The circumstances in these two cases are remarkably similar. Two men confronted on a subway train, a confined space, by an unpredictable, potentially violent individual. One witness in the Penny case stated that, while she did not see a weapon on Jordan Neely, she said, "But I truly felt that he was most likely armed."

The outcomes in these cases, however, are very different. Jordan Williams killed Devictor Quedraogo on June 13, 2023. It took a little more than two weeks for a Grand Jury to decline to indict him on the manslaughter and weapon possession charges. Daniel Penny's fate is now in the hands of a jury. Besides the outcomes, there is also another difference. Jordan Williams is black; Daniel Penny is white.

These are both cases of self-defense, and one might also argue, being a good Samaritan, looking out for fellow subway passengers. Daniel Penny has not been charged with any hate crimes, yet his life hangs in the balance. If there is a racial component in the Penny case, it has been created by the prosecutor herself. Manhattan prosecutor Dafna Yoran claims that Penny "didn't recognize that Jordan Neely was a person" and merely "saw him as a person that needed to be eliminated." Yet Yoran allowed witnesses to describe Penny as "the white man" and even a "murderer." Really? So, is it okay to dehumanize some people but not others? Penny's defense team rightly objected to the language and asked for a mistrial but was denied

SpaceWeatherNews @SunWeatherMan
·
Trying to shoot a hole in this argument. Can’t. Any takers?
prayingforexits 🏴‍☠️
@mrexits
He is kind of asking the right questions here

There exist magic rocks that can boil water.

Boiling water gives us energy.

We stop using magic rocks because they exploded that one time.

Are we re*ed? Imagine if pre historic (sic) peoples stopped using fire because some red burnt his house down once.
10:54 AM · Dec 2, 2024

It's an interesting question. It's also a great illustration of the irrational thinking in some quarters when things like climate change are concerned. The fact is that nuclear energy is safer, with a lower rate of injury, than any energy method other than solar.

Climate scolds, people who want to keep the earth at some human-approved level, are all about "clean energy." They love the intermittent, low-energy-density sources - windmills, solar power - but can't abide and will not discuss nuclear power or "magic rocks." And when it comes to energy density, there just isn't any comparison. One fuel pellet of uranium in a light-water reactor produces as much energy as 1.3 tons of coal, 250 gallons of oil, and 34,000 cubic feet of natural gas. In a breeder reactor, the numbers are much higher: 22 tons of coal, 4,350 gallons of oil, and 590,000 cubic feet of natural gas. //

Forget what climate scolds claim to want. Look at what they are in favor of: You (not they) reducing your standard of living to meet their claimed goals. Look at the actions of the high-profile members of the opposition: Jetting around the globe in private jets, living in huge mansions a few feet above the tide line in the oceans they claim are rising out of control. They expect you to pay the price they aren’t willing to.

Do you want clean energy? This is clean energy. It's safe energy. No “still just thirty years away” fusion boondoggles are required. Not that fusion wouldn’t be even greater if we can make it work on an industrial scale, but how long have various organizations been trying to make that happen? This technology, nuclear power, especially the promising small modular reactors, is a technology we have now.

The new, improved small modular reactors described above could and should be built today. Technological societies like ours are dependent on abundant, cheap energy, and nuclear power has the ability to provide that power. Throughout our history, every major technological advance in power – from animal to machine, from wood to coal to oil to gas – has had one key characteristic in common, and that is increased energy density. Nuclear power represents just such an increase over generating electricity with coal or gas. Solar and wind power run in just the opposite direction, which is why they don’t scale up. //

anon-j5pd
a day ago
I’m an engineer and was a nuclear operator in the Navy. I’m a big supporter of nuclear power.
My dad used to work at the Palo Verde nuclear power plant in AZ. It’s the biggest nuke in the country.
Just for fun I calculated the area of solar panels required to match Palo Verde’s output. It would require a field of panels 25 miles on a side, 625 square miles of panels. I used the power conversion factor and highest rate of sunlight incidence on the panels.
Palo Verde churns out the same amount of power day and night and isn’t impacted by dust. //

They Call Me Bruce
a day ago
Can't argue with a word of this.

As for safety, I used to be fond of pointing out that more people died in Ted Kennedy's car than in every civilian nuclear accident in the US combined.

