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Defense?
A human fart is louder than a trombone.

I discovered this at my son's school concert last night.

*.*

Filming on the next "Mission: Impossible" movie has been put on hold, due to the writer's strike.

I'm not trying to be critical here, but wouldn't you want to have the script written before you started filming?

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Language learning company Rosetta Stone announced today it was introducing a new course designed to teach users the difficult language that had previously only been spoken by President Joe Biden.

The course, named "Bidenese," fully immerses the user in Joe Biden's unique dialect. "Millions of people are eager to find out what the President is saying," said Rosetta Stone CEO & Chairman John Hass. "We're excited to unlock this previously indecipherable language for the entire world."

Pre-orders for the course were already coming in by the thousands, with many of them coming from journalists, members of Congress, and foreign leaders from around the globe. "We've spent the last two and a half years having no clue what he was saying," said a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "You can imagine how difficult it is to negotiate important policy agreements when no one on Earth speaks the other person's language."

Surprisingly, Democratic Party strategists were privately expressing concern that having the public at large know what Biden is actually saying may work to his detriment. "He's been able to sneak by using the whole ‘unintelligible old man' gimmick for a long time," said media personality James Carville. "If voters gain the ability to translate what he's saying, it could turn them off in droves. It would be disastrous."

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Top 5 Signs You Probably Should be Exercising More:

Your five-year-old walking shoes look brand new.

Underneath that pile of cobwebs is your rowing machine

That gym you signed up for has reported you as a missing person

You've switched from wearing belts to bungee cords.

You're got winded just reading this list.

*.*

People say that cracking knuckles is the most annoying personal bad habit.

Apparently, the survey was conducted among people who have never pulled my finger.

Quote of the Times;
The meaning of life is to at all times have a purpose. – Frankl

Link of the Times;
Trove Of Nearly 10K Hunter Biden Laptop Photos, Docs Appear On Organized Website:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trove-nearly-10k-hunter-biden-laptop-photos-docs-appear-organized-website

Issue of the Times;
An Unapologetic Defense Of The Crusades by Auguste Meyrat

Fewer moments in history are as misunderstood and revised as the Crusades. This series of violent clashes between Christian and Muslim cultures spanning three continents and nearly a millennium has been characterized as a futile war of aggression. In the telling of most modern historians, belligerent, greedy, and racist Christians in Western Europe were periodically guided by a bloodthirsty theocrat in Rome to channel their savage energies toward embattling a rival faith in the delusional belief that this would guarantee their admittance into Heaven, if not an earthly kingdom to rule over. What resulted was hardly more than pointless slaughter on both sides.

Nearly all of this is false. The Crusades were wars of defense, with Christians attempting to drive out foreign Muslim invaders in lands that were formerly Christian. Far from being unenlightened savages, the Crusaders were a highly organized force that pushed the boundaries of what was possible in warfare, government, and religious practice. The great personal sacrifice of the Crusaders, along with moral arguments against the use of violence, disprove the idea that they did this for personal gain.

By contrast, the Muslim invaders greatly profited from their conquests. They essentially took ownership of the preexisting wealth from their opponents. They subjected people of these areas to mass enslavement, regular persecution, and crippling taxes — all of which were sanctioned by their holy books and scriptures. And nearly all their victories against opposing forces were attributable to superior numbers and the domestic dysfunction of their opponents rather than superior strategy, logistics, or technology.

Unfortunately, few historians will risk professional ruin by challenging the prevailing narrative of the academy and telling the true history of the Crusades. However, to his great credit, Raymond Ibrahim dismisses such concerns and offers riveting profiles of eight great heroes of the Crusades in his newest book, Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam.

As an Arabic linguist and expert in Islamic history and theology, he is able to tap into primary sources from both sides of the conflict to give a more objective, unbiased account of the Crusades. More importantly, he makes a point of prioritizing the reader and telling a story. In his introduction, he fully agrees with Carlyle’s thesis that history is “but the biography of great men.” Whereas most modern historians tend to attribute developments in the past to impersonal forces (what is known as “historicism”), Ibrahim recognizes and celebrates the accomplishments of heroic individuals and the effect they have on the world. By doing this, he shows that these men were not only important for their time, but can still serve as models for people today.

The War for the Holy Land

Although Ibrahim organizes his chapters chronologically, his biographies work better as a framework for three different regional conflicts: the war for the Holy Land and Byzantium, the Reconquista of the Spanish peninsula, and the Balkan defense against the Ottoman Turks. As Ibrahim relates, each war had its own share of successes and failures for the West, but so much of this depended on the leadership and how unified the Christian kingdoms were. When the leaders were strong and unity existed, they would have long-term victories (as in Spain); when the leaders were strong, but unity didn’t exist, they would have only short-term victories (as in the Holy Land and Balkans).

The war for the Holy Land and Byzantium presents the best overall view of the Crusades. While the first Crusaders recaptured many of the kingdoms along the Eastern Mediterranean, Crusaders in the following centuries devoted most of their resources to securing those kingdoms and establishing outposts to facilitate supply lines. Finally, these kingdoms and outposts were eventually lost, as Western leaders lost interest in crusading.

In the first group was Godfrey of Bullion, a noble who was “strong beyond compare, with solidly built limbs and stalwart chest,” according to William of Tyre. Moreover, he was extremely religious, often praying and fasting before battles. Both qualities proved necessary as Godfrey encountered a completely different kind of enemy, one that had few qualms about murdering and torturing innocents and using terror tactics to intimidate their opponents. Despite this, Godfrey and the other Crusaders managed to retake Antioch and other fortresses as they marched toward Jerusalem.

At that point, they were exhausted, starving, and dying of thirst. Added to this was news of Muslim atrocities where Christian men were massacred and women and children were brutally ravished and sold into slavery. These tactics effectively prevented sympathizers from helping the Crusaders who were forced to depend on their feckless Byzantine allies and fragile supply lines stretching back many miles. Eventually, Godfrey ordered the construction of a siege tower and scaled the walls of Jerusalem. What resulted from the prolonged frustration and ongoing atrocities was the famously bloody massacre of everyone in the city: “the carnage was so horrific that, once the battle frenzy had subsided, ‘even the victors experienced sensations of horror and loathing.” Sadly, showing mercy just wasn’t a luxury for Crusaders if they hoped to be successful.

Nowhere was this lesson better demonstrated than in the two kings who tried to build on Godfrey’s first victories a century later, Richard the Lionheart of England and Louis IX of France. Displaying amazing toughness and intelligence, King Richard lived up to the moniker of Lionheart. In battle after battle, Richard recovered and reinforced the Crusader kingdoms along the coast and conquered Cyprus, which was then ruled by a Byzantine rebel, Isaac Comnenus.

Most of Richard’s success could be attributed to a realistic approach to warfare, understanding the dynamics of negotiation and leverage and outmaneuvering the famed (and exceptionally duplicitous) Saladin: “Richard … marched some twenty-six hundred Muslim captives outside in full view of Saladin and ordered their execution.” If actions like these weren’t taken, Richard would have quickly succumbed to enemy forces or retreated early like his old friend King Philip-Auguste of France.

In contrast to Richard’s accomplishments, King Louis IX (St. Louis) was a “tragic hero” of the Crusades, showing amazing promise and having the best intentions, only to experience continual setbacks during his campaign in North Africa. Unlike Richard, a giant of a man who commanded authority through example and shrewdness, Louis was more sickly and saintly. Although he enjoyed respect from his people and his peers, he struggled to hold them back at critical junctures of the fighting, which led to a number of ambushes inflicting heavy losses. There were also bouts of plague since the enemy poisoned wells and clogged the river with rotting corpses — he had the bad luck of fighting the Mamluk (“slave-soldier”) leader Baibars, an even more vicious and duplicitous ruler than Saladin.

