Category: Crap For Brains

THE DEEP MEANING OF “DON’T:”

Would that President Biden had not warned the Iranian regime not to attack Israel with his pitiful “don’t” yesterday. In Bidenspeak, “don’t” is an invitation. It something like the shout-out for contestants to “come on down” on The Price Is Right.

 

Q.E.D.

 

‘Scholar’ . I didn’t know there was an alternate spelling for tyrant

University scholar wants licensing of journalists, gov. agency to monitor ‘misinformation.

What could go wrong?

A visiting McGill University scholar wants an “Interpol-like agency” to monitor the internet and the licensing of journalists by the government — all in the name of combating “misinformation.”

According to True North, during a recent lecture Raphaël Melançon said Canada’s Bill C-18, aka the “Online News Act,” can only have a “limited impact” on mis/disinformation.

“There is what we can do in Canada in our jurisdiction but there’s also the fact that you have lies coming from abroad and our laws do not apply to what happens outside of our borders,” Melançon (pictured) said. “Liberal democracies [need] to ensure the same regulations are applied elsewhere.”

Melançon, a consultant and journalist who’s worked for the Quebec and Canadian federal government, said countries can create an intergovernmental agency whose job would be to make sure information on the “internet and social media is correct.”

Melançon also recommended the “professionalization” of journalism by requiring licenses for those in the profession.

“At the moment in Canada anyone can pretend to be a journalist,” he said. “To this day members of the press have no obligation whatsoever regarding what they write or say in media.”

MORE: ‘Disinformation’ expert professor: U.S. needs ‘common sense’ speech restrictions

From the article:

[Melançon ] went on to say that specific outlets should be barred from newsgathering at government events.

“That to me is a problem. Should so-called journalists from partisan media such as the far-right Rebel News or the Falon Gong-controlled Epoch Times be allowed to cover government PR press conferences or should they rather be considered as activist organizations and treated like so?” he said.

Melançon said that a proposed system of journalist licensing should take into account academic background and also “past actions.”

“If you propagate fake news, you’re out,” said Melançon.

According to the event description, the talk zeroed in on “how the advent of the Internet and social media has, in the past two decades, contributed to amplifying social tensions, polarizing public opinion, and radicalizing political discourse in Canada,” and how events like COVID, BLM, and Freedom Convoy protests “played an active role in the growing popularity of far-right (‘alt-right’) and far-left (‘woke’) movements.

Once more we see that SloJoe is not, and never has been, in charge.
Part of me is glad that his staff know he’s a senile dolt and reverse anything he’s says that “off script”, but the people who actually are running the executive branch have no Constitutional authority to do so.
They’ve illegally usurped power.

Janet Yellen walks back Biden’s comments US taxpayers on hook for Baltimore bridge collapse
Biden said Tuesday that federal government ‘will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge’

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday appeared to walk back comments from President Biden that U.S. taxpayers would foot the bill for the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore.

Appearing on MSNBC, Yellen said money from the bipartisan infrastructure law could “potentially be helpful.”

“My expectation would be that ultimately there will be insurance payments, in part, to cover this. But we don’t want to allow worrying about where the financing will come from to hold up reconstruction,” Yellen said.

Her comments come a day after Biden said it was his “intention that the federal government will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge, and I expect the Congress to support my effort.”

Biden said that, while the effort will take some time, the people of Baltimore “can count on us.”

When asked by a reporter whether the company that manages the ship should be held responsible, Biden said the federal government would not wait for any decisions and would step in to get the bridge built and reopened.

The Francis Scott Key Bridge along I-695 in Maryland collapsed in the Baltimore harbor around 1:30 a.m. Tuesday after a cargo ship slammed into a support beam. The collapse sent at least eight construction workers and multiple vehicles plunging into the Patapsco River below.

The cargo ship that hit the bridge was the Dali, a 95,000 GT Singapore-flagged container ship, per the Maritime and Port Authority (MPA) of Singapore. There were 22 crew members onboard at the time of the incident.

The Synergy Group, a Singapore-based company that manages the ship, said in a statement that two pilots piloting the ship through the harbor and all crew members onboard were accounted for and there are no reports of any injuries. The group also said that no pollution has been reported.

