Good morning one and all to another glorious day!
House Ethics Committee Decides Not to Release Gaetz Report
Senator John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson Signal Support For Recess Appointments
Mysterious Babbitt Shooting Witnesses Incited Rioters, Met Secretly With Capitol Police on Jan 6
Cable Giant Announces Plans To Spin Off MSNBC, CNBC After Ratings Crash
Texas Offers 1,400-Acre Ranch to Trump for Mass Deportations Program
Deep-Blue California Voters Reject $18 Minimum Wage Proposal
Over 6% of Missouri students now homeschooled, report says
While America Is On the Dawn of Economic Recovery, the Sun’s Going to Set on California
Google Lashes Out at DOJ Plan to Force Sale of Chrome Browser Business
Bitcoin hits fresh record, races toward $100,000 as rally continues
That’s all I got for today. I’ll leave you with a song and move along with my day.
But it will be “hacker” “leaked” by the weekend, I expect. Funny how that works.
Morning, Banjos! Morning, all… Run in terror, Betty Boop — that guy looks like he’s going to eat you (“and not in a fun way” they all reply….)
I thought I saw a headline that some congressional gadfly (MTG maybe?) had proposed to release all of the congressional NDAs if the Gaetz report was released. There’s a pretty good chance the lid stays closed if that were to actually be a realistic possibility.
Mutual Assured Disclosures might work, yeah…. I hadn’t seen that, but the idea is intriguing. And it isn’t like anyone in DC knows how to play political hardball, after all. (/sarc)
One of the things I hear about MTG, no matter her politics, is that she is a congressional rules lawyer on par with Lyndon Johnson. Meaning she will dig into the bylaws and such of the House and use those to force changes.
The way I understand it MTG and Massie would hang out on the floor forcing everyone to follow the rules and force votes, enforce quorum rules, etc. Making them do their jobs was very upsetting to congress critters.
Personally I hope one of the team blue idiots leaks this Gaetz shit, and then it goes scorched earth and all the “secret shit” files on congress get released showing everyone how despicable the vast majority of these congress critters are to begin with.
Rumors on X of an Adam Schiff sex settlement payed out by the Congressional sex abuse fund. Just a rumor – like Gaetz’s accusations, but exposing it all sounds good to me.
Paid. It’s “paid out”.
I’ve been seeing this error recently. Is it some weird autocorrect thing?
It’s fucking Reddit grammar.
“Payed” is a correct past tense, so autocorrect allows it. It’s just not the past tense of paying money.
You suck Spell check.
It probably wasn’t payed out like fishing line.
Sigh… this really tickles my “That’s not how it is supposed to work” reflex. I don’t have a problem with the base concept, especially in the days when it took time for Congress to reassemble due to travel realities and all… but this just seems like abuse. Frankly, I’d rather the system was something like “recess appointments are fine — but a small minority (10% maybe?) can call for a full Senate vote up or down when it reconvenes? Something where you can’t dodge the actual Senate confirmation process en masse like this looks like, in any event.
I don’t understand their plan. Are they going to go through the swearing in and then immediately recess?
Pretty much. At least, go into recess really early so Herr Trumpler can appoint his filthy, sycophantic cabinet.
As I recall, Congress (both houses) doesn’t recess until Easter or so, and then only for a week or two.
When one house of Congress is in recess, the President can force the other half to recess. I knew the fix was in last week when Johnson got to sit at the big boy table with Trump, RFK, and Elon.
It would technically be perfectly Constitutional, for what that’s worth.
Setting that aside, these are executive department staff. I can’t think of any grand principle being violated by having the President appoint his own direct reports with or without legislative approval. Legislative meddling in the executive branch is what got us administrative agencies 99% staffed with tenured-for-life pubsecs, after all.
Isn’t the Senate supposed to “advise and consent” with the emphasis on consent? This is what saved us from Garland being on SCOTUS after all.
Although I do agree with you RE president should pick his cabinet. Which is vastly different than a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land.
A SCOTUS Justice isn’t a direct report to the President in the executive branch, so I wasn’t talking about those. There’s no such thing as recess appointments of judges, as far as I know.
@zwak
Yes. But there is a provision in the constitution for recess appointments. At this point it’s against the spirit of what the provision is designed for, but it is there, is legal, and hasn’t been changed since it was written.
“Sigh… this really tickles my “That’s not how it is supposed to work” reflex.”
I will remind you all that that is how Obama got most of his appointments in 2009….
Not saying that it is the right way to do things, but if you choose to play with a massive handicap, you should expect to lose.
But, muh norms!
I thought Obama had 60 Team Blue senators until Scott Brown won the special election at the end of 2009.
I think the reasoning is they don’t want Trump to go scorched earth on THEM because of how McConnell refused to allow the Senate to go into recess for most of the first term in order to deny POTUS 45 the ability to put his own people in even on a temporary basis. Thus allowing the bureaucrats unhindered ability to block him. Recess appointments were traditionally allowed because they were a relatively rare event, because of death or some other unexpected departure. But of course when Orange Hitler came into power it was weaponized like everything else in DC. Can’t let the outside screw up our lucrative graft system, can we!
And it only takes one Senator to declare the Senate is in recess. That is why I don’t much respect for Rand Paul. IMO he’s a performative contrarian, who talks a good talk which never seems to turn into anything substantial.
And it only takes one Senator to declare the Senate is in recess
Got a cite for that? Seems to me that any Senator who wanted to scuttle legislation or a nomination would just declare the Senate in recess.
To answer your question I will have to refer you to a rather
Recess Appointments FAQ (written in 2015)
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RS/RS21308
The judicial deliberations described in it (as to how long a recess can last before a POTUS can legally make a recess appointment) leading to this:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2017/08/04/republican-senate-blocks-president-trump-from-recess-appointments/
I hope this helps.