Finally, Louis himself was taken captive, but he bravely endured taunts and torture before he was ransomed. In the end, Louis died of sickness in his second Crusade, and with him died the crusading movement. Meanwhile, Muslim invaders recaptured what was won by the Crusaders and inflicted egregious persecutions against the Christian population.

The Victors

In the profiles of El Cid (Rodrigo Diaz) and King Ferdinand III, Ibrahim is able to tell a happier story about the Reconquista. Considering the incredible odds they faced after being forced into a literal corner of the Iberian peninsula, each of the Spanish Crusaders deserves a chapter for their contributions. From about 712 to 1492 A.D., the tiny Christian kingdom of Asturia, which held only a few hundred Christian refugees, would spread to retake all of Spain and eject the occupying Moors.

As Ibrahim demonstrates in his biographies of El Cid (1043-1099) and King Ferdinand III (1200-1252), there were a few factors that led to this. One was the superior leadership and prowess of the Christian leaders, exhibited in both El Cid and King Ferdinand (also a saint) who cut through the hordes of Moorish armies and orchestrated extensive sieges of enemy fortresses.

The second factor was that the Christian kings were usually unified in their mission while the Moors were often disorganized, complacent, and therefore vulnerable. And third, the Spaniards came to understand the futility of allowing an enemy religion to live among its people. While El Cid and many others would allow Muslim residents to practice their faith, Ferdinand forced them to leave because “no matter how lenient a Christian ruler was with his Moorish subjects, and no matter how docile the latter appeared, whenever the opportunity arose, the Muslims immediately revolted.” This helped Ferdinand solidify the victories of previous Spanish Crusaders by reconquering most of Spain and neutralizing possible insurgencies.

Perhaps the most interesting chapters of the book concern the Balkan Crusaders who held off the Ottoman Turks from the late 14th century to the late 15th century. In what amounted to a thankless task that earned them infamy both from their contemporaries and later historians, these heroes faced even more impossible odds than the earlier Crusaders.

Ibrahim begins with Hungarian King John Hunyadi who bucks the trend of paying tribute to the Ottoman Turks and instead launches a guerrilla campaign against the gargantuan armies of Sultan Murad. He was one of the first leaders to show the weakness of the Turks, who never really had to defend their territory: “Both Christians and Muslims were especially impressed that, instead of taking a defensive position, Hunyadi was actually taking the offensive — crossing rivers and mountains to confront the Turks in their own domains.”

Despite Hunyadi’s success, few other kings or nobles followed his lead. Rather, the rulers in Western Europe were preoccupied with other, more self-interested affairs. Only the Italian city-state of Venice was involved — and they helped the Ottoman Turks nearly as much as they fought them. The other exceptions to this general indifference were the two men Ibrahim writes about in the following two chapters: George Kastrioti (whom the Turks called “Skanderbeg,” or “Lord Alexander — after Alexander the Great of Macedon”) and Vlad Dracula III (whom rival nobles smeared as a vampire).

Because both men were captives of the Turks for a number of years, both had personal reasons for liberating their kingdoms and a deep understanding of how the Turks operated. Like Hunyadi, Skanderbeg and Dracula turned their small numbers into a strength by picking apart large, poorly organized Turkish armies. While Skanderbeg’s previous training as a janissary (elite troops of the Turks) helped him to lead his forces efficiently and effectively, Dracula made infamous use of impalement (hence the name, Vlad the Impaler) and night raids. Both men were able to turn the tables on their foes and successfully stymie the Turkish advance into Europe.

A Worse Alternative

For some readers, the greatest strength of Defenders of the West may feel like its greatest drawback, which is Ibrahim’s graphic descriptions and lack of sympathy for the Muslim civilizations. Even if most of these gruesome details come from the sources Ibrahim weaves in, it’s apparent that he wants to cast the Moors, the Turks, and various Arab dynasties in the least flattering light — and if the descriptions aren’t enough, he draws more than a few parallels with them and modern-day Muslim terrorists.

However, the violence and the harsh descriptions give important context that helps to explain the extreme measures taken by the Crusaders, particularly Dracula. This may be off-putting for readers preferring a more sanitized and equivocating approach to history, but this would be misleading and false.

In terms of what it meant for Western civilization, Ibrahim proves that the Crusades were not only necessary but ultimately moral and justified. As ugly as they often were, the alternative of surrender and submission would have been far uglier.

News of the Times;
Tucker on Twitter Ep. 1:
https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1666203439146172419

American Retail Giant Notices Change in Customer Behavior Historically Signaling Recession:
https://www.westernjournal.com/american-retail-giant-notices-change-customer-behavior-historically-signaling-recession/

The slow-motion trainwreck everyone sees coming:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/the-slow-motion-trainwreck-everyone-sees-coming/ar-AA1c8ljS

‘Boycott Target’ Jumps Past Morgan Wallen, Taylor Swift to Become No. 1 Song on iTunes:
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2023/05/31/boycott-target-jumps-past-morgan-wallen-taylor-swift-to-become-no-1-song-itunes/

Children’s Choir Stopped Mid-Performance While Singing National Anthem at US Capitol:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/06/outrageous-childrens-choir-stopped-mid-performance-while-singing/

Mom of preteen who fatally stabbed brother in ‘demonic’ rage says she was on ADHD meds:
https://nypost.com/2023/06/02/mom-of-girl-12-who-fatally-stabbed-brother-said-she-was-on-adhd-meds/

Elementary School Turned into LGBTQI+ Pride Indoctrination Camp:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/06/videos-elementary-school-turned-lgbtqi-pride-indoctrination-camp/

$1 million bond set for man charged with shooting prominent businessman to death:
https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/police-investigating-shooting-crash-on-75-northbound

Nothing wrong with' murder of Trump supporter:
https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=15640

South Africa Drafts Water Usage Regulations to Limit White People’s Access:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/06/south-africa-drafts-water-usage-regulations-white-people/

South African Couple Tortured to Death, Set on Fire While Still Alive:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/06/south-african-couple-tortured-death-set-fire-while/

UMD course aims to remove the 'whiteness' from LGBTQ+ studies:
https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=23374

Suspect in custody after 1-year-old punched in face:
https://www.wbtv.com/2023/06/04/cmpd-suspect-custody-after-1-year-old-punched-face-south-end/

Norway bans child sex changes, joins Finland, Sweden, and UK in rejecting gender ideology:
https://www.sott.net/article/480555-Norway-bans-child-sex-changes-joins-Finland-Sweden-and-UK-in-rejecting-gender-ideology

Border Patrol K-9 sniffs out $2M in fentanyl — enough to kill 48M people:
https://nypost.com/2023/06/04/border-patrol-k-9-sniffs-out-2m-in-fentanyl-enough-to-kill-48m-people-during-traffic-stop-in-arizona/
Pride?
A beautiful woman at the bar wasn't ready for the answer I gave her when she asked, "What do you and I have in common?"

"They're both vowels," I replied.

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I read recipes the same way I read science fiction.

I read to the end and say, "Well, that's not going to happen."

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Senior Pentagon officials have canceled a fundraising car wash upon news the debt ceiling crisis has been averted, sources confirm today.

“Well, shoot,” Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said as he put his shirt back on and placed a pair of cut-off jean shorts back in his desk drawer. “The boys and I were really looking forward to getting some fresh air in the Pentagon courtyard and raising some scratch for another aircraft carrier, a new sixth generation fighter jet, and some more pens,” he said. “I can never seem to find any pens around here!”