In a June webcast, "System Design Tips and Tricks for Switchgear and Switchboards,” expert presenters discussed switchgear and switchboards in more detail. Additional questions are answered here by Sean Hu and Andria Odrowski.

There is a setting in the app to change the port (don’t change it in the Web GUI!). You need to set it to 0.0.0.0:8384 for remote access. Please also be aware that on Android, the username is hard-coded to “syncthing” and the password to the API key, and you cannot change them for now. //

(App menu > Settings > Syncthing Options > GUI Listen Addresses > 0.0.0.0:8384)

(App menu > Web GUI > Settings > GUI Tab > GUI Authentication User).

Just for the record, if you do change them in the Web GUI, they will reset back to “syncthing” and the API key after restart. This is a known issue and limitation.

There are a lot of ways the government can overreach, but I've always considered its ability to worm its fingers into controlling how parents raise their children to be the most despotic of all, and it's still an issue that's happening today.

I think many people pardon this intrusion because it's based on care for the children, which you'll find this is an excuse used by a lot of authoritarians to pass off their control-focused legislation with.

But the brutal truth is that this kind of "care" isn't care at all. It rips apart families on the basis that the government can do a better job parenting your children than you can. It's a signal to Americans that the government has more authority over your child than you do, and that it will wield that authority if you give them any flimsy excuse.

I can't help but wonder how many parents keep their children locked up in America and under constant supervision, not because they're terrified they might come to harm or be kidnapped, but because the state will come down on them after one phone call from a nosy Karen. I have a very strong feeling that America isn't a country of helicopter parents, it's just filled with parents unwilling to risk being taken from their kids.

What kind of free country are we living in, if that's our mentality?

And what does this do to our children? Nothing good. //

Not that there hasn't been state-level pushback. To be fair, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Colorado, and others have been passing laws over the past five years that protect parents who let their kids roam.

My advice? Familiarize yourself with your state's laws, and if they're too tight, make it clear they need to be loosened. Make it a big deal. Get your friends and family involved. Get your neighbors to raise a stink about it.

We expect an increase in reliability in modern tech – unless one is a climate scold, and unless the topic in question is solar and wind power:

Wind and solar have been growing as a share of US electrical power generation over the last two decades. State and federal mandates and subsidies have driven the expansion of renewables because of their inherently and intermittent nature. But it’s clear that renewable electricity sources have a third strike: they are fragile and prone to weather damage and destruction. //

In May 2019, a massive hailstorm in West Texas destroyed 400,000 solar modules of the Midway Solar Project, about 60% of the facility. The project was only one year old. The system was rebuilt, costing insurers more than $70 million. //

This whole problem presents a doom loop of unreliable and fragile electrical generation. The climate scolds would have us believe that the weather is growing hotter/colder/more unpredictable because of human activity causing climate change. And to solve the climate change that we have supposedly solved, we must restrict further our use of reliable energy sources for unreliable and fragile "green" energy systems like solar and wind power, which clutter up the landscape and are less reliable and more expensive than the traditional source.

Retiring West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a former Democrat who turned independent in May in hopes of saving his career in what has become a solidly red state, has a suggestion for Joe Biden: pardon Donald Trump.

After all, the president just pardoned his son Hunter for tax and gun crimes after telling the world for months that he would do no such thing. Pardoning Trump would be the only to make this look less like the corrupt maneuver that it so clearly is, Manchin told CNN’s Manu Raju on Monday:

First, one (mis)attributed to Solzhenitsyn:

They are lying. We know they are lying. They know we know they are lying. Yet, they are still lying.

Next, one (correctly) attributed to Theodore Dalrymple (Anthony Daniels):

When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.

Zman makes the interesting and controversial point that endemic lying is an inevitable feature of democracy:

In a world where the standard is public opinion, winning public opinion is what matters most. In fact, it must count for more than the truth, as the public often accepts as true things that turn out to be false. If the goal is to win the crowd, then playing to their deeply held misconceptions is just as good, if not better, than disabusing them of those misconceptions.
…
Like the Athenians, we have embraced the democratic spirit to the point where factual reality is just one tool in the toolkit of persuasion that may or may not be used by the successful. The modern sophist is untethered from the truth, both spiritually and emotionally, because the only thing that matters is tricking some portion of the public.

Whether or not his thesis is correct, the trajectory is accurately delineated and the West appears to have arrived at the endpoint he describes.