STG, the second link says that the pro-forma sessions require unanimous consent of the Senate, not that one Senator can put the chamber in recess.
The recess appointment clause really is a relic of a bygone era when we had a part time legislature in my opinion. However, a President executing their Constitutional powers as described doesn’t bother me too much. My guess is the thinking behind this is, is that the Senate will filibuster any and all of Trump’s choices for any position just because.
Keep the filibuster, but make it like “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”, shutting down every other bit of Senate business and requiring someone to speak from the floor of the Senate.
is that the Senate will filibuster any and all of Trump’s choices for any position just because.
I accept your terms. All it takes is an EO saying any department without a chief officer approved by the Senate shall have its operating budget reduced to zero and any and all operations ceased until such time as an officer is nominated and confirmed into the position.
It could also be a threat to wield against the Democrats to keep them in line.
Last time around they stonewalled his appointments, making running the government impossible. They were very happy about the success of their “resistance”.
Over 6% of Missouri students now homeschooled, report says
That’s not fair. Why should they get a good education while public school students don’t?
I content that the greatest reason for those that argue against that home schooling is not really the educational advantage the students being home schooled get, but the fact that these students manage to avoid the indoctrination and stupid that gets drilled into them in the public school system, that one side of political elite need to create a dumb and beholden populous…
Huxley: “…the greater part of the population is not very intelligent, dreads responsibility, and desires nothing better than to be told what to do. Provided the rulers do not interfere with its material comforts and its cherished beliefs, it is perfectly happy to let itself be ruled.”
So, not so much one side and not at all conniving by the elite.
Not questioning Huxley and his assertion, but in the case of education there is a clear divide between the teams. You could make the argument that team red would be all in for the public school system if it was indoctrination they approved of (the old ways where people were thought to love the country, and not hate it like the left has done), but they seem to have given upon being able to address that issue with the public school system.
It’s some of that and a lot of supposition that those kids are turned into christfag wingnuts.
I think the opposition to homeschooling and charter schools is based on the fact that government schools get a lot of funding based on student numbers. Every kid in homeschool or a charter school “costs” them money.
there is a clear divide between the teams
In my last article I asked – who had ever been taught about that de Toqueville quote. No one answered, because no one, under any education system (including my own when California truly was the gold standard) had. Fuck off that the Republicans are really a more responsible, serious party. They teach mindless conformity just as much as the Democrats.
I think the opposition to homeschooling and charter schools is based on the fact that government schools get a lot of funding based on student numbers. Every kid in homeschool or a charter school “costs” them money.
The plan with my kids is to have them do associates degrees from 16-18. In my county, if they were enrolled in public high school they could do this for free. As homeschooled kids, I will have to pay for the associates degree out of pocket. So yeah, clearly I have saved the school system money over 10 years but they would argue I have cost them money and now cannot have the “free” community college.
There is going to have to be a paradigm shift sooner or later though. With the ubiquitous nature of all the world’s knowledge contained in nearly every kids pocket, our current model of rote bullshit. What we shift to, if we ever do, will really set the pace for humanity for generations to come.
It isn’t so much team R vs. team D, but, rather, which team is up, and which team is down. The team that is down is going to reach for the protections of the constitution at every opportunity to protect itself, and the team that is up will try to ignore those in order to get its wishes.
This is true in every instance: education, law, politics, etc.
“,Fuck off that the Republicans are really a more responsible, serious party. They teach mindless conformity just as much as the Democrats.”
I am a bit unsure how you got from me saying that the democrats had wrecked the school system for personal gain, and thus, siding with the republicans to break the monopoly now, meant the republicans were the serious party. I am not team blue or team red, but pragmatically right now my choices are between marxist insanity from team blue that have wrecked everything, or team red setting them back on this journey on the river Styx they have taken us on.
“It isn’t so much team R vs. team D, but, rather, which team is up, and which team is down. ”
One of the most effective memes I saw recently was that the election was between patriots and those that hated the country and were destroying it.
Team blue hates the country for sure, and if it is not yet obvious they want it wrecked so they can remake it in their marxist image, you need to check your vision. That doesn’t mean team red is the good guys. Right now they are not the bad guys because they have been forced by the patriots to take on the corruptocracy.
siding with the republicans to break the monopoly now
Republicans don’t want to break the monopoly, they’d be far happier keeping the monopoly and bending it back to their viewpoint. They’ll allow a bit of relief at the margins to keep the pressure off.
Everyone knows it’s the Democrats who are the serious party: they have no sense of humor whatsoever.
We have a Hispanic woman at our gym who moved from Illinois so she could home school her kids here. I learned that Indiana provides funds for homeschooling, even giving extra
(dog ate my comment)
… money to cover the kids’ lunches. It’s more than enough money and she loves it here.
Personally, I’d rather destroy their entire business model by making it illegal to track people online in the first place, for ad purposes or otherwise…. but there’s not really a legal framework for that — it is just my own utter distaste for our surveillance society speaking.
The DOJ is trying to force Google to sell Chrome to them. That’s the truly offensive part.
The interesting thing about divesting Chrome would be… how do you define Chrome? The Chromium base is open source and used as the basis for every browser that isn’t Firefox or Safari. The Blink engine is technically open source, although Google doesn’t distribute it separately from the Chromium binaries. Chrome is the Chromium base with their proprietary blobs and default services larded on. Chrome without Google is… every other browser on the market.
Pat:
Yeah, Chrome isn’t the problem, it’s the data collection tied to advertising where the issues crop up. I ‘member when Facebook got in big trouble for creating “shadow accounts” for people based on tracking cookies and the like for people who had never created an account.