Senior Department of Defense officials say the car wash is no longer critical following a debt ceiling budget deal between President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Ca.) that, according to sources close to the matter, came down to a high-stakes game of rock-paper-scissors.

The debt ceiling is a congressionally mandated limit on the amount of money the U.S government can borrow to cover costs, including the defense budget and paying off its debts to China. A point of contention in the negotiations this year was President Biden’s paltry $886 billion defense budget request Republican lawmakers say would force the Department to make difficult trade-offs between readiness, modernization, and pens.

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Things You Say After 50:

Where the #$%# is my phone?

How did I get that bruise?

How do they expect you to read that small print?

Where'd I put my glasses?

I don't care if it doesn't look fashionable, it's comfortable!

Who the heck is calling at 9pm?

*.*

Nearly 30% of people say they don't commute to work.

But I will say, my bedroom to kitchen to office route can be tricky sometimes.

Quote of the Times;
“Since there's no big surge of transgender young people among homeschooling students in this country, it's obvious where the sexually perverse indoctrination is coming from.” - Kathleen Peck

Link of the Times;
Mock them till they cry:
https://donsurber.substack.com/p/mock-them-till-they-cry

Issue of the Times;
‘Pride’ is Nothing to Celebrate by Trevor Thomas

In his seminal work Mere Christianity, the great Christian apologist C.S. Lewis describes “pride” as “the Great Sin,” “the essential vice,” “the utmost evil.” Lewis concludes,

Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere flea bites in comparison; it was through Pride that the devil became the devil; Pride leads to every other vice; it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

Thus, I suppose it is rather fitting that the “official” celebration of the evil LGBT agenda is called “Pride Month.” Few things today more encompass the wretched display of pride than what is exhibited when those under the throes of the LGBT agenda are unashamedly and boldly “out of the closet.”

Why was it -- as this is typically no longer the case -- that those with homosexual attractions had to come “out of the closet?” It was because to act on those attractions was often illegal, and -- or at least -- typically frowned upon by society at large. Why was homosexual behavior so stigmatized? Because it was once largely (and rightly) viewed as “unnatural” and immoral.

It is important to note that things are not -- or should not be -- immoral because they are illegal, they are -- or should be -- illegal because they are immoral. And this is not to say that all immoral things should be illegal. The biggest achievement of the LGBT agenda has not been the reversal of U.S. laws that deemed homosexual behavior illegal, but rather a sea-change in the views on homosexuality in the American culture at large.

As was the case with all the rotten and perverse fruit of the “sexual revolution,” this was largely accomplished by appealing to the pride of those who wanted to go their own way in the sexual realm. As C.S. Lewis noted, “pride leads to every other vice.” Homosexuality, pornography, promiscuity, and the like, are all born of the desire to ignore our Creator and write our own moral code.

It is telling that, before the LGBT agenda took root in America, pornography, promiscuity, sexually explicit displays throughout media, the “hook-up” culture, abortion (yes, abortion is a sexual issue), and so on, were being promoted and widely embraced across the U.S. Thus, no one should be surprised that once heterosexual immorality became entrenched in our culture, widespread acceptance of homosexuality would soon follow. Immorality breeds immorality.

It is also telling that, the sexual revolution that infected America flourished once those devoted to such a perverse agenda gained power. U.S. courts, politicians, academics, influential media personalities -- and most tragically, even those within the church -- alike all played a role in the pervasive spread of the sexual revolution. Power and pride go hand-in-hand, “For, of course, power is what Pride really enjoys,” writes Lewis. He adds,

There is nothing that makes a man feel so superior to others as being able to move them about like toy soldiers. What makes a pretty girl spread misery wherever she goes by collecting admirers? Certainly not her sexual instinct; that kind of girl is quite often sexually frigid. It is Pride. What is it that makes a political leader or a whole nation go on and on, demanding more and more? Pride again. Pride is competitive by its very nature; that is why it goes on and on.

Many were duped into believing that those promoting the LGBT agenda merely wanted to “live and let live.” However, as I’ve often noted, “live and let live” has never really been a part of the LGBT agenda. Because of their desire to use their power to not only push their agenda, but to exact revenge upon those who stood in their way, the Left’s Pride warriors have enthusiastically gone “on and on” targeting their opponents.

As Dennis Prager rightly noted earlier this year, “pride is not about tolerance -- it is totalitarian.” One only has to examine those targeted in the marriage debate for evidence of this. However, the “transing” of America provides most of the recent and most egregious examples of LGBT totalitarianism.

Few things display the pride of humanity than unabashed displays of LGBT behavior. This is because, few things are further from the truth than the legal redefinition of marriage, and the absurd notion that one can change his sex. Again, almost nothing in the realm of truth is older than what is marriage, and what is a male and what is a female. This is because, “in the beginning” God revealed these foundational truths to us.

Of course, it is hard -- if not impossible -- to hear God when one is filled with pride. And if we’re not hearing God, then we are likely clueless as to what is sin. “Treason doth never prosper,” wrote English poet John Harington. “What’s the reason? For if it prospers, none dare call it treason.” Likewise, sin “doth” never prosper. Why? Because if it prospers, none dare call it sin. This is where we are in America, instead of calling sin what it is, and dealing with it appropriately, we celebrate it, and misery ensues.

Again, C.S. Lewis was right:

The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began… Pride always means enmity -- it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God.

In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that -- and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison -- you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

The ultimate message of Pride Month is that God -- if He exists at all -- is a liar, and that you can do whatever you wish in the sexual realm without consequence. This is why no Christian should have any part of it.

News of the Times;
How Jan. 6 security footage was altered by Democrats:
https://justthenews.com/videos/new-jan-6-security-footage

China rejects Pentagon meeting request:
https://www.rt.com/news/577113-china-rebuffs-pentagon-meeting/

Planned Parenthood officials admit under oath to selling aborted body parts:
https://www.liveaction.org/news/bombshell-planned-parenthood-admits-oath-aborted-parts/

Frilly dresses and white supremacy:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/frilly-dresses-and-white-supremacy-welcome-to-the-weird-frightening-world-of-trad-wives/ar-AA1bVTcY

School official laments electric buses cost ‘5X more’ and are riddled with ‘performance issues’:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy-environment/school-electric-buses-cost-more-performance-issues

Scientists generate 'electricity from thin air.' Humidity could be a boundless source of energy:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/05/30/harvesting-electricity-clean-energy-from-thin-air-humidity/70269453007/

Rainbow flag is burned at LA elementary school:
https://archive.is/2023.06.01-031653/https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12145839/Rainbow-flag-burned-LA-elementary-school-furious-parents-vowed-BOYCOTT-Pride-event.html

Female Athlete Retires After Competing Against Biological Men:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/female-athlete-retires-after-competing-against-biological-men-says-girls-no-longer-have

The State Of Colorado Is Arming Illegal Aliens:
https://vdare.com/posts/the-state-of-colorado-is-arming-illegal-aliens

Four suspects arrested after Georgia Lululemon robbery, employees fired for calling police:
https://thepostmillennial.com/four-suspects-arrested-after-georgia-lululemon-robbery-employees-fired-for-calling-police

Circle K clerk fires shots after thugs threaten him in store:
https://www.theblaze.com/news/circle-k-clerk-fires-shots-after-thugs-threaten-him-in-store-and-sheriffs-reaction-has-folks-applauding

ESPN Host Stephen A. Smith Is Fed Up with Silence About Black-on-Black Gun Crime:
https://pjmedia.com/culture/gwendolynsims/2023/06/02/espn-host-stephen-a-smith-is-fed-up-with-silence-about-black-on-black-gun-crime-n1699919

Stop hiring useless White male:
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/05/31/stop-hiring-useless-white-males-royal-air-farce-n554597

Recalled San Francisco DA Lands At Berkeley Law, While Lori Lightfoot Brings 'Big D*ck' To Harvard:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/failing-forward-recalled-san-francisco-da-lands-berkeley-law-while-lori-lightfoot-brings

Over 1M fentanyl pills headed for Phoenix seized in southern Arizona:
https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/over-1m-fentanyl-pills-headed-for-phoenix-seized-in-southern-arizona-dps-says.amp
Cover?
They had a 2.2 earthquake in New York City last Friday morning.

