay of The USA. NSFW-Language
Attention waterfowl hunters who dream about moving closer to marshlands north and west. The goose capital of Minnesota will award you seven-tenths of an acre inside its city limits if you move there and build a house.
That's right: Zero down, zero interest and zero payments on a roomy 100-by-300-foot lot in Middle River, a town of 300 people set between Agassiz National Wildlife Refuge and the state's well-known Thief Lake Wildlife Management Area. That's a combined 182 square miles of breeding grounds and habitat for ducks, geese, shorebirds, song birds, raptors, deer, bear, wild turkeys, grouse, wolves and more
I've driven through this community, beautiful country.
SURVEY: Anxiety, depression are rising among college students
A new survey found that college freshmen in the United Kingdom and Canada are experiencing depression and anxiety at higher rates due to COVID-19.
The findings have implications for American college students.
U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., published White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci's unredacted financial records and accused him of being misleading when he told the Senate his financial disclosure forms were publicly available.
While Fauci's financial disclosure documents can be requested from the National Institute of Health, they aren't listed in the same searchable database as many other federal officials.
REPUBLICAN SEN. MARSHALL PLANS TO INTRODUCE ‘FAUCI ACT’ AFTER DOCTOR CALLED HIM A ‘MORON’
Fauci is "more concerned with being a media star and posing for the cover of magazines than he is being honest with the American people and holding China accountable for the COVID pandemic that has taken the lives of almost 850 thousand Americans," Marshall told Fox News Digital in a statement.
As if there weren't enough Joe Biden calamities, now it's pirate attacks?
Another Joe Biden calamity we've never seen before is now upon America.
Piracy. We've got pirate problems now.
Comparable to our border, our unguarded interstate rail trade is facing unprecedented robberies as its cargo moves to its destinations. It's literally being raided, pirate-style, by likely the same gangs that have raided retail stores with zero fear of prosecution. Why raid a mere store when you can get the whole freight train of goods and get away with it? America's freight trains carrying goods are now under attack.
It has been said there can be no romance without finance, but at a forthcoming New York City seafood restaurant there will be no fish without fintech. Flyfish Club, an eatery the VCR restaurant group plans to open in early 2023 at an unannounced location that “has iconic views of New York City”, per a promo video, will require guests to show proof of membership in the form of an NFT (non-fungible token) in order to enter. Though it is being marketed as the world’s “first NFT restaurant”, once inside members will be expected to pay US dollars to consume fungible fish.
The memberships come in two tiers, with standard membership tokens sporting an artistic rendering (uncredited) of a handsome yellowfin tuna, while the more exclusive tier giving the member access to the club’s private omakase room features tokens with renderings of various sushi and sashimi dishes that will presumably be offered therein. The first drop of 1,151 memberships sold out within hours, while another 350 were gobbled up in a private sale in December, according to Nation’s Restaurant News. Standard memberships, priced in Ethereum, were initially sold for ETH2.5 (around $7,900), while omakase memberships were offered for ETH4.25 (around $13,485).
South Australia breaks record by running for a week on renewable energy
South Australia sourced an average of just over 100 per cent of the electricity it needed from renewable power for 6½ days leading up to December 29 last year – a record for the state and perhaps for comparable energy grids around the world.
The state’s previous record was just over three days, says Geoff Eldridge, an energy analyst who runs the website NEMlog.com.au, which tracks the operations of the National Energy Market covering Australia’s east-coast states and South Australia.
Called Beyond Fried Chicken, the bucket of nuggets contain a non-meat ‘chicken’ that was developed by the Beyond Meat company. Created exclusively for KFC, the company says it is “packed with delicious flavor and the juicy satisfaction that you’d expect from KFC.”
“The mission from day one was simple – make the world-famous Kentucky Fried Chicken from plants,” said Kevin Hochman, president, KFC U.S. “And now over two years later we can say, ‘mission accomplished.'”
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There appears to be a lack of common sense. World wide.
More than 23,000 sign petition to reinstate female bus driver who was sacked for being 'too short' – after 34 YEARS in the job
Bus company Go North West changed the position of their buses' wing mirrors
This meant Tracey Scholes could not use them while keeping her feet on pedals
Mrs Scholes was offered different role in the company but it came with lower pay
She declined and was given notice before launching an appeal to keep her hours
Petition launched to support her has now garnered more than 23,000 signatures
More than 23,000 people have signed a petition in support of a five-foot bus driver who was sacked because she could not use the wing mirrors safely.
Mother-of-three Tracey Scholes, 57, was one of the first female bus drivers in Manchester and has driven buses for 34 years.
But when Go North West changed the position of their buses' wing mirrors, the 57-year-old widow had to lean around a pillar to see them, meaning she could not keep her feet on the pedals.
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The ONT Musical Interlude
On this day: 16 Jan 2000
American singer Will Jones died aged 71 from the effects of diabetes. He is best known as the bass vocalist for The Coasters and The Cadets. The Cadets' biggest hit was ‘Stranded In The Jungle’ and his bass vocals can be heard on The Coasters' hits ‘Yakety Yak’ and ‘Charlie Brown.’ He also sang lead on The Trammps' cover version of ‘Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart’. via thisdayinmusic.com
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Born on this day: 16 Jan 1946
Ronnie Milsap, country music singer and pianist. He became country music's first well-known blind singer, and one of the most successful and versatile country "crossover" singers of his time scoring the crossover hits, 'It Was Almost Like a Song,' 'Smoky Mountain Rain,' and 'Stranger in My House.' He is credited with six Grammy awards. via thisdayinmusic.com
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When will they learn that Social Media is not your friend and there are cameras everywhere? Genius Award Winner.
Detectives arrest suspected Rochester Hills bank robber in Garden City after using vehicle to track him down
1lb Premature Baby Born at 22 Weeks and Saved by Sandwich Bag Thrives: ‘Little Miracle’
A premature baby whose mom managed to carry on until the 22-week threshold before giving birth is now thriving.
When baby Eris entered the world at 22 weeks and five days, she weighed the same as a small can of soup at 1 pound 1 ounce. She was placed straight into a plastic bag to keep her vital organs warm, preventing the risk of hypothermia.
Cayce Lee, 37, and her husband, Dennis, 35, from Lewisville, North Carolina, prepared to say goodbye to their preemie daughter on more than one occasion during the 254 days in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).
Howdy, Y'all! Welcome to the wondrously fabulous Gun Thread! As always, I want to thank all of our regulars for being here week in and week out, and also offer a bigly Gun Thread welcome to any newcomers who may be joining us tonight. Howdy and thank you for stopping by! I hope you find our wacky conversation on the subject of guns 'n shooting both enjoyable and informative. You are always welcome to lurk in the shadows of shame, but I'd like to invite you to jump into the conversation, say howdy, and tell us what kind of shooting you like to do!
Welp, your ol' pal Weasel is in the depths of hell, work-wise, so I haven't been able to even think about shooting (not really), much less do any shooting (really). At some point I'm going to need to get down to the farm so I at least don't forget where it is. Hopefully things will lighten up after January and I can skedoodle on down there. In the meantime, Gun Thread must go on!
Note: I'm a little behind on my email correspondence, so please forgive me if I haven't responded to something you've sent!