I’m not seeing that. “To a buyer approved by the Plaintiffs in their sole discretion”, yeah the DOJ wants to approve who it goes to… but I would expect that in an anti-trust forced breakup suit. The Court still has to approve it — and it isn’t “to the Plaintiffs” nor is it really implied it is to the government.
But maybe that’s what they really want — I don’t know… have a citation, Neph?
Interesting. I was trying to divine the intent. Now it makes some sense. I don’t use it but I defend Google’s right to own what they built.
Pat:
is apparently how the DOJ is defining Chrome, right or wrong. Just fyi.
So… yeah, Chromium is part of it (unsurprisingly).
SDF-7:
Looks like that was an error in the early reports of this that broke last night. The stories have been updated to clarify that the DOJ was forcing a sale, not that they were going to buy it (which was the original story).
I wonder how the buyer will feel when Chromium, the engine for which is itself a fork of WebKit, which was in turn a fork of KHTML, gets forked 15 minutes after the sale is completed. Probably about like Apache when all of the OpenOffice devs fled to LibreOffice. I wonder if they can legally enjoin Google to cease all development of any other browser engine while they’re at it.
How exactly does Google convey ownership of open-source? Of course the DOJ hasn’t considered that.
They just have to wait for the Trump DOJ.
“Personally, I’d rather destroy their entire business model by making it illegal to track people online in the first place, for ad purposes or otherwise…. ”
Like me you are showing your age, brah…
Are you aware how many young people seem oblivious to the surveillance state because they prefer the convenience sold to them by those tracking them?
That shit is daunting. Especially when they then have certain shibboleths where they think they should have privacy on after they have already given it all away.
What I heard (no assurances as to veracity) was that the ad business are primarily run from data derived from Chrome usage and from google usage, so splitting them immediately creates competing entities.
FTFY
Concur.
At least to balance out my “Wish I’d bought into some of that a while ago” reaction I have my recognition that I have an innate knack for “buy high, sell low!” instincts… I tend to not do such transactions to avoid carrying out that destiny.
If I had bought Bitcoin (or if I were crazy enough to buy some now thinking “Oh… it will only grow!”), that would be the surest sign that the universe were about to bring it crashing down. So all of y’all actually invested in it can thank me for that.
I have a similar knack with gas prices. Every time I fill up, I can guarantee as surely as the sunrise that it will be cheaper within a week. The last time I filled up they actually dropped it by 2 cents per gallon during the ~4 hours I was working inside the store the station is attached to.
Regular periodic purchases of fixed dollar amount in both cases. Regular periodic rebalancing for investments. Don’t know what the analog of rebalancing is for gas.
I bought some BitCoin more or less on a lark, to see how it all worked, ten(?) years ago. I forget what I paid – around $1,000, maybe? I sold half when it doubled, spent a little bit, sold the rest a few years ago, all at a decent profit. Sure, I would have made more if I’d held on, but as it was I made some money. Can’t complain.
Now, the guys who had thousands of BitCoin on some drive they lost (or lost access to), or had it stolen from one of the hacked exchanges – that would truly suck.
MSTR is close to +15% again pre-market. I don’t really understand, but glad I bought at $75 in 2021 even if I did have to watch it go down to $15. Sometimes you just need to be a little retarded.
While I think cryptocurrency is a great way to diversify your investments, my big problem with cryptocurrency of any kind has always been that it depends on electricity and an internet to provide it’s value. The disasters I am prepped for, where I can see having personal wealth to provide you the ability to overcome calamity of needing a hard currency, all also come with reliable internet and electricity service being not being present with enough surety to make it worth it.
I am invested in the 3 precious metals for that. Physical gold, silver, and of LOTS course brass & lead and devices to deliver that down range. I won’t mention some of the other stuff related to chemistry and combustion one might also need.
+1 Carrington event
Don’t jinx us JI!
I’m not clear on why the voters got a say in this effort but not the one that jacked up the minimum for fast-food workers.
Because the Calidems wanted someone to blame when it goes sideways. Stupid voters.
Voters get a say when the legislature is unwilling to take the blame?
damifino, really…. politics in this stupid state only annoy me typically. I’ve given up trying to understand them most of the time.
I keep wondering what Google did to get hit with the anti-trust action. And I completely disagree with it. There are a million browsers out there. And tons of search engines. Any insight ?
FYTW
There may be a million browsers out there, but most of them are built on the same core as Chrome. Same as some of the search engines rely on Google search results (such as DDG). It would be interesting (to me at least) to see what would happen if someone out there set up a search engine using the original Pagerank algorithm.
It’s also somewhat shocking to me that no one has been able to topple Google’s search dominance. I remember the days of new engines coming out and being targeted for specific things (pours one out for AltaVista and AstaLaVista).
DDG sources its index from Bing; Startpage is the privacy-friendly front-end to Google.
I used AltaVista quite literally until the page started redirecting and am still resentful.
Thing about search engines though, is that nobody navigates to a search engine’s web page in a web browser anymore; they search from the search bar on their phones, which means if they’re not using an Apple device, and aren’t a .0001% privacy schizo with Lineage OS installed, they’re searching with Google.
Search is a diminishing aspect of their business anyway. They generate more revenue and data from Android.
All but two are still Chromium-based though, and the cumulative market share of those two is around 10%. In terms of web browsers, Google legitimately does have something as close to a monopoly as you can reasonably get without a legal grant like a utility provider. That said, the fedgov has allowed that situation to exist for decades without any involvement, and has been so deeply involved with Google since the DOD incubated it at Stanford that it’s pretty close to an NGO. I don’t know the scuttlebutt, but Google pissed somebody off.
“ Google pissed somebody off.”
^This. The best summary.
Google pissed somebody off.
They didn’t suppress enough wrongthink to win the election?