No more details were available, as shortly afterwards, someone stole the seismograph.

*.*

Two beefy men came to my house to install some new floor covering in the kitchen. Once they had moved the stove and refrigerator out of the way, it was not long before the job was done.

As they were getting ready to leave, I asked them to put the heavy appliances back in place.

The two men demanded $45 for this service, stating it was not in their contract.

I really had no choice but to pay them.

As soon as they left, however, the doorbell rang. It was the two men. They asked me to move my car, which was blocking their van.

I told them my fee was $45.

*.*

Oneliners:

A study found we blink almost 29,000 times a day and I don't know about you, but I'm counting that as exercise.

If your dog is overweight, you're not getting enough exercise.

Sermons and biscuits are improved by shortening.

Today is "National Leave The Office Early Day", which I observe every Monday through Friday.

People with true character show it when nobody else is present.

Anything worth taking seriously is worth making fun of.

When you get older, lack of pep is often mistaken for patience.

People never grow up; they just learn how to act in public.

If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it.

No matter how bad it gets, I'm rich at the dollar store.

*.*

Alec Baldwin allegedly chastised a server at a gala in New York last week, calling her a ‘peasant'.

On the positive side, he wasn't armed.

*.*

Al Pacino is getting ready to be a dad again with his 29-year-old girlfriend.

There's definitely a, "Say hello to my little friend" line in there somewhere.

Quote of the Times;
"In politics the middle way is none at all." - John Adams

Link of the Times;
FBI Destroyed All Evidence:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/05/biden-doj-formally-shut-down-clinton-foundation-investigation/

Issue of the Times;
For Obama, the Cover-Up Was Worse than the Crime by Jack Cashill

Two enduring aphorisms emerged from the Watergate affair, both directed at then-president Richard Nixon. The one at the outset of the investigation was delivered in the form of a question: “What did he know and when did he know it?” The second came at the end in the form of a warning to future presidents: “The cover-up is worse than the crime.”

Thanks to the Durham report, we know the date that then-president Barack Obama learned about what John Durham calls the “Clinton Intelligence plan.” If CIA Director John Brennan’s notes are to be believed, that date was August 3, 2016.

This was the day Brennan briefed Obama and other key players about the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on 26 July of a proposal from one of her [campaign] advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security services."

To be fair, Barack Obama likely had no more role in the orchestration of the Clinton Intelligence plan than Richard Nixon did in the 1972 bugging of the DNC headquarters at the Watergate. Obama did, however, play the critical role in the cover-up of the Clinton Intelligence plan. It could not have happened without him.

This past Sunday, former congressman Devin Nunes raised the cover-up issue on Maria Bartiromo’s show. Said Nunes, “We now know from Durham that Obama knew and his team knew that in August 2016 this was a dirty trick from the Clinton campaign.”

So what did Obama do with this information? Right after the November election, said Nunes, “He got all the intelligence agencies involved and they leaked out to the fake news media that, ‘Oh, the Russians must have done something and they were trying to help Trump.’

Had Nixon blamed Watergate on Cuba -- several Cubans were, in fact, arrested -- he would have been laughed out of office. Unlike Obama, however, Nixon did not have an obsequious media eager to ignore his mischief nor to explain away that which could not be ignored. With the FBI and the intelligence community in his pocket, Obama executed the most elaborate -- and destructive -- political cover-up in American political history.

Peter Strzok, the FBI agent heading “Crossfire Hurricane,” the FBI investigation into Trump’s apocryphal collusion with Russia, confirmed Obama’s role on August 5, two days after the August 3 meeting. Texting with his FBI lover Lisa Page, Strzok quoted an unnamed bigwig, likely Brennan, as saying, “The White House is running this.”

Strzok wasn’t happy. He believed the White House was intruding on FBI turf. On August 15, Strzok memorably signaled the shared motive of all the conspirators. “There’s no way [Trump] gets elected -- but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” he texted Page. “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.” On September 2, Page confirmed Obama’s involvement. “POTUS wants to know everything we’re doing,” she texted Strzok.

The insurance policy proved insufficient. Shocked and understandably frightened by Trump’s victory, the conspirators got more methodical in their plotting. As part of the plot, Obama was to keep his hands clean -- or at least appear to. In his 2018 memoir, The World As It Is, intimate Obama adviser Ben Rhodes makes a claim so deep in exculpatory BS it needs to be read in full:

Of course, we had no idea -- Obama had no idea -- at the time that there was an FBI investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia; that information was walled off from the White House, and I wouldn’t even learn about it until long after I left government, in the press.

The “time” in question was two weeks before Election Day 2016, nearly three months after the initial August meeting. In Rhodes, Obama had found just the right person to move this hogwash forward, but then again Obama had a gift for choosing the unscrupulous. In nominating John Brennan first as deputy national security advisor and later as director of the CIA, Obama picked the rare American intel chief openly fond of Marxism.

From the beginning, Brennan served as Obama’s fixer. He came to the job well prepared, having written in his graduate thesis, “The democratic process may involve, at some point, the violation of personal liberties and procedural justice.”

Brennan met at least one potential fellow traveler in Obama’s inner intelligence circle. In 2013, the same year Brennan was named director of the CIA, Obama chose the seemingly apolitical James Comey to head the FBI. Like Brennan, however, Comey had a past. In 2003, he acknowledged his leftist roots in a New York magazine interview, telling reporter Chris Smith, “I’d moved from Communist to whatever I am now.”

A globalist and a cradle progressive, National Security Advisor Susan Rice shared with Brennan and Comey a penchant for situational ethics. She proved her mettle in 2012 telling the same Benghazi lie on five different shows one Sunday morning. She upped her game following a meeting that took place in the White House on January 5, 2017.

In conference with Obama was his national security team including all the usual suspects: Comey, Brennan, Biden, Rice, James Clapper, and acting attorney general Sally Yates. After the meeting, Obama asked Yates and Comey to stick around along with Rice, his trusted scribe and factotum.

Obama had a reason for singling out Comey and Yates. Unlike the others, they were staying on in their jobs. On the very day at the very moment Trump was being inaugurated, the soulless Rice sent to “self” a peculiar email. It read:

President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities “by the book.” The President stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.

There is no “book” that justifies what Comey and pals did in the weeks immediately following this meeting while Obama was still president. The next day, January 6, 2017, the conspirators released the declassified version of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA).

Commissioned a month earlier by Obama, the ICA was John Brennan’s way of welcoming the president-elect to Washington. Titled “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections,” the report concluded that Putin “ordered” an influence campaign, the goal of which was “to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.”

The “Obama dossier,” as Nunes called the ICA, reads like one of my college term papers, filled with sundry bits of information gathered from here and there just hours before the due date. Although Christopher Steele had conspicuously failed to corroborate any of his alleged evidence against Trump, Comey lobbied to have the Steele dossier included in the body of the text. He settled for the appendix. On January 10, BuzzFeed published the entire dossier.

Given what we know now, the ICA’s bold-faced claims -- “Putin Ordered Campaign To Influence US Election” or the “Influence Effort Was Boldest Yet in the USA" -- seem laughably crude. Lacking human intelligence in the Kremlin, the conspirators had no idea what Putin did or did not order, but facts no longer mattered.