The large vessel appeared to catch fire before becoming disabled. Footage of the incident shows the lights going out multiple times on the vessel in question prior to impact, suggesting the collision may have been due to a power failure.

“This pesky Constitution keeps us from doing whatever we want…..”

Breyer says Supreme Court risks creating ‘Constitution that no one wants’

Former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said the Supreme Court risks creating a “Constitution that no one wants” if it follows its current way of interpreting law.

In an interview with Politico Magazine published Tuesday, Breyer discussed his view of originalism, a legal theory based on the idea that law should be interpreted according to the writers’ original intent, which is popular among the conservative majority on the court.

Breyer said in the interview that he used to argue with the late fellow Justice Antonin Scalia, a noted originalist, about originalism and told him if the theory is used to interpret the Constitution, “or the statutes, we will have a Constitution that no one wants.”

“Because the world does change, not necessarily so much in terms of values, but certainly in terms of the facts to which those values are applied,” Breyer continued.

Breyer argued in the Politico Magazine interview that originalism discounts “lots of changes designed to further the value of protecting basic civil rights, because the world has changed.”

On Sunday, Breyer also said that he would support age limits for Supreme Court justices and that an age limit would have helped him make his own decision to retire in 2022.

“I don’t think that’s harmful,” Breyer said, talking about age-limited terms on the high court in an NBC “Meet the Press” interview with Kristen Welker on Sunday. “If you had long terms, for example, they’d have to be long. Why long? Because I don’t think you want someone who’s appointed to the Supreme Court to be thinking about his next job.”

“And so, a 20-year term? I don’t know, 18? Long term? Fine. Fine,” he said. “I don’t think that would be harmful. I think it would have helped, in my case. It would have avoided, for me, going through difficult decisions when you retire. What’s the right time? And so, that would be okay.”

You remember earlier when the fact that certain car manufacturers were sending data from ‘connected’ cars to LexisNexis and they were selling it to insurance companies who used the info to jack up premiums?

Well, GM (don’t know about Hyundai or others) announced on their OnStar site : As of March 20, 2024, OnStar Smart Driver customer data is no longer being shared with LexisNexis or Verisk. Customer trust is a priority for us, and we are actively evaluating our privacy processes and policies.

GM stops sharing driver data with brokers amid backlash
Customers, wittingly or not, had their driving data shared with insurers.

After public outcry, General Motors has decided to stop sharing driving data from its connected cars with data brokers. Last week, news broke that customers enrolled in GM’s OnStar Smart Driver app have had their data shared with LexisNexis and Verisk.

Those data brokers in turn shared the information with insurance companies, resulting in some drivers finding it much harder or more expensive to obtain insurance. To make matters much worse, customers allege they never signed up for OnStar Smart Driver in the first place, claiming the choice was made for them by salespeople during the car-buying process.

Now, in what feels like an all-too-rare win for privacy in the 21st century, that data-sharing deal is no more.

Already unconstitutional per SCOTUS in Heller and controlling on state laws per McDonald.

D.C. v Heller (IV para5)
We must also address the District’s requirement (as applied to respondent’s handgun) that firearms in the home be rendered and kept inoperable at all times. This makes it impossible for citizens to use them for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional.

Bill would require Rhode Island gun owners to lock firearms when not in use

The Rhode Island Senate approved a bill Tuesday that would require all firearms, when not being used by the owner or another authorized user, to be stored in a locked container or equipped with a tamper-resistant mechanical lock.

Under the bill, the unsafe storage of a firearm would be considered a civil offense that could be punished by a fine of up to $250 for a first offense and $1,000 for a second. Any subsequent violation would be punishable by up to six months in prison and a fine of up to $500.

The measure passed by a 28-7 vote.

The bill’s sponsor, Democratic Sen. Pamela Lauria, said responsible gun owners already take precautions, but those steps should be a requirement, not an option.

Continue reading “”

You say floating dock, I say sitting duck

My expertise in life is rather limited.

In fact, the only things I’m really well versed in are dental care, raising a family, and pouring a beer just so into a frozen mug resulting in a perfect, frothy one-inch head.