How Innovative Is China in Nuclear Power? | ITIF

An interesting (albeit saddening) article from the Swamp-based Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.

• China intends to build 150 new nuclear reactors between 2020 and 2035, with 27 currently under construction and the average construction timeline for each reactor about seven years, far faster than for most other nations.

• China has commenced operation of the world’s first fourth-generation nuclear reactor, for which China asserts it developed some 90 percent of the technology.

• China is leading in the development and launch of cost-competitive small modular reactors (SMRs).

• Overall, analysts assess that China likely stands 10 to 15 years ahead of the United States in its ability to deploy fourth-generation nuclear reactors at scale.

• China’s innovation strengths in nuclear power pertain especially to organizational, systemic, and incremental innovation. Many fourth-generation nuclear technologies have been known for years, but China’s state-backed approach excels at fielding them.

That used to be the US’s strength – the ability to take smart ideas from anywhere around the world and actually implement them. That was before the US changed itself into a make-work program for bureaucrats & lawyers.

As a matter of past-practice in this district, courts do not dismiss indictments when pardons are granted. Rather, in each of the most recent cases where pardons have been granted by former President Obama and former President Trump, the United States District Court for the Central District of California has not dismissed the indictment. Instead, it has been the practice of this court that once an Executive Grant of Clemency has been filed on the docket, the docket is marked closed, the disposition entry is updated to reflect the executive grant of clemency, and no further action is taken by the Court. //

What is clear is that the Government, while it accepts Joe Biden's act of mercy as to his son, is not cool with the notion that the "charges should be wiped away because the defendant falsely claimed that the charges were the result of some improper motive." For good measure, the pleading adds, "No court has agreed with the defendant on these baseless claims, and his request to dismiss the indictment finds no support in the law or the practice of this district."

Nate Silver
@NateSilver538
·
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I discussed here how I voted for Harris despite feeling like Democrats indulged in a lot of bad behavior that voters were rational to publish. After the White House lying about the Hunter pardon I'm not sure how much more I can tolerate.
natesilver.net
SBSQ #15: Democrats have a "fool me twice" problem
7:58 PM · Dec 1, 2024

Nate Silver
@NateSilver538
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Replying to @NateSilver538
Don't vote for any Democrat in 2028 who doesn't repudiate the pardon within 48 hours.
8:03 PM · Dec 1, 2024

Nate Silver
@NateSilver538
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Replying to @NateSilver538
But please stop thinking of yourself as a defender of "democracy" or norms or the rule of law if you're defending this. You're just a garden-variety partisan dressing yourself up in sheep's clothing. And voters are smart enough to see this even if you aren't.
10:02 PM · Dec 1, 2024. //

DaveM
9 hours ago
"I discussed here how I voted for Harris despite feeling like Democrats indulged in a lot of bad behavior that voters were rational to publish. After the White House lying about the Hunter pardon I'm not sure how much more I can tolerate."

Given that you voted for Harris knowing the truth... spare us your whining. You had a chance to do sonething about it- and didn't. //

GBenton
8 hours ago edited
Nice cope, Nate.

Guess what, if you voted for Kamala you are the partisan hack you now accuse others of being.

You think this meaningless pardon is the Rubicon crossing moment?

Lol, silly con artist. Even if you ignore that Biden stole the 2020 election and lied about the Very Fine People hoax and Hunters laptop, on day one of his pResidency he opened the border and ended the Keystone pipeline and Anwar and more, setting up the inflation and illegals to cause mayhem, not to mention his illegal mandates and fascist speeches demonizing more than half the country and illegal student loan scams.

The time any moral sane person should have left the Democrat crime syndicate was then, or at least when he tried to throw Trump in jail by any means necessary or when he got Americans and Afghan allies killed in the withdrawal.

The fking pardon was the red line for you not the alleged 20m in pay to play Hunter collected for the Big Guy or lying about his dementia for 4 years?

GFY, Nate. Not fooling anyone. You're not a pollster and you're not an honest broker, either. You're a lying partisan hack who wants to rebrand for self preservation and opportunism. //

GBenton anon-dhms
an hour ago
Thanks, I appreciate your feedback. I do try to pull zero punches, for better or worse, lol.