With that, let's get to the gun stuff below, shall we?
Because WeaselCares, I picked up a photography light box to improve my pictures here on the ol' GT, but instead, it seems to have made things no bueno. I'm using a reasonably decent small Canon digital camera which I know takes good pictures, but as you can see, the results in the light box suck. I have tried turning the LED lights up and down (inside the box) but something ain't right.
Any of you photography people out there have any suggestions on making these not look like shit? I suspect I need to do something camera-setting-wise.
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Our pal blake has been to the gun store and the range!
Well, I lasted all of 31 days, couldn't take it any longer, and headed to the nearest gun shop here in AZ to see what they had to offer. I was in luck, they had guns galore in stock! In fact, they had guns on the wall that would have put the owners in jail for a long while, had they been on display in CA! Yeah, plenty of short barrel carbines, evil black rifles with the shoulder thingy that goes up, detachable magazines capable of firing a zillion bullets per trigger pull, etc. The shop was everything CA politicians have nightmares about.
I'd had a hankering for a 1911 style pistol chambered for 9 mm, but, a bit shorter barrel than my Kimber. As luck would have it the store had a dandy 1911 with a 4.25" barrel built by a company out of Turkey, Girsan, which is considered a "budget friendly" firearm.
I asked if the store would accept a trade, specifically, a Lee Enfield, Mark IV. (before anyone has a conniption, the Lee-Enfield was a jamomatic for me. No matter what I tried, rim jams were a constant problem.)
In the end, the trade covered most of the cost of the new pistol, but, I added a few bucks to the final purchase price buying a spare magazine, some practice ammo and some defensive ammo.
Gun purchase note: I did fill out the 4473, but, no background check. AZ CCW permit, baby!
I have to admit, after putting up with the gun buying nonsense of CA these last couple of decades, it was nice to walk in, look at a gun, say, "I'll take it" and walk out an hour later. (it took a while to get the appraisal done on the Mark IV)
So, my new purchase and I headed to the local range, to see if the gun would go Bang! when I pulled the trigger. I got to the range, took the gun apart, wiped it down and oiled it with some Otis CLP, put it back together, and proceeded to run some ammo through it. And, by golly, the gun shoots quite well. (sorry, no target pics, but, it appears the gun shoots pretty much dead center, though a bit low. How much was the gun and how much was me, no idea.) I'd add, reassembly after take down was a bit of a headache. Getting the slide lock to engage the barrel link pin was a bit tricky.
I had two hiccups, both with the factory original magazine. On the last round, the gun stove-piped, twice. However, this wasn't an issue with the non factory mag. I would also mention the magazines I have for the gun are functional, and that it. The lack of basepad makes magazine insertion problematic. No worries, though, because I ordered some stainless magazines for the gun from Sig.
After shooting some paper, I moved down to the steel portion of the range and, sitting casually on the tailgate of my truck, put a few rounds downrange at some plates and the plate rack, I'll be darned if I didn't connect and, I estimate I was shooting roughly 20 yards at the time.
After that, it was time to get out my full size Kimber, and see how I did with it. I'm pleased to report I scored, at 18 yards, paced it off, on 7 of the first 8 shots shooting steel, Made my day, it did.
I ran a few mags through the Kimber, called it a day and headed home.
I'd like to also note the Girsan comes with a standard 3 dot setup, which I plan to get rid of. I'll switch it out to a fiber front sight and standard black rear sight. My thinking is: Handguns are all about the front sight. Lining up 3 dots for targets, great. Lining up three dots for defensive purposes, not so great.
So far, I like the Girsan, but, I've only run 50 rounds through it. Fit and finish are okay, price is good, to soon to make a call about reliability.
Great report and nice looking pistol, Blake! Congratulations!
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Next up, our pal Jesse (no longer) in DC
Went out with SiD to our local range to burn some powder on what is becoming our Friday date night.
She shot well indeed, but she can render her own range report....
I took my Ruger 10/22, which I had not shot in a while. This was fairly close range like 30 feet. I just wanted to sight it in. The target is 50 rounds of Norma Tac 22, and I never shoot this well. I shot 1 box and quit for the day. I have 2 magazines, so one group is 20 rounds, ( 2 x 10) and the other was 30. All fliers are on me. I had brought this to the MOME in case someone wanted to shoot it, but had no takers. It was another great day at the range.
Nice shooting, amigo! Is there really ever a bad day at the range?
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Next up our pal JerseyDevilRider needs some help with a rifle identification and sourcing a part.
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I need some help. I ended up acquiring a .22. Can't tell the the brand. I took it to the range with the old ammo. Jammed about 20% of the time. Tried new ammo and ended up less than 10% jams. So I stripped it down. The guy it came from never did and he had it for years. Just for varmits. I probably fired it more in a day than he did the whole time. Anyway, I bent the firing pin spring on reassembly. I could blame the old spring but I must share in the credit. I ordered a set from KIDD but none of them fit. Can you recommend a place and help me figure out the model and size of the spring? I attached some pictures, including one that show the dirt from one pass on the bolt/chamber.
So how about it? Anyone recognize the make and model? How about a supplier for the firing pin? I recommended Gun Parts/Numerich, but figure there must be some other sources out there.
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From time to time I get it into my head that I really need an antique flintlock. So far, I have managed to resist the urge, but it's probably only a matter of time.
Here's a guy explaining the loading and firing process. A little on the slow side, but looks like fun, huh?
Can't find one for sale you like? Just build one!
Built one and fired it? Now it's time to clean, lube and otherwise maintain it!
I know we have a lot of black powder shooters here, like our pal JTB for instance. Anyone else?
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With winter here we cannot always make it to the range and in the past, I have harped on the value of dry-fire practice drills at home.
Q: Weasel, will you please shut your piehole about dry fire practice?
A: OK. Sure. No problemo. Here's Jerry Miculek running his piehole about it!
If you're not going to listen to me, listen to Jer!
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Magazine Loaders
Loading magazines has never been something that bothered me much. I suppose I always figured loading was part of shooting. I do know it's something a lot of shooters don't particularly like to do, and that's why we have the speed loader. Here's one for the AR-15 platform from RSS Speed Loaders
Here's a helpful video on how this gizmo works:
So how about it? Do you load magazines before you head to the range or after you get there? What's your opinion on this product; great idea or just another thing to take up space?
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Stabby Things
Here's a fun little bear fighter, an original Blackjack A.W.A.C. knife. A.W.A.C. stands for All Weather All Conditions, and it's one hell of a solid unit. A bought this example many years ago, and it's still unused in the box. Something happened to the Blackjack Knife Co., and this model is no longer produced, but there are still knives being produced under the Blackjack name. Warning! More lousy photos!
I get the sense the original maker is no longer involved and the line was purchased by someone else. Anyone know what the story is with the company?
This feature will be back soon - I'm compiling the list of cigar stores and small volume rollers, and I'd like to have a few more. So if you're sourcing your cigars from a local shop you recommend, please send me a link!
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Gun Basics 101
Interested in buying a gun? Here's what you need to know about buying different state.