I’m wondering if the word “monopoly” will ever recover from the ridiculous abuse that has been heaped on it by these grifters.
There’s probably a chance — but it would take funds from the community chest to do it.
I blame Parker Brothers.
Yeah; government schools have a greater percentage of minor children in their grasp than anything the government claims is a monopoly.
Well, it is still Garlands DOJ, so maybe payback for not fixing the election for them?
Knowing the speed of the bureaucracy, this was definitely percolating in the first Trump admin, possibly even late Obama.
There is nothing like losing power to force you to exert power.
This is the same DOJ that prosecuted anti-trust actions against IBM and Microsoft.
Are there really? I thought most (almost all now) are just skins on Chromium these days. And those who aren’t (maybe Firefox? Not sure how much is still Gecko and how much is Chromium now… I thought they were converting over the last couple of years) are trending towards it. Which allows the big G to pull crap like breaking ad-blocking / no-track extensions across the board to help their core business.
But as mentioned — I just despise that part of their core business, so I’m probably too biased to look at this objectively. I hate all the tracking that’s become “acceptable” over the last 25 odd years. Don’t care who is doing it. Anyway… not going to rant. Preach, choir, etc.
Firefox is still 100% Gecko. They were going to rebase on a new engine during the Servo/Quantum skunkworks, but ended up just integrating the changes to the Gecko engine itself. The only other viable engine that supports all modern web standards is WebKit. The PaleMoon furries still maintain an ancient fork of the pre-Quantum Gecko engine, but it runs like dog shit and hasn’t been standards compliant in years. Even if it were a good fork, the guy that runs the project is a megalomaniac who handles feature requests and bug reports like you called his mother a cunt. I can only guess his day job is as a Gnome dev with Red Hat.
There is a wonderful graphic out there showing all of this… let me find it.
Legitimate LOL…. I would have gone with “like that asshole behind systemd (Poettering, I think?)”, but that’s close enough.
Ah… I think it was this. The engines seem to be color-coded.
I miss pre-ChiCom Opera.
I confess I sort of like systemd
I liked old Opera too. Especially the Mail application.
I don’t know if it’s still maintained, but Otter Browser was a chromium-based project to mimic the UI and functionality of vintage Opera.
rhywun:
I still remember the old Eudora mail client, and their “anti-flame” pepper rating on messages. I even remember setting up my own Mailwasher client for spam filtering back in the day.
/goes and gets a Werthers.
Lol, my dad used Eudora long after it was discontinued and only stopped when his mail provider began requiring modern security features that Eudora didn’t implement.
I used Hamster for its Perl rege filtering.
I can only guess his day job is as a Gnome dev with Red Hat.
HA!
“like that asshole behind systemd (Poettering, I think?)”
I too sort of like systemd a la slumbrew, but Poettering certainly comes across as an asshole, though maybe that’s sort of par for the course to develop such a large software base. Which is where systemd sort of falls on it’s ass – trying to be too much and provide hooks for every system function.
100%. All it needs to become a fully stand-alone system is systemd-kerneld. Once upon a time it was supposed to be an init system. Booting a modern system on parallel sysvinit was, indeed, cumbersome, but other inits solved for that without packing 80% of an OS into PID1. It *does* make administrative tasks easier in some ways, but at the cost of a really unwieldy, unauditable piece of software that is the antithesis of Unix philosophy. And ironically enough, it now takes an age to boot, which was supposed to be half the reason for moving away from sysvinit.
I still use Debian with systemd for my servers, but I vastly prefer runit as an init.
*on non parallel sysvinit…
Ah… I think it was this. The engines seem to be color-coded.
I’ve been using LibreWolf, which I don’t see on that chart. I think it is largely a disto of FireFox with lots of privacy-improved settings standard.
My wife has, for reasons I have not explored, been using Brave (or maybe just Brave Search?). I don’t see that on the chart either.
LibreWolf is, indeed, Firefox-based/Gecko engine. It’s more or less a Firefox distribution that ships with a custom user.js similar to the Arkenfox framework, and the telemetry disabled.
Brave is chromium-based.
LibreWolf
Firefox with privacy features turned on, telemetry off. I believe you could make librewolf by taking stock firefox and configuring (i.e. I don’t think there are code changes?).
My wife has, for reasons I have not explored, been using Brave
Brave is chromium based.
I have librewolf and brave installed and use brave when something I need to do for work breaks irreparably with librewolf.
I miss NetPositive from BeOS. I used BeOS from about 1998-2003 or so when I was forced to go to Windows (briefly) when I started grad school, then within a couple months of starting grad school I switched to a Mac.
I thought a lot of the uproar was because of the prepackaged and only installed browser on Android devices, which hold something like a 70% share of devices worldwide.
Presupposes that users are too stupid to install a different browser – just like the Internet Explorer days….
Maybe they’re right but it’s still dumb. No, I am sure this is simply about extracting $$$.
Android SystemWebView is a front end to Chromium, and is also used for all of the non-browser web-rendering functions in Android (including AOSP/Lineage). Same for ChromeOS, if that’s still even what they’re shipping on Chromebooks these days – it’s a barebones Gentoo system that launches a Chromium instance as the “desktop” to access Google services. You could technically swap in another rendering engine, but as currently constituted, divesting Chrome would break Android and ChromeOS as well.
Anybody else notice the difference in tone between the coverage of the 4B movement and MGTOW?
Sort of like the difference between icky sex bots that men are interested in and the empowering use of vibrators by women, I imagine.
*looks up MGTOW*
Oh, that. Wikipedia all but calls them Nazis.
Nazis/Incels, potato/potahto
Why a warm home will soon become a luxury
asking each household
Now that is how you euphemism!
“Asking”
Dammit, JI!
I can guess the answers they’ll get.
That is how you graft.