That being said, you’ve got to be out of your freakin’ mind to consider building a floating dock into Gaza for the purpose of delivering humanitarian aid.

Of course, our practically petrified puppet in the White House is out of his freakin’ mind as his senile dementia proceeds apace.

But my point is, if you build it — the floating dock, not a practically petrified puppet — a certain number of Americans are going to die.

And they’ll die in the service of a population that hates America and Israel in equal measure, and whose Hamas brethren would like nothing better than to do to U.S. soldiers what they just did to more than a thousand innocent Jews.

Even if we created a temporary military base, complete with an airfield, on the land side of the dock, some Americans would still die (see Kabul Airport, bombing and U.S. Cole, bombing). I mean, they don’t call Hamas ‘terrorists’ for nothing.

But as that well-meaning, elderly man with a bad memory yelled out during his State of the Union harangue, there will be no American boots on the ground!

The poor souls tapped to serve this mission will be the very definition of sitting ducks. And their Navy and Air Force protectors will be, as Sleepy Joe’s puppet master might say, leading from behind. They will get involved only after missiles, RPGs, drones, and God knows what else, rain down death and destruction upon our servicemen and servicewomen.

Can you imagine Hamas dragging American corpses around the Strip for the edification of their Gazan supporters? Or Hamas sending out videos of female American soldiers being gang-raped, tortured, and killed?

I can.

And after this past October 7, most sentient beings — which precludes the dried-up turnip in the White House — also can.

How best to relieve the suffering of the Gazan civilians, I don’t know. But this cockamamie floating dock idea, created simply to assuage Muslim voters in Michigan, is just about the stupidest and most dangerous idea I’ve ever heard.

If implemented, it’s bound to end in U.S. blood and tears. That, sadly, I do know

Appeals Court Ruling Poses Danger of Confiscation of All Firearms

An Obama-appointed judge in Rhode Island authored an exceedingly dangerous opinion last week, rejecting arguments that the state’s ban on magazines holding more than 10 rounds was unconstitutional. Instead, Judge William Kayatta, a graduate of Harvard Law School, built the case cleverly, declaring that LCMs (large capacity magazines) weren’t protected under the Second Amendment and, by implication, neither are the firearms they feed.

At issue was the law passed in 2022 — HB 6614 — banning the possession of LCMs, with violations being declared a felony and violators facing five years in jail upon conviction. In other words, law-abiding citizens would lose not only their firearms, but their freedoms as well.

Lawsuits brought by pro-Second Amendment advocates were rejected at the district level and, when appealed, the lower court’s decision was affirmed. But Judge Kayatta went further — much further — to build a case that anti-gunners around the country will likely seek to emulate.

The plaintiffs, Ocean State Tactical, doing business in the state as Bear Hunting and Fishing Supply, and four individual gun owners, complained that Rhode Island’s law violated their Second Amendment rights, the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.

In reviewing and affirming the lower court’s decision denying their complaints, Kayatta wrote that the plaintiffs “failed to prove that LCMs are ‘Arms’ within the meaning of the Second Amendment,” that the Takings Clause in the Fifth Amendment (“No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation”) was not violated by the state law, and that it further “posed no problems under the Fourteenth Amendment.”

There were several pieces of the puzzle Kayatta put together to avoid the demands of Bruen, namely that the state had to provide historical analogues to the infringements in order for them to stand.

Instead,

Given the lack of evidence that LCMs are used in self-defense, it reasonably follows that banning them imposes no meaningful burden on the ability of Rhode Island’s residents to defend themselves.

After discussing the history of states restricting possession of sawed-off shotguns and Bowie knives, he wrote:

In each instance, it seems reasonably clear that our historical tradition of regulating arms used for self-defense has tolerated burdens on the right that are certainly no less than the (at most) negligible burden of having to use more than one magazine to fire more than ten shots.

He then used what he called an “apt analogy” to support the state’s ban: rules on the private accumulation of gun powder. Without mentioning the fact that those state rules were driven by concerns over accidental fires, he wrote:

Founding-era society faced no risk that one person with a gun could, in minutes, murder several dozen individuals. But founding-era communities did face risks posed by the aggregation of large quantities of gunpowder, which could kill many people at once if ignited.