Please note the new and improved protonmail account gunthread at protonmail dot com. An informal Gun Thread archive can be found HERE. Future expansion plans are in the works for the site Weasel Gun Thread. If you have a question you would like to ask Gun Thread Staff offline, just send us a note and we'll do our best to answer. If you care to share the story of your favorite firearm, send a picture with your nic and tell us what you sadly lost in the tragic canoe accident. If you would like to remain completely anonymous, just say so. Lurkers are always welcome!
That's it for this week - have you been to the range?
Food Thread: Raw Hamburger...Tartare Is Really Raw Hamburger! (Or Is It People?)
—CBD
It's an acquired taste...I think, but plenty of people have told me that when they were kids they used to eat raw hamburger all of the time, so maybe, just maybe we have it hard-wired in us!
Probably not, but good Tartare is really fun. And sort of a pain in the ass to make, but I think it is worth it. The trick is to remove every bit of connective tissue so all you are left with is the beef and maybe a little bit of fat. But too much fat and it becomes greasy and unappealing....yuck!
There are lots of good recipes all over the place, so I won't bore you with mine. But if you are intrigued by the idea but can't quite work up the intestinal fortitude to make it, try something called "Beef Carpaccio," which is simply thinly sliced beef pounded even thinner, then served with a splash of olive oil and lemon and maybe some capers and onion. Just as beefy but without the problem of the texture that many people find distasteful in Tartare.
If both of these sound good, email me and I will send my special recipe for Chicken Tartare!
Our current political malaise has brought us the joys of inflation, and nowhere have I seen it worse than in the food markets. Maybe I am too many multiples of 29 to have a coherent sense of the meteoric price rises, but the next time I see "10% increase in food prices" I might just cut a bitch.
That's from the last three days compared to sometime last year. Nothing scientific, but spare me the government-massaged misinformation.
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I'm making chili today, mostly because it's 12 degrees outside and it seems like the appropriate food to have simmering on the stove. And before you eviscerate me...yes...chili is an idea, not a recipe. But I enjoy trying these out just to see whether it is possible to make crappy chili.
And I don't think it is!
Sure, you can make it it too spicy, but that's still okay. I have made chili that was stupidly hot. Painfully, mouth-burning, lip-melting hot. But a spoonful of sour cream and extra cornbread was all it took to make it...um...still stupidly hot but fun to eat.
I think there is a basic template for chili, and as long as you follow that, your chili is going to be good. Maybe not award-winning stuff that will get you an appearance on TV, but plenty good enough to enjoy on a cold day in January while you watch the snow pound down onto your driveway.
As for beans and carrots? Those are deeply personal and private decisions best left alone in a public forum such as this.
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What the hell is this stuff? Nurse Ratched sent me the photo, and since she is a well-known hippie (can you smell the patchouli oil?) I figured it was some new-age weirdness that has homeopathic properties. IT CURED MY HEMORRHOIDS!
Anyway...anyone besides the Nurse use this stuff?
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That is a three-week fermentation! Yeah, definitely not by plan, but things got away from me and all of a sudden I realized that the dough was still in the refrigerator.
And you know...it was pretty damned good. The bread was quite malty and sour, but not unpleasantly so, and the texture was surprisingly good. Not nearly as dense as I expected.
I do not recommend three week fermentations, because it wasn't any better than a more typical one. But if it happens, don't throw it out!
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What's the deal recently with monster chickens? I used to be able to buy three pound chickens, which they called "fryers." Now it seems as though the minimum size is 4.5 pounds, and there are some Argentinosaurus-sized birds out there that are just ridiculous!
Obviously processing costs decrease when the birds are grown larger, and the stores are selling a higher-priced item compared to normal chickens from this planet. but sometimes I just want to make a roast chicken, not a meal for eight people!
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Short ribs are one of my favorite cuts of beef, and when done well (Sous Vide...duh!) they are incredible. I have spent a fair amount of time and money perfecting my own recipe, which puts the short rib front-and-center. It's got incredible beefy flavor, so there is no reason to mask it in complex recipes with lots of competing flavors.
Which is why I am puzzled by this recipe from "Smitten Kitchen. I think the writer is a good cook, and I like her relaxed attitude toward food and cooking. But why not use a chuck roast at half the price and most of the beefy flavor?
Everything about her short rib onion soup recipe is good...except the waste of good short ribs. So try it out with a cheap chuck roast and save the short ribs for a special occasion.
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[Hat Tip: Misanthropic Humanitarian]
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Brussels Sprouts that aren't as tough as trees, beef short ribs that have meat on them (not the stupid little sliver of bone they sneak into the packages), carrots that don't taste like stalky chalk, spare bottles of Van Winkle Special Reserve 12 Year Old Bourbon, an herb garden that actually produces herbs (but no basil!), well-marbled NY strip steaks and elk backstrap to: cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com.
And don't think that you are off the hook with maple syrup and French Toast: I'm watching you...all of you! And I am watching you perverts who shake Manhattans and keeping a list for the Burning Times.
Covid plus crappy weather plus working at home plus life has conspired to drain car batteries all over the world!
I was first introduced to these marvelous little gadgets several years ago when my parents' car would sit for weeks and weeks. I bought one for a ridiculously low price and it worked like a charm. Hook it up to the car battery and...that's it! it took a few days to recharge it, and it wouldn't work on a completely dead battery, but still, as convenient modern tools go, this is a good one.
Fast forward to today, and the next generation of these things is happily recharging the battery on one of our cars. You know...the one that is driven 14 miles each week, at low speed, and only for about three minutes at a time. Just perfect for draining batteries!
Oh...I also use it to condition my sump pump backup batteries!
Wait...this isn't a problem. it is a marvel.
So what modern miracles make you smile when you use them?
Five days in the hospital for Wuhan flu doesn’t sound great, but I am very glad I had access to a good community hospital with good nursing and an experienced staff that has seen tons of the disease. My county has been the hardest hit in my state, so I guess I am a bit lucky.
Contrary to the ignorant reports of overwhelmed ERs (lines outside don’t mean anything), my experience was impressive. Triage was perfect. There were lots of typical ER visitors (sprains and sniffles and nausea… ) wandering around, but they were placed at the back of the line. I was seen almost immediately, and within 10 or 15 minutes was put in a private room and given a PCR test to confirm the rapid test. That took about an hour, and I was then treated with the hospital’s standard protocol and moved to the Covid wing.
Most of my crushing and awful symptoms rapidly moderated, which was impressive. And very possibly coincidence, but there is no way to know. I was left with profound fatigue, a cough from hell, and clear instructions to use the damned spirometer as much as I could. But as some of you know, hospitals are nothing if not boring and uncomfortable, so that was my entertainment! But please; don’t ask about the food!
One thing I found fascinating and not a little depressing was the real time information available to me via the much-touted electronic medical information systems that are going to revolutionize medical care. Unfortunately the systems in use where I am are an absolute catastrophe…filled with inaccurate information (in real time!) and glaringly obvious cut & pastes by physicians, nurses and clerks. Wrong data about medications, inaccurate descriptions of physical exams, time stamps that are obviously incorrect, and that was from a casual perusal over several days.