One of the things I rail against are liars like Nate Silver - especially if their scam is they pretend to be reasonable and credible. Rassmussen broke down the stats on the polls and Nate was demonstrably skewed left and clearly was dishonest when he said it was too close to call. The data never showed Kamala in the lead and he's not a real pollster. His model is a subjective scam like that Keys idiot.

RNC Research

@RNCResearch
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CNN reports Biden was under mounting "pressure" from Jill, Ed.D., to grant Hunter a pardon

2:36 PM · Dec 2, 2024 //

In other words, when it comes to decisions that have had long-term (negative) consequences for the Biden family, Jill Biden, and sometimes Hunter, too, has been right in the middle of them. Read into that what you will.

The theatrics around Kavanaugh's confirmation were Democrats trying to play the long game, but they overplayed their hand so severely that the sympathy built up for the embattled nominee. Sure, the narrative survived in too many people, but anyone remotely paying attention found themselves disgusted by the Democrats, effectively giving Republicans and Kavanaugh the PR victory.

But while Kavanaugh was and still is technically a threat to the left, Trump's incoming cabinet is one built for one purpose, and that's deconstructing the deep state and exposing the corruption within the government so it can be reduced and its power decreased. The Democrat Party, whose entire concern is maintaining that power and influence, considers this a nightmare scenario. This is a code red situation for them.

As such, I see the Democrats going absolutely overboard in ways that make the Kavanaugh hearing look like an elementary school stage production. The fearmongering they will resort to will be such that future generations will want to study it.

There is no way that the Democrats will want their deepest secrets uncovered, and they will do what they always have done in order to avert losing even an ounce of their power: they will resort to lies, drama, and fear. Schumer's letter confirms this for me, as it sets the tone for the Democrats being "the adults in the room," and as such, any overblown accusations they resort to will be taken with some form of belief by onlookers.

But this won't work this time around. The Kavanaugh hearings came at a time when voter's fatigue with Democrats hadn't reached its height and the orange man effectively passed off as "bad." Now, Democrats are going into these hearings with the public actually behind Trump, and excited about this nominees. Democrats are going to be fighting an uphill battle in both Washington and the public square.

It was thought that Trump, who was handed gobs of political capital on November 5th, would have to spend some of his capital to get his more controversial nominees, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Pete Hegseth, approved by the GOP-led Senate. This may still be true, but Joe Biden just gave him something even better:

The mother of all mandates. //

Joe Biden's pardoning of his son, Hunter Biden, further diminishes an already-neutered Democrat Party and empowers Donald Trump to an extent we probably haven't seen in modern times. No more can Democrats cry, "No one is above the law!" because their "big guy" just blew that idea to smithereens.

Even better, Joe Biden and his fiercely lying press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, have just confirmed that the Department of Justice is corrupt. //

Joe Biden granted his son Hunter Biden a sweeping pardon on Sunday covering any possible crimes between Jan. 1, 2014, and right up through Dec. 1, 2024. This despite lying and saying he would not do such a thing. It shows you just how much Joe Biden's word means. His action is truly unprecedented in its breadth. But that may not be all -- there may be more coming from Joe Biden between now and Jan. 20. //

The pardon wasn't just for the things to which Hunter had pled guilty, which Joe claimed involved "selective prosecution." That was a nonsense claim to begin with. If anything, the "selectivity" was in not prosecuting him for years for all the behavior that was revealed on the laptop. It meant there would be no prosecution for any federal crime including the alleged foreign influence questions that could touch Joe Biden. Notice the pardon started from Jan. 1, 2014. Hunter joined the Burisma board that year. It also covers all the time that Joe Biden was occupying the Oval Office up until Dec. 1 and Biden meeting or talking with Hunter's business associates. //

But what Biden has done is made it impossible to criticize any pardon that President-elect Donald Trump might give, when Biden is willing to go this low with his son and lie about it. This is true, especially if Biden pardons himself. Not that the MSM wouldn't go after Trump anyway for pardoning J6ers or any other pardon. Of course they will, and they'll talk about how it's destroying all the norms -- that Biden already imploded.

They will have no credibility in doing so, and Biden is going to cost the Democrats even more damage to their brand with his actions.

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released its final report Monday, making numerous findings that would have gotten people deplatformed four - or even three - short years ago, and some of the points upon which there was bipartisan consensus will rock the minds of the Covidian cult.

Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), a physician, chaired the committee.