In response to this concern, some governments at the time limited the quantity of gunpowder that a person could possess, and/or limited the amount that could be stored in a single container….

It requires no fancy to conclude that those same founding-era communities may well have responded to today’s unprecedented concern about LCM use just as the Rhode Island General Assembly did: by limiting the number of bullets that could be held in a single magazine.

Indeed, HB 6614 is more modest than founding-era limits on the size of gun-powder containers in that it imposes no limits on the total amount of ammunition that gun owners may possess.

And then he completed the “workaround” he created in order to circumvent Bruen’s demands:

In sum, the burden on self-defense imposed by HB 6614 is no greater than the burdens of longstanding, permissible arms regulations, and its justification compares favorably with the justification for prior bans on other arms found to pose growing threats to public safety.

Applying Bruen’s metrics, our analogical reasoning very likely places LCMs well within the realm of devices that have historically been prohibited once their danger became manifest.

He executed his coup d’etat:

Common sense points in the same direction. It is fair to assume that our founders were, by and large, rational. To conclude that the Second Amendment allows banning sawed-off shotguns, Bowie knives, and M-16s — but not LCMs used repeatedly to facilitate the murder of dozens of men, women, and children in minutes — would belie that assumption.

Accordingly, it should not be surprising that Bruen’s guidance in this case leads us to conclude that HB 6614 is likely both consistent with our relevant tradition of gun regulation and permissible under the Second Amendment.

If this ruling isn’t appealed and overturned, the implication remains: If semi-automatic rifles are similar, if not identical, to military grade M-16s, and the LCMs that feed them can be confiscated and their owners jailed, then it’s a short step to declaring semi-automatic firearms themselves (both rifles and pistols) as contraband, and subject to the same penalties.

Biden Tries to Take Questions but Staff Cuts Him Off in Bizarre, Troubling Video

That’s when the person on the porch says that they’re going to take some questions. But the Biden staff cut that off very quickly, telling the press that’s it and telling them they have to go back to the bus.

They didn’t want the press there to hear anything or ask anything. That’s crazy.

If he wants to take questions, how can lowly staff shut him down? I think we all know the answer to that question and that’s incredibly troubling when they are controlling things and not supposedly the “leader of the free world.”

This is also on the press, too. They need to do their job and push back against this and report fully on this problem. They did do a little of that on Thursday, pointing out how it appeared the staff was keeping them from hearing everything Biden was saying during the stop.

 

Things Just Got a Lot Worse for Joe Biden

Last month, the Hur report found that Joe Biden willfully retained, mishandled, and disclosed classified information but determined that he was essentially too senile to stand trial. According to the report, Biden struggled to remember details, and he couldn’t remember when his son Beau died.

Joe Biden angrily defended his memory in his unplanned address and attacked Special Counsel Robert Hur for bringing up Beau during his interview during the investigation, which managed to make things worse for him.

“There’s even a reference that I don’t remember when my son died,” Biden said. “How in the hell dare he raise that? Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn’t any of their damn business.”

Except that Hur didn’t bring it up. Biden did. PJ Media has reviewed a copy of the transcript of the interview, and it proves that Biden lied when he claimed Special Counsel Hur brought up his son Beau.

“So during this time when you were living at Chain Bridge Road and there were documents relating to the Penn Biden Center, or the Biden Institute, or the Cancer Moonshot, or your book, where did you keep papers that related to those things that you were actively working on?” Hur asked during the relevant portion of the interview.

“Well, um… I, I, I, I, I don’t know,” Biden replied. “This is, what, 2017, 2018, that area?”

“Yes, sir,” Hur told him.

“Remember, in this timeframe, my son is — either been deployed or is dying, and, and so it was — and by the way, there were still a lot of people at the time when I got out of the Senate that were encouraging me to run in this period, except the President,” Biden answered. “I’m not — and not a mean thing to say. He just thought that [Hillary Clinton] had a better shot of winning the presidency than I did. And so I hadn’t, I hadn’t, at this point — even though I’m at Penn, I hadn’t walked away from the idea that I may run for office again. But if I ran again, I’d be running for President. And, and so what was happening, though — what month did Beau die? Oh, God, May 30th—”

“2015,” Rachel Cotton from the White House Counsel’s Office interjected.