Obviously many of those errors are not specific to electronic data…doctors and nurses and clerks make mistakes regardless. But the replication of errors is made effortless by electronic records, and while a cut & paste of a physical exam that wasn’t done on Tuesday may mean nothing, one can imagine that sometimes it can be a very big deal. Any medical malpractice attorney with two functioning synapses would have a field day with these sort of errors, not to mention the undeniable fact that this simply isn’t good medicine.
The larger question for me during this experience is whether the vaccine I got 10 months before had conferred any residual immunity. Clearly, based on the data, the immune response fades over time, so was I protected at all? I have no idea, but what I am quite pleased with is being fit and of normal weight. I was far to the right on the Covid Severity graph, and there is no explanation for that other than the randomness of the disease, but I imagine I would have fared worse had I been fat and unfit.
Could have I avoided hospitalization were other therapies available to me? Perhaps. Monoclonal Antibodies were not available, but neither would they have been the first choice because of the severity of my symptoms. HCQ and Ivermectin? The data on HCQ is sort of crappy, although because it is quite safe there is no particular need for it to be strictly controlled. Ivermectin is another case entirely, with its use a disgusting political football. Other countries have had good outcomes with it, and it is undeniably a safe drug, so absent clear and convincing evidence that it does not work, there is no medical reason for its restriction.
The politics of medicine has roared to the forefront, with the vaccines presented as the Holy Grail against Covid, and Ivermectin and a few other therapies presented by an insanely partisan media as some sort of nefarious plot by the far right to undermine SCIENCETM.
A rational analysis of the science, without the vile politics and craven behavior of the bureaucracy in support of their partners in Pharma, or the craziness of the anti-vax purity brigade yields some pretty basic facts.
The vaccines are modestly effective but their protection fades over time.
The vaccines should be given to high-risk people first, and then to the general population.
The risk-benefit analysis strongly suggests that the vaccine should not be given to children.
The virus is rapidly mutating (as most viruses do) to a more infectious and benign form.
The current vaccines are probably not as effective against the current strains.
There are mature, very safe medications that seem to be of benefit against Covid that should be considered for use, just like the other new high-priced therapies that don’t have the safety records of the older medications.
Pharma will do what any corporation will do…maximize profit. I have no problem with that. What I have a huge problem with is the revolving door between government regulators and cushy jobs in Pharma, and even worse, the ability of regulators and our oh-so-honest politicians to profit from investments in the very companies they regulate.
Until the blatant corruption in the system is minimized we cannot trust the basic science being used in support of therapies recommended by our government medical bureaucracy. It is profoundly, irreparably corrupt, and until it is burned to the ground and rebuilt with high walls between Pharma and government we will continue to see these insane disconnects between good medicine and government action.
Good morning to you all from the stately Dungeon of Discord. Welcome once again to the classy and luxurious Sunday Morning Book Thread, that plushly appointed mosh pit of opinion, snark, choler, jest and japery, and our continuing conversation on books, reading, writing, and the culture at large. While OregonMuse is recovering from the effects of prolonged use of Pervitin, I will toss together this placesetter Book Thread with my usual slugabed skrimshankery. And please feel free to lounge poolside in your HQ shorty robe. I don't impose harsh moral strictures or expect my readers to obey outmoded notions of decency. If you want to study Schrödinger starkers/not starkers, who am I to judge? Your natural right to cavort pantsless Shall. Not. Be. Infringed! Nor will I judge you for bowing to convention and wearing pants. Even if it's these pants, that could be worn at a Klingon blood ritual/BBQ. So join us in Ace's Grotto for some light refreshment and convivial conversation, and tell us what you've been reading!
I believe I linked to the Biblioburros of rural Columbia many threads ago. I was reminded of them when I placed a hold on a book after reading a good review of it in the Epoch Times - "The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek: A Novel" by Kim Michele Richardson. Anybody read it? The Amazon blurblet says "The hardscrabble folks of Troublesome Creek have to scrap for everything---everything except books, that is. Thanks to Roosevelt's Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, Troublesome's got its very own traveling librarian, Cussy Mary Carter." Alas for Cussie, she is one of Appalachia's "Blue People" (a fictionalized verson of the Fugate family of Troublesome Creek and Ball Creek, KY who carried the recessive methemoglobinemia gene) so she will have to confront prejudice. Sounds very Book Club-y, but it is supposed to to describe the people and land very vividly so we shall see.
Is there an author I love more "problematic" than H.P. Lovecraft? My very love itself is problematic (he referred to my tribe as "stunted brachycephalic South-Italians")! And yet I care not that his tentacles are colonizing my brain like a shoggoth. Here's a passage from the short story "The Hound", in which the protagonists, having lived a life of increasing hyper-depravity, become grave-robbers. "Only the sombre philosophy of the Decadents could hold us, and this we found potent only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our penetrations. Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural personal experiences and thrills."
What ungood authors do you like?
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Well that's it for this week. Get better, OregonMuse!
If I'm looking to purchase a desktop to be used primarily for playing the occasional game on the intertubes with intertube (nothing demanding on a system) friends in a different state, but need it to have the ability to do some serious video editing, and have a budget of less than $1000, what would you recommend?
I like my Dell Inspiron 16 Plus but that's a laptop and if you want one with dedicated Nvidia graphics you're looking at about $1280 which is rather more than $1000.
From Sam Adams:
Pixy Misa, could you please give a few new browser recommendations, with a brief explanation why you like them? I would really love to get the hell away from Google, Microsoft, etc.
Sure. It's not a long list though.
1. Brave. It doesn't spy on you - much - and it's highly compatible with Chrome other than the spying parts, being built on the same open source Chromium project. The built-in ad blocker seems to work fairly well.
Downside is that it likes to inject little crypto buttons into certain websites. You can turn that off easily enough, but it's turned on by default. I understand that they want to present a way to keep independent websites alive while blocking ads, but a browser should never alter the contents of a website without you explicitly requesting that.
2. Vivaldi. Also based on the Chromium project, so you can switch over and expect sites to work as before.
If you like choosing exactly how you want your browser to behave, this is the one to go for. It has twenty tabs full of settings for you to play with. I'm not sure if there's anything that's not customisable.
Plus it has built-in email and RSS support. Not news (Usenet / NNTP) alas, but a pleasant reminder that the internet didn't always consist largely of walled gardens controlled by communists.
From mongo:
You mentioned Lenovo today. My understanding is that the company is owned by the Chinese which, let's face it, means the CCP. Is there any indication that their computers come preloaded with viruses or other malware to make it easier for them to spy on you?
Good question.
It's worth noting that Huawei didn't get banned for putting spyware on their consumer devices. They got banned for putting spyware on their high-end telecommunications equipment.
The other two companies involved, Superfish and Komodia, went out of business in 2015 and 2018 respectively.
People have been keeping a close watch on Lenovo since then.
From Inquiring Minds:
Why does it take 900 network requests and one minute for ace.mu.nu to load (using the Brave browser on Linux)?
You know how there are lots of long articles posted here every day? You know how you can click to instantly show the full content of any post?
That's because all that content and the embedded content behind the posts is right there in the main page. Once the visible content has loaded your browser continues to load all the invisible stuff.
There's JavaScript that can be used to lazy load it all, but it's not entirely seamless. We should look into doing that anyway.