By the time he left office on January 20, 2016, Obama had all his cucks in a row -- prominent sycophants in every branch of the government and in every major newsroom prepared to ruin Donald Trump’s presidency in service to a lie.

“He weaponized information and showed a willingness to lie,” Ben Rhodes writes about Putin, “using traditional media like television, and new media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, to spread disinformation into open, Western societies like a virus.”

I imagine Obama reading this and saying, “Vladimir, hold my beer.”

News of the Times;
Chicago Has Worst Memorial Day Weekend Violence in Over a Decade:
https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/even-more-than-the-old-boss-chicago-has-worst-memorial-day-weekend-violence-in-over-a-decade/

Left-Wing Extremism Tied To Psychopathy And Narcissism:
https://www.dailywire.com/news/left-wing-extremism-tied-to-psychopathy-and-narcissism-study-finds

The value of the illicit Drug Market is half a Trillion Dollars per Year:
https://oneworldto.blogspot.com/2022/09/drugs-in-war.html

TikToker Who Filmed Himself Committing Crimes For Clout Says Outrage Is Only Because He’s a “Black Male”:
https://summit.news/2023/05/23/tiktoker-who-filmed-himself-committing-crimes-for-clout-says-outrage-is-only-because-hes-a-black-male/

South African Farmers Set up Safe Havens as Crime Explodes:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/06/three-murders-every-hour-south-african-farmers-set/

Charges dismissed against COVID patient who assaulted senior citizen in nursing home:
https://www.wxyz.com/news/charges-dismissed-against-covid-patient-who-assaulted-senior-citizen-in-nursing-home

Maryland doorstep where dad was beaten to death protecting son:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12118757/Father-beaten-death-son-12-middle-school-brawl-spilled-over.html

Social Justice Now Claims Waking Up Early Is White Supremacy:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/benbartee/2023/05/21/social-justice-now-claims-waking-up-early-is-white-supremacy-n1697018

Democrats to parents everywhere:
https://nypost.com/2023/05/21/democrats-to-parents-everywhere-your-kids-belong-to-us-not-you/

'Teacher of the Year' Busted for Allegedly Having Sex with 16-Year-Old Student:
https://radaronline.com/p/california-high-school-teacher-of-the-year-busted-sex-16-student/

Musk is right about Soros, libs’ trouble with truth and other commentary:
https://nypost.com/2023/05/22/elon-musk-is-right-about-soros-libs-trouble-with-truth-and-other-commentary/

FBI Refuses To Comply With Congressional Subpoena:
https://www.weaselzippers.us/490389-fbi-refuses-to-comply-with-congressional-subpoena-on-biden-pay-to-play-scheme/

North Face Unveils New Ad Featuring Drag Queen:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/05/north-face-unveils-new-ad-featuring-drag-queen/

Conservatives’ Bud Light boycott is a massive success:
https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/conservatives-bud-light-boycott-is-a-massive-success-and-other-companies-are-taking-notice/

Nordstrom to lay off 379 San Francisco workers as company flees crime-ridden city:
https://thepostmillennial.com/nordstrom-to-lay-off-379-san-francisco-workers-as-company-flees-crime-ridden-city
Absurdity?
I've been busy lately telling people about the benefits of eating dried grapes.

I'm raisin awareness.

*.*

Facebook should have a limit on how many times a relationship status can be changed.

After 3 times, it should change by default to "Unstable."

*.*

A man in a hunter's outfit enters a butcher's shop. "I would like to buy two undressed ducks, please."

"I'm very sorry," the butcher replies. "But I'm afraid we're fresh out of ducks. I can sell you a couple of fresh chickens instead if you like."

"Chickens!" the hunter exclaims. "I can't go home and tell my wife I bagged a couple of chickens!"

*.*

Oneliners:

I worked hard all this week to put this beer on the table.

There should be a summer camp for adults where you just go to sleep for three weeks.

You think you love your family, but suddenly there are three of you and one remaining slice of pizza.

A shout out to everyone who got report cards growing up that said, "Talks too much."

Purses are just junk drawers with handles.

One thing horror movies have helped me realize is that as a parent, you definitely want to avoid having demonic children.

It is not the lofty sails but the unseen wind that moves the ship.

If something is confidential, it will be left in the copier machine.

Ditch the driving test for an I.Q. test.

Trust everybody, then cut the cards.

*.*

The 107th Running of the Indianapolis 500 is happening Sunday at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Speedway, Indiana.

It sounds like there was a shortage of available words when they came up with this event.

Quote of the Times;
“When Joe Biden came to Washington as a Senator in 1973, America’s national debt was $438 Billion. Under his 50 year control, America is now nearly $32 Trillion in debt.” - Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene

Link of the Times;
Three Lies They're Telling You about the Debt Ceiling:
https://mises.org/wire/three-lies-theyre-telling-you-about-debt-ceiling

Issue of the Times;
The Absurdities Of Our Age by Davis Hanson

A sign of a civilization in headlong decline is its embrace of absurdities. Unfortunately for the United States, we are witnessing an epidemic of nihilist nonsense.

Here are a few examples:

Reparations

How could a dysfunctional state like California even contemplate $800 billion in reparations?

The state currently faces a $31 billion annual deficit—and it’s climbing. The state’s $100 billion high-speed rail project is inert, a veritable Stonehenge of concrete monoliths without a foot of track laid down.

California’s income tax rates are already the highest in the nation. Its sales taxes, electricity rates, and gas taxes and prices are among the steepest in the country. And for what?

Crime, homelessness, and medieval decay characterize the once great downtowns of San Francisco and Los Angeles. It is now not safe to walk alone in any major California city after dark.

Shoplifting and smash-and-grab theft are no longer treated as real crimes. The result is the mass flight of brand stores from our downtowns and inner cities, with all the accustomed cries of “racism,” even as racist public prosecutors pick and choose whether to indict the arrested on the basis of race.

California infrastructure, once the best in the county, is now among the worst. Decaying and crowded freeways, inadequate water storage, and pot-holed streets are the new norm. Once robust gas, oil, mining, and timber industries are nearly inert.

The state’s public schools are dysfunctional. Once premier public universities are spiraling headlong into decline—junking scholastic tests for admissions, using illegal racial quotas to warp admissions, and institutionalizing racialized dorms and graduation ceremonies.

Even if California enjoyed a huge surplus, even if 300,000 residents were not fleeing the state each year, even if California had a history of being a Confederate slave state, even if whites were the majority of the population, even if the black population was greater than its present 5-6 percent, it would be insane for the state to even contemplate racial reparations.

Twenty-seven percent of the state’s residents were born outside of the United States, and have no American ancestors. The state is the most racially diverse in America, and one in which every group could, in theory, lodge complaints against the dead of the past. Mexican-Americans, Armenians, Asians, and the descendants of the impoverished “Okie” diaspora could all cite legacies of bias—but from whom exactly? The long dead?

For those of increasingly mixed heritage—about a quarter of the state—did their own ancestors oppress their own ancestors? Are all blacks sure that eight generations ago their individual ancestors were slaves outside of California, and therefore they have monetary grievances against those in the state whose ancestors eight generations ago might have owned slaves outside of California? And can such writs be documented?

Do we really wish to go down this path of destroying individuality and insisting that superficial appearance damns us to a collective rooted in the past?

If so, are we to tally up the half-century role of racial quotas to calibrate all the impoverished whites of the last 50 years who were discriminated against in admissions and hiring? Have there not been existing reparations from the decades-long implementations of racial preferences and exemptions—or perhaps in some $20 trillion dollars in reparatory transferences during a half-century of Great Society entitlements?