“Was it 2015 he had died?” Joe Biden asked.

“It was May of 2015,” an unidentified speaker said.

“It was 2015,” Biden repeated.

“Or I’m not sure the month, sir, but I think that was the year,” Biden’s personal Robert Bauer said.

Marc Krickbaum of the Special Counsel’s office added, “That’s right, Mr. President. It—”

“And what’s happened in the meantime is that as — and Trump gets elected in November of 2017?” Biden asked.

That’s right. Joe Biden didn’t even remember what year Donald Trump was elected president. Two people then jumped in to correct Biden by saying it was 2016.

“’16, 2016. All right,” Biden said. So — why do I have 2017 here?”

“That’s when you left office, January of 2017,”  Edward Siskel from the White House Counsel’s office said.

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So in the same exchange, Joe Biden not only brought up his son Beau — contradicting what he claimed last month — but he couldn’t remember the year Beau died and didn’t even know the year that Donald Trump was elected president.

Ouch.

U.S. Prepares to Take a Long Walk Off Biden’s Short Gaza Pier.

“Embrace the suck” became the NCO’s unofficial motto during the Iraq War and Operation Enduring Freedom as a reminder to enlisted men and women that just because a job was unpleasant, didn’t mean they didn’t have to do it. As our men and women speed towards the Eastern Mediterranean on Presidentish Joe Biden’s hamfisted mission to provide aid and comfort to Hamas, they’ll have to learn to “embrace the stupid.”

How it is stupid? Let us count the ways…

The first and most obvious is that any food or other aid will not go to any starving Arab residents of Gaza. It will go to Hamas. That is how siege warfare has always worked and will always work. If the White House doesn’t know this ancient truth, the Pentagon surely does. Nevertheless, this country will deliver supplies to terrorists.

I can’t think about that too long without wanting to pour myself a coffee mug full of bourbon, so let’s move on to the next bit of stupid we must embrace.

U.S. Central Command announced that, on Saturday, “U.S. Army Vessel (USAV) General Frank S. Besson (LSV-1) from the 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary), 3rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command, XVIII Airborne Corps, departed Joint Base Langley-Eustis en route to the Eastern Mediterranean less than 36 hours after President Biden announced the U.S. would provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza by sea. Besson, a logistics support vessel, is carrying the first equipment to establish a temporary pier to deliver vital humanitarian supplies.”

While that all sounds very impressive on TwitterX, CENTCOM left out one tiny detail: it will take the Besson about 60 days to arrive in the Eastern Med and begin assembling the pier.

That’s two months, for those keeping score at home, and by that time I wouldn’t be surprised if Israel were finishing up operations at Rafah in the south of Gaza.

Also, if you’re a member of Israeli’s war cabinet, you’re looking at likely sites for Biden’s stupid pier, and seriously considering ordering the IDF to take and hold them in the next few weeks. The Gaza coast is only 20 miles long, and the IDF already controls nearly half of it. Taking troops away from the main fighting in the cities to protect the coast will prolong the war — but Biden’s stupid pier will do that anyway.

“What happens if the IDF controls the entire coast by the time we get there?” doesn’t seem to be a question anyone at the White House bothered to ask, even as vital as it is.

Then there are all the practical things that can go wrong with three different armed groups with different goals and methods, all operating in close proximity. The best we can hope is the worst predictions don’t come true.

So maybe Biden’s Operation WTF (or whatever they’re calling it) promises to be a ginormous clusterfark from top to bottom, but hey, at least the White House will have protected its left flank against accusations of supporting Israeli genocide, right?

Wrong.

The White House will quickly learn that there’s no appeasing the cultural Marxists who hate the Jews and call Israel a colonial-settler state.

On second thought, I take that last part back. The White House already knows there’s no appeasing the party’s hardcore lefties. But they’re making an obscenely stupid attempt, regardless, because they lack the imagination and guts to do something intelligent.

And so when faced with doing nothing or doing the stupid thing, these people will pick the stupid thing every time.