From CppThis:
I like my current PC but it's probably going to start giving trouble in a few years. If I start sourcing components for a new build this year, including a GPU, will they all become available and make it through the supply chain by 2026?
Given that the RTX 2060 from 2018 is the hot new card for 2022, that sounds about right.
Sapphire Rapids is supposed to be competitive with AMD's 3rd generation Epyc CPUs. 4th generation Epyc will be out later this year and is expected to blow current chips out of the water, with 25% better performance core and 50% more cores.
So Intel's delay puts their new 56-core parts squarely in front of the bulldozer, since AMD has three server updates in the pipeline: Milan-X with up to 64 cores and 768MB of cache, Genoa with 96 cores, and Bergamo with 128 cores.
That's hardly surprising since it costs less than a single current game title and runs at a modest 46W. If you want to play current games you should be looking at the i3-12100 at least. It's more expensive, still just 60W, and will run much faster.
If a site uses the IndexedDB API to store local data in your browser, every other site you visit can see that you visited the first site. Every embedded frame can see that you visited the first site. If you're using private mode, it doesn't matter, every site can still see it. If you're on an iPhone or iPad and using a different browser it doesn't matter, every site can see your browser activity.
That's because there aren't really any other browsers on iOS, just Safari in drag.
These don't entirely suck. Over time Atom has reached the point where it's fine for basic tasks. You'd still want the quad core and not the dual core, but single-threaded performance is actually better than the i7-5500U that I still use as a spare laptop, and multi-threaded performance with the quad core Atom is a lot better.
As always, what a journalist considers a heavy workload is laughable, so take the comments on 8GB being adequate with a a kiloton of salt. More importantly:
This is something that pros especially should be aware of: bootable backups are possible, but if your internal SSD completely dies, that bootable backup will fail too.
So... Your backups work a long as you don't need them, and die the instant you do?
Fortunately GitHub has restored the account of the developer who most recently blew up the entire Node.js ecosystem and allowed him once again to access the code that he created. With any luck this whole drama will soon be forgotten and then immediately repeated.
War CriminalComedian Idol Rabbit Spitting Facts Video of the Day
Years ago, a young Navy Pilot was injured while ejecting from his A-4 Skyhawk due to engine failure during a cat shot from the carrier, but due to the heroics of rescue helicopter crew and the ship's hospital staff, the only permanent injury was the loss of one ear.
Since he wasn't physically impaired, he remained on flight status and eventually became an Admiral.
However, during his career he was always sensitive about his appearance.
One day the Admiral was interviewing two Navy Master Chiefs and a Marine Sergeant Major for his personal staff.
The first Master Chief was a Surface Navy type and it was a great interview. At the end of the interview the Admiral asked him,
"Do you notice anything different about me?" The Master Chief answered, "Why, yes, Admiral. I couldn't help but notice that you are missing your starboard ear, so I don't know whether this impacts your hearing on that side."
The Admiral got very angry at this lack of tact and threw him out of his office.
The next candidate, an Aviation Master Chief, when asked this same question, answered, "Well yes, Sir, you seem to be short one ear." The Admiral threw him out as well.
The third interview was with the Marine Sergeant Major. He was articulate, extremely sharp, and seemed to know more than the two Master Chiefs put together. The Admiral wanted this guy, but went ahead with the same question. "Do you notice anything different about me?"
To his surprise, the Sergeant Major said, "Yes Sir. You wear contact lenses."
The Admiral was impressed and thought to himself, what an incredibly tactful Marine. "And how would you know that?" the Admiral asked.
The Sergeant Major replied: "Well, sir, it's pretty hard to wear glasses with only one fuckin' ear.
A man has become a professional queuer and earns his money by standing in line for rich people who don't want to - and he's making a killing doing it.
Freddie Beckitt charges £20 an hour to stand in line for other people, and he says it comes naturally to him as he's a Londoner, and has queueing "down to a fine art".
On a good day, the 31-year-old can earn up to £160, but he must have the patience of a saint as that means he's stood in a line, barely moving, for a full eight hours.
Freddie, from Fulham, said that his best jobs are queueing for tickets to highly popular events, such as performances at the Apollo, for customers who are money-rich and time-poor.
An inter-gender mixed martial arts fight involving a Russian porn star was stopped on Friday in wild scenes after a fan stormed the octagon.
The bout was fought between a blogger, named in reports as Sasha Mamaha, and porn star, named as Alexander Pistoletov, as part of a card put on by the Epic Fighting Championship.
Pistoletov is also known in Russia for being a singer, while Mamaha has a social media following.
Friday night's card also included a two-on-two all female contest as well as a fight including another porn star in the form of Elena Berkova, who also ran for president in 2018.
***
The Saturday Night ONT should be fun. And I'll be honest with you I debated whether or not I should run the following story.
Cops humiliated after using pink face masks to fight Covid and demand another colour.
The head of Italy's police union has said the masks are "unsuitable" for police officers and is calling for "immediate action" to get blue or black masks sent for officers to wear
***
The ONT Musical Interlude
Born on this day: 15 Jan 1941
Don Van Vliet, (Captain Beefheart), American musician, singer-songwriter and artist. Released the albums 'Safe As Milk', 'Trout Mask Replica', and 'Strictly Personal' with his Magic Band. His expressionist paintings and drawings have been exhibited in art galleries and museums across the world. Beefheart died on 17th Dec 2010 aged 69 from complications from multiple sclerosis. via thisdayinmusic.com
&&&
Born on this day: 15 Jan 1948
Ronnie Van Zant, vocalist with Lynyrd Skynyrd who had the 1974 US No. 8 single 'Sweet Home Alabama' and the 1982 UK No. 21 single 'Freebird'. Van Zant died in a plane crash between shows from Greenville, South Carolina to Baton Rouge, Louisiana on October 20th 1977 along with bandmates Steve Gaines and Cassie Gaines. Remaining band members survived, although all were seriously injured. via thisdayinmusic.com
***
It sounds like he lives with his Mother. But probably not in the basement for very long. Genius Award Winner.
JANUARY 12--A group of senior citizens unknowingly consumed pot brownies that were brought to a community center card game by a 73-year-old South Dakota woman who was unaware that her son had prepared the baked goods with THC butter, cops report.
According to a probable cause affidavit, police dispatchers last Tuesday received several calls reporting “possible poisonings” of individuals who were “at the Tabor Community Center earlier for a card game.” Tabor (pop. 423) is a town about 85 miles southwest of Sioux Falls.
“An investigation into the incident lead me to believe that the patients were all under the influence of THC from a batch of brownies that were brought to the Community Center by Irene Koranda,” reported Deputy Sheriff Joel Neuman.
A couple who had been at the weekly Tuesday night card game told police that “after several people had eaten the brownies including themselves,” they learned that Koranda’s son “had made the brownies and had been in Colorado over the past weekend and brought back products with marijuana.”
***
Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by Shocking Humor.
Notice: Posted without anyone's permission by the Ace Media Empire or AceCorp, LLC. This Cob has the keys and by God I did put a lot of artificial crap into this ONT.