If we are collectives and not individuals anymore, are all of us to be judged by adding up our group’s historical and current pluses and minuses?

If so, do we add or subtract reparatory charges based on group data? If one race is vastly overrepresented in hate crimes or interracial crime statistics, and other groups vastly underrepresented as perpetrators, is it the role of the state now to intervene and provide reparatory and collective “equity” from one collective for the relatives of the victims of another collective?

Are we really convinced that past institutional racial bias is all-determinative of present opportunity? If so, why do Asians nationally as a collective on average earn $20,000 a year more than non-Hispanic whites—despite past exclusionary immigration laws, forced government relocations, and zoning prohibitions? Was there some unknown university study that postulated that the Japanese-internment or early 20th century Yellow Peril exclusionary immigration statutes were irrelevant to Asian-American upward mobility?

Inequality Under the Laws

Ideology now has made a mockery of the cherished traditions of blind justice and equality under the laws. Whether you are arrested, indicted, and convicted increasingly hinges on your politics.

During the 120 days of 2020 riots, looting, arson, and assault that saw $2 billion in damage, 35-40 killed, hundreds of injured police officers, and 14,000 arrests, were there mass detentions, thousands of convictions, and lengthy sentences handed out to Antifa and BLM members for the violence? After all, the insurrectionary rioters staged iconic attacks on the idea of government, whether defined as torching a police precinct or federal courthouse.

Why then were so many protestors of January 6 demonstrations at the Capitol that saw no violent deaths at the hands of another—except a Trump supporter lethally shot for the misdemeanor of entering a broken window of the Capitol—given lengthy prison sentences?

George Floyd—a 6’4”, 223 pound black career violent felon, arrested while suspected of passing counterfeit money, serially high on dangerous drugs, resisting arrest—was choked into unconsciousness while resisting arrest by a reckless white police officer.

Floyd was canonized as an American hero, often portrayed with halo and angelic wings.

The officer was convicted of second-degree murder and is serving combined state and federal prison sentence of over 40 years.

A white Ashli Babbitt, 5’2”, 113 pounds, a 14-year military veteran, and, like Floyd, unarmed, was lethally shot for the crime of entering a broken window in the Capitol by a black policeman.

Postmortem, her life was smeared and slandered, her shooter canonized. Was Babbitt some sinner, Floyd a saint? The choker officer Chauvin a Satan, the lethal shooter cop Byrd godly? The petite Babbitt a mortal danger stopped only by a bullet, the huge and uncooperative Floyd supposedly easy to arrest with no need of force?

Why were the downtowns of Washington, D.C. and Seattle simply hijacked and expropriated by violent groups with impunity, while federal troops were forbidden to assist overtaxed local law enforcement? Was that not in stark contrast to the barbed wire, 20,000 soldiers and barricades that marked Washington for weeks after the Capitol demonstrations?

Why was there not to be a 2020 riot congressional commission to investigate the deaths and destruction caused by groups who crossed state lines to plan and orchestrate the violence, often weaving their conspiracies with the aid of social media?

Nullification

Did we not fight a Civil War to reestablish that states and locales could not ignore federal laws?

Why did 550 local and state jurisdictions, in old Confederate South Carolina style, declare with impunity that federal immigration law did not apply in their territories? Does the Left now believe in such neo-Confederate principles? Would it applaud counties that rendered federal endangered species, or handgun-control statutes null and void in their jurisdictions?

Or do we now declare some nullifications good and others bad, depending on our own politics?

How did the Biden Administration simply suspend all immigration law to greenlight 6-7 million illegal entries across the southern border since January 2021? Did Biden not take an oath to execute our laws faithfully?

Does any president now have the right to order the executive branch not to execute entire bodies of federal law? Will the next president declare entire sections of EPA statutes inert by de facto nonenforcement to appease a particular political base?

At any time, did Joe Biden send a bill to Congress requesting that anyone can now cross U.S. borders without identification and legal sanction?

So do citizens fly into JFK or LAX from foreign countries and simply announce that they either forgot their passports or never obtained them? And as a reward for lack of an ID or legal permission, are they still allowed into the United States and given a free phone, and a free hotel room? Do we have one set of laws for citizens, and another for non-citizens? And if so, why?

Rogue Agencies

How can a former FBI director under oath claim amnesia or ignorance 245 times during congressional testimony, or leak a classified account of a private conversation with a president with complete impunity, as did James Comey?

How can an FBI director, as did Andrew McCabe, lie on four occasions with impunity to federal investigators? Is it now the case that FBI directors at times must lie and deceive as part of their job descriptions?

How can a former FBI director, as in the case of Robert Mueller, with all seriousness deny under oath any knowledge of Fusion GPS or the Steele dossier, whose controversies prompted his own special counsel appointment? Can citizens tell inquisitive IRS auditors that they have no memory of deductions in question?

Why is there still an FBI after it has been confessed that it paid a foreign national, Christopher Steele, to compile dirt against a presidential candidate—and paid his source in Washington to provide Steele with false information to impugn a presidential candidate? How did the FBI manage to play a central role in both the 2016 and 2020 elections in efforts to alter the result?

How can a legitimate FBI knowingly submit such information that it knew was false to a federal judge to spy on an American citizen to further a farcical plot to destroy a presidential campaign?

So what will the FBI not do? Forge documents? Offer in vain $1 million to a foreign national to verify just one fact in a fake, bought dossier used to obtain a FISA warrant? Disappear cell phone data under subpoena?

Have high-ranking officials promise that a presidential candidate will never be elected? Infiltrate Latin-Mass Catholic Church services and school board meetings to monitor the activities of church-goers and parents in attendance?

Use armed performance-art SWAT teams to swoop into private homes to arrest suspects accused of mostly misdemeanors? Hire out social media private companies like Twitter to suppress free expression deemed by the FBI unhelpful or problematic?

Suppress information about an FBI-confiscated Hunter Biden laptop, while keeping mum as former intelligence officers lie absurdly before a national election that the computer in FBI hands was likely the work of Russian disinformationists—to aid a presidential candidate in a debate and harm the incumbent?

Destroy the lives of any whistleblowers who expose such miscreant behavior to Congress?

Printing Money

The journalist/historian Paul Johnson famously once wrote that the tripartite duty of any government leadership was “to ensure external security, internal order and maintenance of an honest currency.”

We certainly do not maintain an honest currency by borrowing 130 percent of annual GDP, with a looming debt of $33 trillion, an annual $1.5 trillion-plus budget deficit, and a 2022 annualized 6.5 percent inflation rate.

But statistics mask the real problem, which is a mentality of suicidal spending passed off as juvenile “modern monetary theory.” Unlimited borrowing as a “theory” is the academic idiocy that some socialist hare-brained professors dreamed up to excuse printing money we do not have.

Both parties have run up the debt. Yet the culpability mounts as each successive president adds to the crushing debt, in fear that on his watch the medicine of restraint will be worse than the disease of insolvency.

Note how casually the federal government burns through billions of dollars. We still have no idea how many billions of dollars in arms and equipment the military shrugged away in Kabul. Who cares anyway whether the terrorist Taliban is becoming one of the largest dispensers of U.S. taxpayers’ weaponry?

Currently, Joe Biden lies that by not spending allotted money he somehow is the greatest deficit hawk in memory, as he rams through a $1.5 trillion 2023 budget deficit.

The top federal income tax rate is 37 percent. In California, to take the example of our largest state, the top state bracket is 13.3 percent. Income subject to federal payroll taxes is 15.3 percent for the self-employed—and income subject to that crushing take is a whopping $160,200.