It’s almost funny if it weren’t so enraging.
There is a reason that in the UK this would also be called a “scheme”.
The NY Times fact checks RFK and accidentally proves him 100% correct.
https://x.com/VigilantFox/status/1859328265644802352
All fact checking has been bullshit.
Most people don’t read past the headline, so the headline always states whatever they want you to believe regardless of what is true.
Id they provide context, you will eventually find out the headline is fake as shit if you can read between the prevarications they put in the explanation.
The FBI has foiled another terrorist plot!!!
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-arrest-harun-abdul-malik-yener-alleged-plot-to-bomb-new-york-stock-exchange/
Did they do that with one of those paper shredder trucks that have been seen doing the rounds at various DOJ or FBI offices?
Meh, I’d regularly schedule paper and HDD shredders to my locale cause of the nature of my work. Not everything is a conspiracy.
Not everything is a conspiracy.
That’s just what They want you to think!
Duh! You regularly schedule shredding so you can disguise your irregular shredding.
The FBI has had informants and undercover agents talking to him since the beginning of the year.
Over/Under on the IQ of this guy?
They represent that he “tasked them with taking photos to determine the best location for a bomb”…. wanna take bets on how that really went down?
They said he kept bomb making plans in a storage unit, where they also found watches, with timers that could be used to make a bomb.
The surest way to tell when a foiled terrorist bombing was an FBI setup from the get go is when the feebs actually catch the “suspect.” Their record on preventing bombings they didn’t orchestrate themselves is abysmal. Their only real shot is if the bomb maker makes a boo boo like the Weather Underground retards in Greenwich Village.
Also….
The headline says “Florida Man”
Really? That is the distinguishing feature of an Arab Muslim who wanted to join ISIS?
Maybe he was born there. Sometimes the 2nd generation is more radicalized than the 1st.
Well, Mrs OBE and myself have successfully completed 12 trips around the sun together and on through our 13th cycle. So happens it was also my oldest’s birthday yesterday, though we tell him we were married in December because at the time, they had the vile ex whispering in his ear that I hated him and only cared for my wife.
Mazel tov!
Congrats!
Congratulations! Keep up the good work. And happy birthday to the kid!
The 53rd anniversary of my birth is on Saturday. Unusual that it’s so far before Thanksgiving this year.
NICE!!! Frau Zwak and I did our 19th last month. (plus two years of sin…)
Good morning Banjos and all of the Glibs!
When will they drop the name of the next unqualified, Russian asset podcaster?
Russia used an ICBM missile with a conventional warhead on the Ukraine. Obviously a warning to the rest of Europe and the U.S.
https://nypost.com/2024/11/21/world-news/russia-launches-nuclear-capable-icbm-into-ukraine-first-time-since-2022-invasion/
Need more info. A whole lot of Ukraine says and a lot of not sure what type in that article. Not to put it past Russia, just seems like perfect timing to ramp up the fear factor.
https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1859562244410888634
Probably an rs-26 missile.
https://eutoday.net/russias-potential-rs-26-missile-strike/
Two months of nuclear chicken is gonna be fun.
I agree with OBE, this smells of more Uke horseshit.
Shouldn’t that have triggered some alarms in our national defense systems?
You’d think so
Would we know if it did?
And that’s the Russians’ point. The Storm Shadow and our missiles being launched into Russia by NATO are fully nuclear capable.
Would we know if it did?
Oh, you might expect a little bit of noise around DEFCON jumping a couple of levels.
Although we supposedly don’t have the shells anymore, 155mm howitzers are nuclear-capable.
The US ain’t Blinkin!!
Is it really an ICBM if you don’t have the IC part?
yeah, this is just people that don’t understand the terminology.
I bet it was a ballistic Iskandar launch, and those are short range (less than 800 miles) range, but no ICMB. To fire an ICBM short range would be idiotic.
Good morning!
The Descendents are just so damn good. Excellent selection, too. If that doesn’t get you going yore hopeless.
More backpedalling on demographic destiny from Ruy. The really good part is the graphic in there about how much the Dems have lurched left – despite their (and the media) lying about Republicans being the ones far off the center.
That confirms my preconceived ideas and includes pictures, so I’m giving it an “A”.
To be fair, they thought they had successfully shifted the Overton window such that the center was approximately Elizabeth Warren.
The funny thing is if that were even remotely true, they’d have a left that was tearing up their asses for being so centrist. Then again, why coddle the delusions of broken minds?
“they’d have a left that was tearing up their asses for being so centrist”
Well, they do, but it’s apparently not very powerful. OTOH, they did get the Green New Deal passed.
RC, I’ve never heard anyone attack Warren as too centrist, and that certainly would be the case if the OW had moved sufficiently that she was.
We’re watching a coalition that was always fragile & at odds with each other fall apart in real time.
Now they’re going to have to tell the white elites who run the party to ease off on the tranny and free shit for illegal aliens stuff? LOL good luck with that.
They created a party of religious zealots, where no dissent is tolerated. I know a few of them, I have no idea how they’ll get those folks to chill out.
TOK — I’m in the same boat and I agree. I have one friend who sends me lefty tracts (in book form). I think I’m expected to read them and declare allegiance.
BP, it’s insane to think they are going to win anyone over. So they’re shrinking their cult, but somehow under the delusion people will see the light and repent?
They are “more selective” TOK.
Perusing the headlines, I can’t help but think having sex in America is one of the worst crimes imgineable.
Only if you’re doing it right.
Related to ICBM talk upthread.
Video of Russian ICBM warheads hitting Ukraine (supposedly, seems plausible):
https://youtu.be/Q6YakFifmD0?si=qLt84LE4PkB7zbMg
U.S. Says not true..
But who can trust these fucks these days…
See looks like a series of MIRVs coming down.