Saturday Evening Movie Thread - 1/15/2022 [TheJamesMadison]
—Open Blogger
Public Domain Day
Every January 1 is Public Domain Day, the day when copyright expires, generally, on creative works from a given year. This year it was the works released in the United States back in 1926. 95 years ago.
I hate the American copyright regime.
Anyway, January 1 was just a couple of weeks ago, so what does that mean for movies? Well, some interesting stuff has entered the public domain.
Let's be honest, you can find pretty much anything online now without paying except those things that major copyright holders are keeping an eye out for. Want to watch John Ford's The Informer? A bit of searching will find it on places like YouTube or some Russian or Polish streaming sites. The title is in the Fox library, which Disney bought, and Disney doesn't care about The Informer. They care about their new Marvel movies being online illegally. So, in practical terms, for most of what's entering the public domain, there's little effect.
That's mostly because most of what's getting released into the public domain is stuff copyright holders (if anyone actually knows they own the copyright, which is not true for something like 99% of stuff that old) generally aren't actively protecting. So, what changes?
The threat of any legal action against anyone taking the original film elements and then selling them in any form goes away. The threat of legal action, even without a known copyright holder, is enough to keep most home video publishers away from old titles, limiting their ability and desire to spend any money on acquiring film elements like original prints, digitizing them, and even cleaning them up through a restoration.
Public domain is a bit of a different beast in that, yes, the work may be free to use, but access is still limited by whomever actually physically owns the best prints. Publishers still need to pay for that access, but it's a different financial arrangement with lower initial costs since copyright is taken out of the equation. There are a handful of titles this old that labels will happily pursue because they are simply that famous (Charlie Chaplin films, D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation or Intolerance, etc.), famous enough to be able to justify the cost of the restorations through guaranteed sales. However, the longer old nitrate prints remain in storage without any kind of help or restoration, the less usable they'll be when it does come time for them to enter the public domain. Also, the longer a movie remains out of the public consciousness, the less likely it is to find an audience today. A little known Buster Keaton film from 1926 is less likely to invite sales than a little known John Ford movie from 1946 (like, say, They Were Expendable).
So, anyway, that's my little bit on Public Domain and part of why I hate it (did you know that Rudyard Kipling still has works under copyright? Dude died in 1936.). What's actually suddenly available?
German Expressionism
One of the most important early movements of film was German Expressionism. Influencing people like Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford to great degrees, who then influenced another few generations of filmmakers themselves, German Expressionism was the first major effort after Georges Mιliθs in film to make things look not real. These things tend to be more popular with film nerds like me than general audiences because, it seems, general audiences are more inclined to accept things that go easier over the suspension of disbelief. One of the classics of the genre was released in the United States in 1926, and that is F.W. Murnau's Faust.
Now, I do own a Blu-ray copy of this. Released by Kino Lorber Classics a few years ago, it's from a restoration done by the Murnau Foundation, a German organization specifically dedicated to the restoration of works by Murnau and German film in general. It looks quite nice on that disc.
The film itself is taken from the German folktale and poem by Goethe about an older man (Faust) who makes a deal with the devil for youth. It's also a wonderfully inventive visual feast, using every tool of the early cinema's special effects to create new fantastical images. It's quite an enjoyable film and really should have entered the public domain 20 years ago. There were also films by G.W. Pabst and Michael Curtiz made in Germany in the same year. The Pabst film (One Does Not Play With Love) is now considered lost, but I wonder if it would have been possible to find elements if the search had been able to start 20 years earlier.
Comedy
Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd both released movies in 1926. Battling Butler and For Heaven's Sake. I have yet to watch either of these, but Keaton never ceases to entertain me when I watch his films. His are the work of a daring physical comedian who is willing to take huge risks to get a laugh, all while underplaying what's going on with his famous stoneface. Movies like The General, Our Hospitality, and Steamboat Bill Jr. may be the height of his work, but everything else has been entertaining.
Lloyd tends to be my favorite of the three major silent comedian stars (Keaton, Lloyd, and Chaplin). His Safety Last! is a combination of Keaton's daring with Chaplin's sweetness in the boy-faced comedy star. He even managed to successfully hide his mangled hand most of the time (he'd lost a couple of fingers in an accident early in his career).
Auteurs and Stars
Some of the earliest recognizable directorial names were making films in the mid-20s. John Ford, Howard Hawks, D.W. Griffith, Carl Th. Dreyer, King Vidor, Josef von Sternberg, G.W. Pabst, and Raoul Walsh all had films released in 1926. 3 Bad Men, Fig Leaves, The Sorrows of Satan, The Bride of Glomdal, Bardelys the Magnificent, A Woman at Sea, Secrets of a Soul, and What Price Glory should all be entering the public domain.
In terms of early movie stars, the same goes for Rudolph Valentino, Greta Garbo, Douglas Fairbanks, George O'Brien, Theda Bara, Fatty Arbuckle, and W.C. Fields all had movies released in 1926. That means that The Son of the Shiek, The Temptress, The Black Pirate, The Johnstown Flood, Madame Mystery, My Stars, and So's Your Old Man should be entering the public domain.
The point being that there's a whole lot to discover. I've already seen a handful of these because of my trips through the filmographies of particular directors (3 Bad Men is, in my opinion, John Ford's first great film, for example), but there's a lot more I've never seen. I had already, in fact, made a promise to myself to find and watch Raoul Walsh's What Price Glory because Ford later remade it, starring Jimmy Cagney, in the 50s.
Money
So, pretty much all of this stuff you can find on YouTube or other video hosting sites, so what's the point? Who cares this much about public domain. The issue is money. If people can throw up a video file onto a video hosting site without getting attacked through legal means, that's one thing, but if they can actually monetize it, that's something else entirely.
Leaving it up to those doing it out of the mere interest in sharing old movies limits the pool of people looking for and working on providing access to these old films, and the pool of people who are naturally interested in movies almost a century old tends to be fairly small. However, remove copyright protection on these movies, and suddenly anyone can try to make a buck off of it. Considering the explosion of software that can help clean up already digitized images (actually digitizing film is another matter and requires expensive equipment), you could have an army of people willing to clean up old films and try to make some money off of it. The profit motive is kind of awesome like that.
However, when combined with the 95-year timeline, the idea that there's a huge audience, a market, for the product seems silly, further limiting the number of people who are willing to work on it even when there is no copyright concern. The market for films from the 40s is significantly larger than those from the 20s, and if copyright had remained what it had been before the Sonny Bono Act in 1998, what happened this year on January 1st would have happened in 2001, and we'd be up to 1947 in the public domain. For 21 years, from 1998 to 2019, public domain in the United States was effectively frozen, and we've just simply lost more than we probably would have if anyone could have made some modest dough on what's out there.
The Future
Around 2017-2018, Disney apparently sent lobbyists to Congress to test the waters about advancing copyright once again, and they simply walked away without anything even getting to committee. The efforts of some activists to prevent further copyright extensions was apparently enough, but we're still two years away from Steamboat Willie entering the public domain. Disney always could put in a final push to protect one of its most profitable pieces of intellectual property.