The above taxes are well aside from capital gains taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, and fuel taxes, which, along with income taxes, can easily take 50-60 percent of one’s middle-class income. Note that the government not only does not appreciate the crushing extractions but targets for auditing those who pay at that rate. And all this tax revenue leads to what? Multitrillion-dollar budget deficits and unsustainable national debt.

Adding insult to injury, our current White House occupant, Mr. “Ten-Percent”/ “The Big Guy” Joe Biden demagogues as “greedy” anyone who resents the wastage of federal spending after handing over half his income to the government. Yet did the Bidens report all their past foreign income and pay at that rate? Could Joe have ensured that his son first paid all he owed to the IRS before he smeared other Americans as not paying their fair shares?

A sane country would immediately reboot and update the old Simpson-Bowles reduction and simplification of taxes and spending proposals that would gradually work our way toward a balanced budget—and maybe, in a century, pay off what we have borrowed. But we know that is impossible since we would hear ad nauseam that such fiscal integrity was racist, heartless, and cruel.

So we will keep up borrowing and printing bread-and-circus money until, like the late fourth-century polis, or late imperial Rome, there is finally no money for the upkeep of infrastructure, domestic law and order, and deterrence against foreign enemies.

Then what cannot go on, will not go on and all the absurdities of the present will end with a bang not a whimper.

News of the Times;
Target Becomes The Latest Target Of Anti-Woke Boycott As It Sells ‘Satanist Pride’ LGBTQ+ Products For Kids:
https://summit.news/2023/05/22/target-becomes-the-latest-target-of-anti-woke-boycott-as-it-sells-satanist-pride-lgbtq-products-for-kids/

The Leftist Controlled FBI is now American KGB. Speak against them and get crushed:
https://daily.whatfinger.com/the-leftist-controlled-fbi-is-now-american-kgb-speak-against-them-and-get-crushed-jim-jordan-dicusses/

The FBI just got caught in yet more massive, outrageous FISA abuses:
https://nypost.com/2023/05/21/the-fbi-just-got-caught-in-yet-more-massive-outrageous-fisa-abuses/

Sorry vegans, a major health organization says meat, eggs and milk are vital sources of 'much-needed nutrients':
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/nutrition/sorry-vegans-a-major-health-organization-says-meat-eggs-and-milk-are-vital-sources-of-much-needed-nutrients/ar-AA1aVtlW

Universal flu vaccine based on mRNA tech to be tested by National Institutes of Health:
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/15/nih-will-start-testing-universal-flu-vaccine-based-on-mrna-technology.html

Texas DPS recovers 30 children in joint human trafficking operations:
https://www.newsbreak.com/news/3026240467499-texas-dps-recovers-30-children-in-joint-human-trafficking-operations

UC Berkeley Hosts Exclusive “Black Only Graduation Ceremony”:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/05/uc-berkeley-hosts-exclusive-black-only-graduation-ceremony/

Chicago suburb forced to cancel armed forces carnival:
https://www.theblaze.com/news/chicago-suburb-flash-mob-armed-forces-carnival

Homeless Vets Ousted to Make Room for Illegal Immigrants:
https://uniondailypost.com/homeless-vets-ousted-to-make-room-for-illegal-immigrants/

China Built an Army of Influence Agents:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-china-built-an-army-of-influence-agents-in-the-us

Tampa drag queen event canceled after DeSantis signs new law protecting children:
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/tampa-drag-queen-event-canceled-after-desantis-signs-new-law-protecting-children/

Supreme Court Reins in EPA Overreach:
https://reason.com/2023/05/25/supreme-court-reins-in-epa-overreach/

WHO Issues Warning on “Unusual” Surge of Severe Myocarditis Cases in Newborns:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/05/who-issues-warning-unusual-surge-severe-myocarditis-cases/

Social media risks for youth mental health highlighted:
https://www.statnews.com/2023/05/23/social-media-youth-mental-health/

Native American Man Gunned Down:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/lincolnbrown/2023/05/22/native-american-man-gunned-down-after-calling-cbp-on-trespassing-illegals-n1697296
Normalcy?
What is a web developer's favorite tea?

URL Grey.

*.*

Oneliners:

Whoever invented the idea that your harshest critic is yourself was clearly never married.

A balanced diet is dark chocolate in one hand and white chocolate in the other.

You've got to spend money to lose money.

Love is like Wi-Fi, you can't see it, but you know when you've lost it.

I wonder if Ikea has a decaf coffee table.

Just because I can't sing doesn't mean I won't.

I fully intend to haunt people when I die, I've got a list.

Never trust a story that has been told more than twice.

A clean tie attracts the soup of the day.

A promise is a debt.

*.*

Top 5 Dog Breeds Not Officially Recognized by the American Kennel Club:

The Remarkable, but not Great Dane

The French Snoop Dogg

The Canoodle Poodle

The Whippet Whippet Good

The Bowser Schnauzer

*.*

I think Hitler was falsely accused of being racist.

After all, he married a Braun girl.

*.*

The kids next door challenged me to a water balloon fight.

I'm just updating my status while waiting for the water to boil.

Quote of the Times;
"If you catch 100 red fire ants as well as 100 large black ants, and put them in a jar, at first, nothing will happen. However, if you violently shake the jar and dump them back on the ground the ants will fight until they eventually kill each other. The thing is, the red ants think the black ants are the enemy and vice versa, when in reality, the real enemy is the person who shook the jar. This is exactly what’s happening in society today. Liberal vs. Conservative. Black vs. White. Pro Mask vs. Anti-Mask. Vax vs. Anti-vax. Rich vs. poor. Man vs. woman. Cop vs. citizen. [Etc.] The real question we need to be asking ourselves is who’s shaking the jar… and why?" - Starr

Link of the Times;
Whistleblower: FBI Withheld J6 Video to Conceal Undercover Agents:
https://nationalfile.com/whistleblower-fbi-withheld-j6-video-to-conceal-undercover-agents/

Issue of the Times;
Do Not Fall for the Normalcy Presumption – Nothing Is Normal Anymore by Kurt Schlichter

Conservatives, being conservative, like to think they live in an ordered world with norms and rules and that if they rely upon the norms and rules, they will be protected. They won’t be. The genius of cultural Marxism is how it attacks those foundational premises that conservatives believe in, perverts them, and then uses them as a suppository on the befuddled cons.

Let’s look at the phenomenon of the Soros DAs. Why did the leftist zillionaire decide to spend a ton of money in otherwise obscure local races? Because he found a weakness in the American political system and decided to exploit it knowing that dumb conservatives would be slow to understand how his actions destroyed the system and keep acting as if the old system was still in effect long after it had been demolished. Here’s how it works.

District attorneys, and other prosecutors, have incredible discretion to charge or not charge crimes. In normal times, this was not a problem, because while a prosecutor position was typically an elected office, it was not a political position in the usual sense. Republican, Democrat, whatever – the DAs usually prosecuted bad guys relatively fairly and squarely. Sure, sometimes they got stupid and went after enemies, but generally they were not partisan. My mom became an assistant DA in San Mateo County in the 1970s. She went in to meet the DA, Keith Sorenson, a legendary prosecutor.

He told her that her job was not to convict people but to do justice, and that he expected her not to prosecute cases where the result would be unjust or the case could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. To this day, I cannot tell you if Keith Sorenson was a Democrat or a Republican, and it did not matter. He ran his office like it should be run. Most DAs did – that was why prosecutor offices were once respected institutions. That was why it was safe to give prosecutors massive discretion. We could rely on them to do their duty.

But what if Keith Sorenson was a communist catspaw?