“Sure looks”
If they correct about the missile type, it straddles the line between “intermediate” and ICBM depending on the payload. The cutoff range is 5,000 km.
Yeah, it’s a kind that was treaty banned until 2019 looks like.
Look out for Rollers and Funky Bombs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt3SwPBIGUg
::roots around for copy of Nuclear Escalation board game::
Hot Fudge Sundae!
You forgot Skippy the Super Virus!
Red shift
The country largely shifted to the right in this presidential election from where it was four years ago.
In 2020, President Biden won six of the seven most closely watched states, but this year, they all shifted toward President-elect Donald Trump.
What’s more, Trump is on track to win the popular vote this time, when Biden won it by 7 million in 2020.
They didn’t vote for the hard core lefty candidate with the proven track record of failure. What a bunch of right wing racists.
Anyone to the right of Mao or Stalin is right wing to these idiots…
With an assist from those 12 million voters who for some unknown reason decided not to vote in 2016 or 2024.
The early vote totals were not complete and while Harris is still down from Biden, it isn’t as dramatic as it first appeared.
Mail in ballots were a huge part of that. In 2020 many places sent them out without request.
Fair enough, with CA still counting. 🙄
But first colorful woman candidate and some millions of Dems stayed home? Something’s fishy.
Give Harris credit, she was a worse candidate than Hillary (who at least actually won the nomination via the primaries).
“In 2020 many places sent them out without request.”
That didn’t stop after 2020. I’m sure it did in some places, but not all. Not, for example, in AZ, where junk ,ail ballots are the default and you still have to opt out as far as I know.
Another useless international organization doing stupid shit..
Odd how no arrest warrants were issued for the Hamas architects of the October 7 atrocities.
The barbarians are oppressed people and everyone knows Jews are white supremacist colonizers!
Vice President Harris was hoping she could turn out women in the suburbs in key swing states to get her across the finish line. But that didn’t happen. Trump, for example, won white suburban women by 7 points, as well as white suburban men — by 27. So there were some split kitchen tables, but not enough to help Harris win.
Trump won the white suburban wimmyn vote? I guess they’re just too dumb to understand their best interests.
Nope. They’re gender traitors who are jealous of the success of independent women. They seethe at the idea a woman could get by without men.*
*You know, except for the whole of modern civilization that men have completely built and wholly maintain part.
Their husbands reviewed the ballots before they went to the dropbox.
Crying in the wilderness
Haley first went after Gabbard, a former Democratic member of Congress and 2020 presidential candidate who endorsed Trump this year before announcing she was a Republican. The nomination has also raised concerns from some traditional GOP foreign policy thinkers.
“She opposed ending the Iran nuclear deal. She opposed sanctions on Iran. She opposed designating the Iran military as terrorists who say death to America every single day,” Haley said on SiriusXM’s Nikki Haley Live. “She said that Donald Trump turned the U.S. into Saudi Arabia’s prostitute. This is going to be the future head of our national intelligence.”
Haley added that it was “disgusting” that Gabbard, a military veteran, went to Syria in 2017 “for a photo op with Bashar al-Assad” while he was attacking his own people and has expressed skepticism that the dictator was behind chemical attacks on his own people.
Haley said DNI was “not a place for a Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Chinese sympathizer.”
Democracy is so weird. The winner gets to run the government.
Appears that Harris won every single Haley/Cheney Republican.
Haley’s a whore, not a spread your legs whore but a whore for death and destruction in service of money which is way worse. I’d be less ashamed of my daughter if she was working a street corner in a bad area of Detroit.
You can just say Detroit.
Poor baby. Her contrition act isn’t getting her a position in the new admin, so she’s having a tantrum.
“‘Petrified’ Morning Joe’s REAL reason for meeting Trump at Mar-a-Lago is revealed amid fears Gaetz will probe host’s dead intern”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14108351/Morning-Joe-fear-Donald-Trump-Matt-Gaetz-intern-probe.html
Sometimes I just like the headline.
Eeeew!
STEVE SMITH NOT PROBE DEAD INTERN, JUST LIVE ONE.
DEAD INTERN HAVE INSUFFICIENT STRUCTURAL INTEGERITY.
SNAZZY RAT MAKE JOKE ABOUT DIGITAL CONDITION?
JURIS SMITH PUTS FINGER ON PROBLEM.
From the same link:
Transportation Security Administration chief David Pekoske is signaling that he’d like to stay on in his current role as President-elect Donald Trump begins his second term.
During a segment about Thanksgiving travel with CBS on Tuesday, Pekoske was clear that he’s hoping to stay until his term ends in 2027, saying that he “loves” the role.
“It’s important for continuity in TSA to run the second term to its conclusion,” he said, adding that the agency has made numerous investments and increased partnerships not just in air travel but on surface transportation security, too.
I’d say the absolute last thing we need from the TSA is “continuity”.
Shut it the fuck down.
I think we should keep him, and on her first day Tulsi can sit him down and have a nice conversation about why she was put on the Quiet Skies list. Maybe Matt Gaetz will want to be there too.
“Why don’t you tell me about everyone involved in putting together this program?”
Dude. Keep your nitrile glove fetish to yourself.
“When Donald Trump first won a presidential election in 2016, Corey Burke and her trans wife considered leaving the country….
Burke had a high-flying job with Jeff Bezos’ space exploration company Blue Origin. The company is yet to comment on the allegations against her. Her wife, Samantha Leigh Allen, has enjoyed a glittering career as a Conde Nast editor.
In her best-selling book, Real Queer America: LGBT Stories From Red States, Allen writes about how the couple struggled to deal with the 2016 presidential election.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14084253/corey-burke-power-lesbian-killed-father-seattle.html
They sound insufferable. Still, no idea what’s a power lesbian.