I'm hopeful but anxious about the whole situation. Copyright in America is pretty much a joke, morphing from a reasonable protection of 28 years (with an option for another 28 years if applied for) to perpetual ownership of IP by corporations. In terms of being a movie fan, I want more people working to preserve older films for me to discover later. The lack of clarity around most films about whether they are actually under copyright or not (technically, if the extension was never applied for before a certain date, works after 1926 are in the public domain, but nobody really knows about most except in certain circumstances like It's a Wonderful Life and Charade) and the inability of people to actually pursue a profit is just leading to a situation where film elements are languishing, waiting for time to make them unusable.
That makes me sad. Film history is a wonderful thing to explore. I don't want the ravages of time and the greed of studio executives who weren't even born when Walt Disney hunched over a working desk to draw Mickey Mouse for the first time to limit what I can later discover.
The King's Man (Rating 3.5/4) Full Review "So, no, this film isn't perfect, but I still ended up kind of loving it. 2/3 of it is a great look at World War I, and 1/3 of it is a crazy action movie with some detritus in between. It's a mixed bag, but one that I really embrace." [Theaters]
Fort Apache (Rating 3.5/4) Full Review "Still, with the film as it is, it's a very good film that's just ten to fifteen minutes of cuts away from greatness." [Personal Collection]
3 Godfathers (Rating 3/4) Full Review "And it mostly works. It's fine. It's entertaining and amusing. I just could have been more." [Library]
Wagon Master (Rating 3.5/4) Full Review "Everything up to that point, though, is kind of wonderful. Heartfelt, masculine, and grand visually, Wagon Master is four-fifths of a great film." [Library]
The Quiet Man (Rating 4/4) Full Review "This probably is the easiest film to love in Ford's large filmography. Bright and colorful while consistently entertaining from beginning to end with delightful performances from the leads on down, The Quiet Man is old school Hollywood filmmaking at its best." [Personal Collection]
Mister Roberts (Rating 4/4) Full Review "The film works as a collection of amusing events until its conclusion when it pulls it all together in a complex set of emotions that works really well, elevating the movie that came before into something rather special." [Library]
Contact
Email any suggestions or questions to thejamesmadison.aos at symbol gmail dot com.
I've also archived all the old posts here, by request. I'll add new posts a week after they originally post at the HQ.
Hello Saturday afternoon peeps! Wow, it's bright out here . What do you daywalkers call that big orange thing in the sky?
We were all tremendously excited to hear that Oregon Muse is recovering, but it will be a bit before he's able to resume his COB duties. Please continue to keep him and his family in your prayers.
I'm still covering the chess thread, but I'm going to be honest with y'all. The past two weeks exhausted even my pretend knowledge and silliness on the subject. I just don't have the knowledge, so I'm going to have to shelve the subject until OM is ready to resume writing the thread. I fervently hope that this is soon, but probably not as fervently as those of y'all who, you know, enjoy chess and dresses.
I don't have a theme in mind, but today I thought I'd talk about my big winter project. Be warned, however, that I'm not at the Alberta Oil Peon level. No, I'm more at this guy's level.
When we moved to this house a year and a half ago, it came with a nice big garden. The plot is 33' X 42', and last year I tilled it up and planted a conventional garden. Initially, it looked very nice.
However, mid summer we went away for a week, we all caught Covid and the next 3 weeks were rainy. I basically ignored the garden for a month, except for picking the occasional vegitable to eat, and the weeds went nuts. I mean, they got away from me fast. By the end of the summer the garden looked like this:
Actually, it looked a lot worse, that's just the last picture I took.
So, anyway, I did what any red blooded American male would do: I burned it. I took a propane torch and burned the field right down to the dirt. I decided that my winter project was going to be to make raised beds. And quite a lot of them too. The space will hold 20 4 X 8 beds, with 3' paths in between for access. The challenge was going to be making the beds without spending a fortune. I wanted to use barn tin, of which Texas has an abundance, but the problem is that everyone thinks they're Martha Stewart and that lovely old rusted barn tin will make just the cutest accent wall, so what should sell for not much is going for more than lumber. It's nuts. I finally scored 8 26” X 12' sheets for $100, enough for 8 beds.
I've built 2 of them so far, here's the result:
The chicken wire in the bottom is to prevent burrowing animals from coming up and eating my root crops. I made one bed out of 2X8s, you can see it in the background of the above picture, but lumber is dear now. That one bed cost $60 in materials! I needed another solution.
What I finally settled on was pickets. They're cheep, under $2 each, and at 6' X 5 ½ inches they're the right size for the job. The only thing is that they require a joint on the long side, but that's not too big of a deal. They're also perfect for making potato towers (foreground).
The corner posts I'm using were repurposed from shipping container supports. You can see the groove where the straps would go.
And that's my winter project this year. I'm about halfway done, yesterday I had 15 CY of bedding dirt delivered and this morning we were filling up the beds. Pro tip: Have a friendly neighbor who owns a tractor with a frontloader, it makes the job so much easier.
There's more than enough beds completed for my frost hardy crops, which go in next month, and I have until April to finish the rest, but I plan on finishing sooner. When I get to the actual planting and growing, maybe I'll ask KT if I can write a guest garden thread. It'll be like old times, that's what I started on here at the wonderful AoSHQ!
Well it looks like Sobek has brought out the best in fellow artists. The following is from "Long time Lurker".........
Here’s a sketch of my cousin’s Sheltie puppy Bonnie. I love her mismatched ears
Sign my long time lurker
What a lovely dog and what a lovely sketch. I'm somewhat envious of your skills. Thanks for coming out of the Lurker darkness.
***
This is Churro a chihuahua mix. I would love to know what else is in there lol! He's a cutie! He does have a few health issues the biggest being an enlarged heart. Right now he's also battling a cough which we have him on medication for. After a thorough vet visit he will probably be on more. He loves all the volunteers and has already been integrated with the other dogs, with supervison. He was an owner surrender due to her being moved to a nursing home. - Jewells
Once again Jewells, thank you for all your work you do with these Sr. Citizen dogs.
***
This is MadisonTheCat showing her disdain for television. She’s right, you know. I hope I sent it correctly.- Eromero
Hello Eromero, of course you submitted this correctly. Thanks for sharing your cat who has good taste.
***
A repeat pet moron.
Here is a picture of the most spoiled cat in the world, Oblio. A picture of her highness lounging on top of the blanket.
Regards,
Butch
Repeat Morons are always welcome, especially if they are cute and spoiled. Thanks for sharing today.
***
I bought a new toy for Paisley.
How long will it take for her to destroy it. She's very determined.
Northernlurker
Speaking of repeat Pet Morons. Good to see Paisley again being spoiled rotten. Thanks Northernlurker.
***
Thanks to all who submitted to today's Ace of Spades Pet Thread. It's a shame to see how the Pet Morons are so neglected.
If you wish to share with us something animal related please contact us here at petmorons at gmail dot com.
Saturday Gardening, Puttering and Outdoor Adventure thread, Jan. 15
—K.T.
Hi, everybody! It's still winter. Had any garden or outdoor experiences, or are you dreaming for later? for those in the dreaming stage, Bluegreen Kayak sent in some information and photos:
While trying to organize ten years of digital pictures, I found these lilies from the North Dakota State University Daylily Display Garden in Fargo.