Entitled “After Action Review of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Lessons Learned and a Path Forward," the report begins with Wenstrup outlining those points of bipartisan consensus:

1. The possibility that the COVID-19 virus emerged because of a laboratory or research related accident is not a conspiracy theory.
2. EcoHealth Alliance, Inc., and Dr. Peter Daszak should never again receive U.S. taxpayer dollars.
3. Scientific messaging must be clear and concise, backed by evidentiary support, and come from trusted messengers, such as front-line doctors treating patients.
4. Public health officials must work to regain Americans' trust; Americans want to be educated, not indoctrinated.
5. Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo engaged in medical malpractice and publicly covered up the total number of nursing home fatalities in New York.

According to Wenstrup, the committee also made numerous findings, including (but not limited to):

1. The U.S. National Institutes of Health funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
2. The Chinese government, agencies within the U.S. Government, and some members of the international scientific community sought to cover-up facts concerning the origins of the pandemic.
3. Operation Warp Speed was a tremendous success and a model to build upon in the future. The vaccines, which are now probably better characterized as therapeutics, undoubtedly saved millions of lives by diminishing likelihood of severe disease and death. //

Contrary to what was promised, the COVID-19 vaccine did not stop the spread or transmission of the virus.

Vaccine mandates trampled individual freedoms and harmed military readiness.

And, most importantly, the committee found that "a lab-related incident involving dangerous gain-of-function research in China is the most likely origin of the COVID-19 pandemic." //

TXavatar
11 hours ago edited
I work in clinical drug trials and the key words missing from the discussion is "informed consent" which is the moral and legal bedrock of all medical treatments. With such a limited time to test, the drugs were not vaccines but rather experimental treatments and given liability exemption as a result. That could have been acceptable if presented as such to the concerned populace. However, when they were falsely promoted as vaccines and the population was coerced/mandated in to receiving them, "informed" and "consent" was thrown out the window.

The pardon power has seen some... questionable uses throughout the history of the Republic.

There's a seismic shift in New York politics. It may be because of the Democratic Party's continual dragging of their Overton Window to the left of Fidel Castro. It may be because of the anointment of Kamala Harris as the Democrat's catastrophic 2024 presidential candidate. It may be due to any number of things, but the fact is this: Democrat voter registration in the Empire State is dropping, and that doesn't bode well for Democrats there or nationwide.

But there may be one thing Joe Biden (or whoever is pulling his strings) overlooked — the Fifth Amendment. Namely, for the time frame covered in the pardon, Hunter Biden can no longer assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Hunter Biden would have to answer questions about his business interests if called before Congress, a criminal defense lawyer has said. //

From the wording here, it appears that even if evidence surfaced that Hunter was a serial killer in the specified time period, he could not be prosecuted because of the blanket pardon — which is within the power of the president. But the twist? He cannot assert his Fifth Amendment rights because he cannot self-incriminate. //

Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan strongly suggested on X, formerly Twitter, that Hunter may be called to give evidence as Republicans consider whether to impeach President Biden for his business interests with his son. "Democrats said there was nothing to our impeachment inquiry. If that's the case, why did Joe Biden just issue Hunter Biden a pardon for the very things we were inquiring about?" Jordan wrote on Sunday. //

With that said, I'll offer another prediction: This won't be the last family member Joe Biden pardons. //

Twist Gamma you cant make this stuff up
14 hours ago
Chasing Biden instead of the deep state would be a waste of time and political capital. Find out who instigated and coordinated the Trump lawfare. Get them out of government, and charge them if there's any charge to be found.

And let the DOGE run wild.

That will be hard enough. Prosecuting the case against Biden would just be a distraction from the far more important goals.

This time around the mood is more morose. Perhaps it has to do with the fact they failed to stop him from regaining the White House. Maybe after so many busted narratives - Russian collusion, Nazi Fascism, death to democracy as we know it, et al. - they have run out of material. Or, most likely, it is dawning on them that these vacant narratives delivered in bulk and applied with the nuanced precision of a Caterpillar front-loader not only are unsuccessful but have driven off a large core of the intended audience.

These failed techniques are not only played out, but publishers are no longer tolerant just to let their staffers work untethered. From Jeff Bezos at WaPo to Mark Thompson at CNN and the publisher of the LA Times, the names above the mastheads are no longer tolerant of these tactics. Peter Baker and others are facing a harsh reality – they may have to actually work for a change.