Still, no idea what’s a power lesbian.
I still have no idea who’s XX and whose XY or whatever of the possible permutations fit the couple.
Nor do I care too much – all one needs to know is 2 mentally ill people got together and at least one did mentally ill things.
Murdering someone is not mental illness. We shouldn’t use the terminology of the therapeutic state.
It’s fucking evil, plain and simple.
Murdering someone is not mental illness.
No, but arriving at the conclusion or having the lack of socialization and/or self control that makes you think that’s the proper response to interacting with another human being, can have its root in mental illness. I suppose its a matter of semantics at some level though I suspect you’d disagree!
It is semantics, a bit.
The problem is it makes it seem that murder can be fixed by fixing some mental illness; that the person wasn’t as responsible because of a quasi-medical condition (and not one like Whitman’s tumor); AND it further stigmatizes mental illness (because it is being conflated with evil action).
Trump won in 2016
women and childrenfathers hardest hit.No way…
Welfare recipients, criminals allowed to sponsor illegal immigrants under Biden ‘parole’ program
I’m hearing they aren’t vetting the people with whom they are placing children. This makes me sick. Just like the first time I saw videos of people pouring over the border, and realizing our own government was facilitating this.
It’s worse than that, with many children all sent to the same phony addresses.
They aren’t vetting the people coming in, either.
It’s impossible to come to any other conclusion than that Joe’s handlers want the increased chaos and crime. They are literally helping to organize “tren de aragua” or whatever it’s called and who knows how many other criminal gangs.
The second part that makes me sick is knowing how much work and expense it will take to reverse this. What a waste. Everyone involved should at the very least have their retirement confiscated and their wages garnished until they die.
When my wife was getting her green card we had to show that I had enough income or that we had enough assets. We also had to sign a document that stated that she would not require any public support for 12 months. That seemed reasonable, even if it was a pain in the ass. I had no income because I had been laid off from my job in Europe. We had the assets in the form of her apartment, which she bought when it was privatized, but it normally took over a year to transfer the deed. We were able to shorten that to a couple months with some gifted vodka and candy. It chaps my hide that these people are flown in, given apartments and all kinds of support and the government claims there’s nothing it can do.
As someone that has sponsored two people before I was proud to help become US citizens, a process I would not wish on even my worst enemy because of it’s shittiness, and is now going to sponsor my son when he gets married, I can’t tell you how furious I am at the government doing what they are doing now with illegals. Fuck them all.
Man I should have read that before posting. The gist is that I sponsored two great people in the past, and I will be sponsoring my son’s soon to be wife. The two I sponsored in the past are great Americans. My soon to be daughter in law will do the same in time.
It is an insult our government prioritizes people that commit crimes over these people.
Is “sponsoring” aliens a viable business model, like having aa fleet of foster children?
One of the tortious ways to come here legally is be sponsored. As in job and reimbursement for social services if consumed, etc. or be related and family.
It’s difficult and expensive so it’s better to come illegally and get lots of free shit.
No.
No chain migration.
a fleet of foster children?
Well, it’s no substitute for a well administered gang of orphans.
TSA spokesperson on Wednesday backstopped Pekoske’s comments. Pekoske “was instrumental in pushing for equal pay of all TSA employees to make them commensurate with the rest of the federal government” among other initiatives like lowering workforce attrition and increasing screener employees at airports, the spokesperson said.
Musk and Ramaswamy should put his head on a pike outside their office, for the edification of the masses.
The thought that my decades of radar experience and electrical know-how is belittled to make ball grabbers and panty sniffers have equal pay makes me want to reach out to Musk
Last thing I’d be doing is talking to the news.
‘Near-tragedy was averted.’ Tree service crane topples onto Montville home
I assume not properly leveled and secured or too much load.
“Bruised Jay Leno got back behind the wheel just days after a horror 60ft fall left him with a broken wrist and sporting an eyepatch.
The iconic host, 74, who suffered second degree burns in a car fire in November 2022, revealed he had broken his wrist and been hit in the eye by a ‘bunch of rocks’ on Saturday as he headed to dinner – just three hours before his show.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-14107097/jay-leno-wheel-fall-broken-wrist-eyepatch.html
Yikes!
Didn’t he get burned pretty good working on some old car not too long ago? Say what you will about the guy but I admire his tenacity.
Yes. Steam car. Got a face full of fuel that ignited.
Recovered and a few months later drove through a driveway with a chain he didn’t see and almost got decapitated riding a bike with a sidecar.
I hate to say it, but he might need to turn in his license, hang it up.
Strictly on the up and up
Senior Biden administration officials insist that their latest efforts to help Ukraine aren’t moves to box in President-elect DONALD TRUMP’s foreign policy when he takes office in January but rather responses to the battlefield needs of Kyiv’s fight against Russia.
The latest U.S. decisions include transferring American anti-personnel mines to Ukraine, lifting a ban on how Ukraine can use U.S. long-range weapons to strike Russian territory and allowing U.S. military contractors into the country. The Biden administration has also vowed to commit $7 billion in military assistance to Ukraine by the time President JOE BIDEN leaves office. (Defense Secretary LLOYD AUSTIN on Tuesday announced a new tranche of $275 million for Ukraine that would include more drones, artillery ammunition and mortars).
Some senior Trump advisers have framed these as a last-minute way for Biden to escalate the war and limit the incoming president’s options on Ukraine and talks with Russia. Other pro-Ukraine European officials and U.S. lawmakers have framed it as a long-overdue way to support Ukraine before Trump takes office. Either way, they see this as all about Trump.
But Biden officials say that’s not so.
He’s just doing his job. Honest injun.
Dunleft
I’m sure NYS’s business climate had no impact.