My sister showed the garden to me when I visited late in July last year. It was a wonder to me how many different varieties of day lilies there are; I mostly see the ubiquitous yellow ones that grace the new home subdivisions.
In addition to the wider range of colors, I liked the variety of petal types on display, especially the ones with a sort of frill around the edges. Some day lilies were bred to emphasize every other petal, giving them a semi-triangular shape.
Thanks again for the great pictures and plant tips you put up there for all of us - Bluegreen Kayak
These photos are impressive. And quite the daylily farm!
Bluegreen Kayak's comments give us a clue into why a lot of people are amateur daylily breeders. If you study the flowers in the photos, there really is a lot of variety! I like the flower form of the specimen above.
We turned our turkey coop into a greenhouse. We're in zone 6a so always seem to need an extra month for growing. Lemon tree is showing some fruit. We also took some beef steak tomato cuttings that have grown enough for 5 gallon pots. Hope they make it to spring for transplanting and get a jump start on the season.
S.Lynn, Wilder Idaho
This sounds like such a good idea. Love to see the little lemons, in Idaho!
While driving to the city Thursday to buy a new cell phone for DH, I happened to hear part of the first radio interview of Devin Nunes since he left Congress earlier this month to head up the Trump Media & Technology Group. The first project of this new company will be a social media platform, to compete with the Big Tech platforms that cancel, suspend or hide people for their political views. We've all seen this happen.
For a limited time, you can hear the entire Nunes interview on the Ray Appleton Podcast for January 13, hour 2. It's 40 minutes long, with listener input. (If the podcast dates don't show for you, try a different browser).
I also discovered that the day before, Appleton had spoken with Victor Davis Hanson about Nunes and his switch from Congress to the Trump organization. They also speculated about whether Trump would run for president again. Trump will be holding a rally in Arizona this afternoon. Maybe we'll get some clues then.
The Appleton podcast segment with VDH runs about 12 minutes, with a few more minutes in which VDH and Appleton discuss California issues. You can find the VDH interview at the same link as the Devin Nunes interview above. January 12, hour 2.
VDH pointed out that Nunes was tenacious in standing up to the left in Congress. He and Appleton had a hard time coming up with names of others in Congress who were similarly tenacious in standing up to the left. Can you think of any? They also discussed how life for a California conservative in Congress could be difficult.
Starting a new social media company in today's climate also sounds to me like a venture fraught with potential pitfalls. In his interview, Nunes seemed to recognize Big Tech as a foe every bit as formidable as the ones he faced in Congress, perhaps even more formidable. He also views the legislative process in Washington as having fallen into disarray.
Nunes seems determined to leave politics behind, even wiping Adam Schiff from his memory banks. He has a new challenge.
In the interview, he mentioned a book he wrote. This was a short Encounter book entitled Countdown to Socialism. It came out in September of 2020, before the election. One came to our house (not in Nunes' district) in the name of our nephew, whom I doubt was registered as a Republican. Maybe one of his friends put him on a list when he was living in Tulare.
It is very short, and an easy read.
. . . In this explosive Encounter Broadside, Congressman Devin Nunes exposes the nexus between the Democratic Party, the mainstream media, and the social media corporations. These three entities cooperate to blast out the Democrats' message and downplay their extremism while suppressing and censoring conservative points of view. Tens of millions of Americans are only seeing one side of the debate. The information they get from newspapers and social media is not "news"--it's contrived content designed to help one political party and punish its opponents. In the run-up to the most consequential election of our lifetime, read this book to learn how your information is being skewed and regulated to force America onto the path to socialism. . .
This little book may have played a role in Trump's decision to ask Nunes to head up his new company.
Incidentally, a month later, just before the election, the paperback edition of Lee Smith's book The Plot Against the President came out with a new subtitle: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History
. . . While popular opinion holds that Russia subverted democratic processes during the 2016 elections, the real damage was done not by Moscow or any other foreign actor. Rather, this was a slow-moving coup engineered by a coterie of the American elite, the "deep state," targeting not only the president, but also the rest of the country. The plot officially began July 31, 2016 with the counterintelligence investigation that the FBI opened to probe Russian infiltration of Donald Trump's presidential campaign. But the bureau never followed any Russians. In fact, it was an operation to sabotage Trump, the candidate, then president-elect, and finally the presidency. The conspirators included political operatives, law enforcement and intelligence officials, and the press. The plot was uncovered by Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and his investigative team. They understood that the target of the operation wasn't just Trump, but rather the institutions that sustain our republic. A country where operatives use the intelligence and security services to protect their privileges by spying on Americans, coordinating with the press, and using extra-constitutional means to undermine an election then undo a presidency is more like the third world than the republic envisioned by the founding fathers. Without Nunes and his team, the plot against the president -- and against the country -- never would have been revealed. . .
VDH emphasized this issue in the interview mentioned above.
In 2010, when he had much less influence in Congress, Devin Nunes wrote another little book, Restoring the Republic.
Born and raised in the breadbasket of California, thirty-six-year-old Nunes has seen firsthand how the convergence of big government, big business, and the radical Left has wreaked havoc on entire communities, turning the once-thriving farmland of the San Joaquin Valley into a blighted desert reminiscent of the Dust Bowl. Now the same forces are doing their damage on a national level, threatening America's very foundation. But Nunes has a plan to stop them.
I suspect that this would have been an extremely difficult plan to carry out in Washington D.C. Wishing Nunes success in the struggle to interrupt Big Tech's takeover of our lives, in ways big and small. The new social media platform is scheduled to launch in March. They promise no algorithms, and much less intrusiveness.
Incidentally, a little tip for the tech-illiterate like me:
It can be a minor ordeal to transfer your contacts from an old Android phone to a new one if your phone's contacts have not always been synched to your Google account. You may need to look up how to import some contacts on the SIM card (from the old device, now in the new phone) to your Google account before they will show up on the new phone. Amazing. Your phone cannot display the contents of the SIM card inside it without your Google account. Google knows practically everything about you.
Hope you have something nice planned for the weekend.
This is the Thread before the Gardening Thread.
Serving your mid-day open thread needs
Bonus Meme: Media's attitude during the Russia Collusion "revelations", courtesy of Dr_No. You can probably think of other issues where this fits the media's approach:
Oregon Muse is continuing his battle with Covid, and while we all fully expect a victory, it will be some time before he returns to his accustomed place on these pages. He would like to thank the Horde for their prayers and kind and supportive thoughts! AoSHQ
Forgotten 80s Mystery Click Yesterday I mentioned "Simple Mind's other hit," thinking they only had two. I forgot they had a third. So this is a real Forgotten 80s Mystery Click on my end. Here's their other other hit.
Forgotten 80s Mystery Click Simple Minds' other -- and I'd say, better -- hit Relatedly, Thompson Twins managed a couple of hits just before they were banished to the outer darkness of VH-1 oldies shows (and then disappeared forever) one of which is in in the same mock-religious vein as Simple Mind's lesser-known song
Justice Breyer says that there were "750 million new covid cases yesterday"
There are 330 million people who live in America which means everyone apparently got covid twice in the last 24 hours
As Phil Kerpen said: they know literally nothing. These, the GigaSolons who arrogate to themselves the power to decide our fates for us, because we're not smart enough to.
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