Instead of enforcing the law, the Austin Soros DA – like Alvin Bragg, George Gascon, that idiot in Atlanta, and so many other scumbags seeded in blue cities across the map – decided that he would choose not to prosecute crimes that the legislature enacted laws against, not on the grounds that the individuals were innocent but on the grounds that the Soros serf did not like the law the people’s representatives had enacted. They protected regular criminals, and they especially protected Democrat agents who rioted and looted, making it possible for Democrats to use violence to achieve their goals.

And they decided they would, unlike typical felonies, go full throttle on shaky and legally dubious cases against political opponents (like Trump) and those exercising the (leftist-disfavored) right to self-defense. They took that broad, unfettered discretion DAs had been entrusted with and used it in the service of cultural Marxism instead of the people.

And now we have the sham system of today. But dumb cons cannot comprehend that systems only function if all the cogs are working correctly. If one component is flawed – like a leftist DA pursuing a specific agenda – you stop having a system. But dumb cons do not want to accept that the justice system has been corrupted so that there is no justice system anymore. They seek the false comfort of illusory normalcy so they do not have to face the ugly reality.

Get it through your thick squish heads – there is no justice system to preserve or protect anymore. That’s why you look at a sham prosecution like Daniel Perry in the blue enclave of Austin and you do NOT shrug and say, “Oh well, the jury has spoken.” That is the normalcy bias – you cannot assume this is normal because the presence of a leftist DA pursing a leftist agenda destroys the system.

The great @IowaHawk, before he got totally disgusted with politics and began tweeting primarily about old cars, called it with a tweet made famous by PJ Media’s own Instapundit Glenn Reynolds. He tweeted:

1. Identify a respected institution.
2. kill it.
3. gut it.
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.

#lefties

The city and county district attorneys’ offices were once respected institutions, not perfect but generally trusted enough to be given a huge level of discretion. Then Soros saw their unfettered discretion and identified the system’s vulnerability. The Soros candidates jumped into the normally low-energy races with millions from their patron and won them. Next, they proceeded to kill and gut the institution by politicizing it. They then wore its pelt pretending that nothing had changed and that they were still entitled to the same respect and deference the non-political prosecutors enjoyed. And stupid conservatives nodded along.

You owe these institutions no respect because they are not the institutions that had once been worthy of respect. They are a simulacrum of the old institutions, a fraud, a scam, a clever ploy to get people who default to assuming everything is normal to go along when everything is not normal. And the left counted on that normalcy bias to defeat any resistance.

But some of us know what time it is. Governor Ron DeSantis gets it. He fired a Soros DA and passed laws to limit the ability of pinkos to perpetrate their violence. Governor Greg Abbott promised to pardon Daniel Perry, rejecting the notion that we are obligated to pretend that a Soros DA’s actions have any legitimacy at all. And Jim Jordan is going to investigate that slob Alvin Bragg. Republicans in Congress investigating a DA in a Democrat city? Why, that’s against all the norms! No, it’s not, because the norms only apply when you do not have nakedly partisan prosecutors using their power to interfere in national elections. Change the system by changing a component, and you change the rules. You don’t get to defend your rejection of normalcy by demanding that we pretend that everything is normal.

This is the way.

Understand what has changed and stop pretending it has not changed because you really wish everything was normal and you think that if you shut your eyes and pretend hard enough, it will all be normal again. Soros found a loophole – prosecutorial professionalism that meant we trusted prosecutors with expansive powers. Well, we need to fix that. In every red state there are blue cities where this crap happens. Time to rein these communists in. In red states, we have the power of the state, and we can take the power the left exploits away from the leftists and retain it for ourselves to protect the citizens who are being plagued by unpunished crime and threatened by unfair political prosecutions.

Red states must:

Invest red governors with the power to remove DAs who refuse to do their job.
Pass broad laws that expand and protect the right to self-defense, like presuming it exists where mobs exist or when the citizen is trapped in his vehicle.

Create procedural protections, like the threshold motions to dismiss already available in some states, that force the prosecutor to present actual evidence that could potentially be believed beyond a reasonable doubt before the prosecutor can proceed to trial where there is a claim of self-defense
Create penalties and incentives to force DAs back to their proper role, like forcing city/county governments to pay not only attorney’s fees but damages to citizens who successfully assert a self-defense defense.

Expand pardon powers for red governors – too many states force them into complicated administration proceedings before they can issue pardons, and the people can pass judgment on the red state governors’ use of the power at the ballot box

And the most important thing – red state leaders and our GOP pols in the federal government must understand and accept that this situation is not normal, and that different realities call for different measures. Thirty years ago, our prosecutors could generally be trusted to do something like the right thing, but thanks to Soros’s exploitation of that trust, we cannot say that today. We Republicans need to stop pretending that everything is normal. It’s not.

News of the Times;
Disgraced Soros Prosecutor Refuses To Charge Cinco de Mayo Shooting Suspect:
https://freebeacon.com/democrats/disgraced-soros-prosecutor-refuses-to-charge-cinco-de-mayo-shooting-suspect/

Head Of Ukraine's Supreme Court Arrested For "Large-Scale Corruption":
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/head-ukraines-supreme-court-arrested-large-scale-corruption

Bakhmut Falls, Artemovsk Rises. What's Next:
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-52023-bakhmut-falls-artemovsk

Alarming Surge In Gun Shop Robberies As Democrats Fail To Enforce Law And Order:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/alarming-suge-gun-shop-robberies-democrats-fail-enforce-law-and-order

Leftist Campaign Worker Shot and Killed by Fellow Leftist Campaign Worker:
https://www.westernjournal.com/leftist-campaign-worker-shot-killed-fellow-leftist-campaign-worker-canvassing-city-streets-police/

Girl, 6, Performed Oral Sex in Class With Teacher in Room:
https://thenewamerican.com/girl-6-performed-oral-sex-in-class-with-teacher-in-room/

1500 African men formed spontaneous migrant mob army in northern Italy:
https://www.riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/modern-day-censorship/african-migrant-mob-spontaneously-formed-in-northern-italy-and-attacked-localities-and-girls/

Tunisia Coast Guard Rounds Up Mediterranean Migrant Boats, Returns Them to Africa:
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/04/27/tunisia-coast-guard-rounds-up-mediterranean-migrant-boats-returns-them-to-africa/

Record-Setting 83,000 Migrants Illegally Crossed US Border This Week:
http://www.renegadetribune.com/record-setting-83000-migrants-illegally-crossed-us-border-this-week/

Elementary students reportedly violently forced by black peers to pledge fealty to BLM:
https://www.theblaze.com/news/black-students-at-ohio-school-allegedly-force-white-students-to-pledge-fealty-to-blm

Illegal Alien Released by Biden Regime Charged with Brutally Raping Alabama Teen Girl:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/05/illegal-alien-criminal-released-biden-regime-charged-brutally/

FBI Misused Surveillance Powers Nearly 300,000 Times in 2 Years, Unsealed Court Document Says:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/05/19/fbi-misused-surveillance-powers-nearly-300000-times-in-2-years-unsealed-court-document-says/

John Kerry Declares War on US Farmers: Gov’t Farm Confiscations ‘Not Off The Table’:
https://thepeoplesvoice.tv/john-kerry-declares-war-on-us-farmers-govt-farm-confiscations-not-off-the-table/

Breakfast Club Star Takes On Cancel Culture:
https://fortheloveofnews.com/breakfast-club-star-takes-on-cancel-culture-unsustainable-were-basically-a-bunch-of-puritans-robm/

FDA updates blood donation policy to include gay, bisexual men:
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/3999657-fda-updates-blood-donation-policy-to-include-gay-bisexual-men/
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