Latinx or Japanese? Can’t be too safe.
F1 driver Yuki Tsunoda interrogated in pyjamas by US border officials
Mind you Japan is the only place I’ve had my luggage searched coming into the country along with detailed questions of my itinerary.
Those crafty foreigners, sneaking into our country on their private jets.
Trump can apparently learn.
https://archive.is/RvVU7
Lots of butt-hurt in DC. It warms the heart.
He should just lie back and take it. For the good of us all.
It’s hilarious. These stupid fucks still have no idea what is happening.
They thought they had the system rigged in their favor, and then they got blindsided that Trump chose not to play the game they had rigged.
It is glorious.
It’s funny how they keep writing these “scare” stories and half the people who read them think all of this is great. I think we should start calling them “briar patch” stories.
I think the reason the scare stories is all we are getting is that the machine now realizes without a doubt that the majority of the people feel the government is too big, completely corrupt and self serving, and that there is no more grace to be given to them. People want payback. And they have no idea how to move forward with that revelation. After all, they were doing whatever horned demon that gave them their vision of the “Fundamentally changed America” wanted, and now they have been told that is unacceptable.
I will second that.
Why stop there?
House Republicans have renewed a push to pass a bill that would allow the treasury department to strip non-profit groups it deems to be supporting “terrorism” of their tax-exempt status.
The so-called “non-profit killer” bill would give the government broad powers to sanction civil society organizations. Progressive groups have rallied in opposition to the bill in recent days, arguing that Donald Trump’s administration could invoke it to punish his political opponents.
The measure “would be profoundly damaging to all sorts of non-profits”, said the American Civil Liberties Union federal policy counsel, Kia Hamadanchy. “There’s the stigma of being called a terrorist-supporting organization, there are banks who may not want to transact with you once you have that status, there are donors who may not want to give you money because they’re afraid, themselves, of being called supporters of terrorism.”
“Civil society organizations” my eye. Do away with nonprofits altogether.
“The measure “would be profoundly damaging to all sorts of non-profits”
This is another one of those ‘you dont have to try and sell me on it’ things. Get rid of them all. They aren’t just used to support sketchy causes they are also used to launder money to pols. Get rid of them all. Also, get rid of the income tax.
Think about how this power could be used if President Newsom/V.P. AOC were running the government? Stuff like this comes back to bite one in the ass. I like idea of stripping non-profit status from revenue code altogether. A non-profit shouldn’t be making a profit anyway so what is there to tax? [And no personal income tax deductions for donations to non-profits either].
Problem is, it was already happening to nonprofits that the left doesn’t like. IRS going after certain groups, banks throttling certain groups, etc.
That said, I too have trepidation about a move like this. Go after nonprofits that are afoul of current law in terms of corruption, acting as fronts for identified terror organizations or hostile foreign governments, etc.
God forbid you get a grant in December and spend it down over the next year. Or that you have actual reserves for continuing the mission when when funding is delayed or lower than usual. Or that my HOA now has to pay taxes because we took up a collection in the neighborhood to have someone cut the lawn at the neighborhood entrance .
Inconceivable!
Who names there kid Kia?
I won’t even go that far,
This will never not astonish me:
https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1859632085939429396
Why would you ever want to reuse large parts of a spacecraft when the government will pay you to build a new one every time?
/s ULA
I agree. I’m like a kid when I watch those. It does the soul some good.
Recess appointments are like the electoral college. Everyone bitches about it when it’s the other guy’s turn but no one ever changes it.
Trump will get his appointments.
There is talk about some of the people being part of the negotiation process. As in, make a crazy first offer. To me that gives Trump two ways to win: He either gets these nominees, and if he doesn’t, the next ones look less extreme and he still gets someone good.
The goal is to crush our enemies, see them driven before us, and to hear the lamentation of their women on Tik-Tok, Instagram, YouTube, Blue Sky, and X.
Especially the blue and green haired land whales claiming they will no longer have sex.
Don’t leave out Mastodon!
The electoral college is actually good though.
I could do without recess appointments.
From Tundra’s link:
Many of the president-elect’s moves to skirt official transition policies are within the law, experts said — or at least are subject to laws that are not regularly enforced.
But his transition alarms some officials who say the president-elect is weakening transparency, eroding checks and balances, and risking national security.
“The Trump team is attempting to convert the government into an instrument of his private agenda,” said Max Stier, president and chief executive officer of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Partnership for Public Service. Instead, Stier said, “We’re seeing a push to revert to the spoils system,” a reference to the 19th-century practice of rewarding supporters with government jobs without vetting and often not based on merit.
Everybody knows the President should be nothing more than a ceremonial figurehead. We can’t allow him to exploit these loopholes to wrest power from the establishmentarian bureaucracy. It’s not fair.
Above I said we get complaints about recess appts with every incoming admin. I left out that it is always the same complaints word-for-word like they are reading from a script.
The Trump team is attempting to convert the government into an instrument of
his privatethe agenda the people voted for.FTFY
Since when is getting government jobs about merit? Our VP is an affirmative action hire.
Trump’s mistrust of the State Department dates to early in his first presidency, when transcripts of his calls with then-Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and another with then-Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull were leaked in full to the press. Several career diplomats were subpoenaed by Congress to testify at Trump’s first impeachment hearings about their alarm at the Trump administration’s unorthodox policy toward Ukraine.
They were acting in the national interest. They’re heroes.
Howdy! Anyone in OKC?
I’m here til the first on bidness but of course I play dg and party, lemme know if you wish
There sure are a lot of moving pieces jumping around. I go outside to mortar some bricks for a couple of hours and I have to catch up.
I think Trump tried to be reasonable on his last go round and look where that got him. Now he is wearing a hockey mask and smashing down the door with an axe.
I aprove.