On the whole, I don't think anyone predicted two years ago that the war would enter into a third year. I think most believed that Zelensky and his government would catch the first thing smoking (yes, Walsh, I owe you a beer for copyright infringement) for Zurich, and the Russians would easily carve up the country. I know I did. Since then, we've learned a lot. The big takeaway is that John McCain was right. Russia is a gas station with nukes. Its military is crap, and the command structure utterly corrupt. We've seen drones become a dominant weapon, even to the extent of driving Russia's Black Sea Fleet out of Sevastopol. We've seen that Western weapons and command and control methods are essential to winning battles. We've even seen that it takes a plausible threat to motivate Western countries to up their defense spending, not bullying and bluster. //
RoINTEL
@RoINTEL
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The German Minister of Defense, Boris Pistorius, warned, on Saturday, in a speech held at the Security Conference in Munich, that European countries and the #NATO alliance must prepare for a decades-long conflict with #Russia.
9:45 PM · Feb 17, 2024 //
The Russians are again claiming the aircraft were lost to friendly fire because Russian stupidity is a more palatable explanation than Ukrainian prowess.
Christians are often labeled "intolerant" for their refusal to embrace destructive behaviors. I would argue that America could use more Christian intolerance and a lot less Western "acceptance." The reason we should is pretty easy to see at this point. //
It's time to start normalizing intolerance. Obviously with nuance and discernment, but intolerance should make a comeback nonetheless. //
frylock234 RSVP
16 hours ago
I've always said that tolerance is that I have to let you go your own way, even if I don't approve of it, but nowhere does tolerance mean that I have to support you in your ways or embrace them if I disagree. I only have to accept you have the right to go your own way, and you have to reciprocate or else there is no tolerance. //
My pastor during my growing up years once stated it this way:
"We dare not condone that which God seeks to redeem. It confuses the sinner." //
anon-608f
16 hours ago
Hear hear! Tolerance, discrimination, prejudice, these are words which have been weaponized.
But on reflection, one of the more striking things to emerge from this was something that happened on my morning and evening Uber rides between my Arlington hotel and the CPAC venue.
Why? Here's why, and I'm going to tell you:
Cameroon. Chad. Uganda. Nigeria. Ethiopia. Those were some of the locations my Uber drivers were from. They all have several things in common, and those things they have in common speak eloquently to what America has been, what it still is, and what it hopefully will remain. //
Of all the speechifying I heard at CPAC, after all the great discussions I had with great people, these conversations were one of the most edifying experiences I have had on this excursion. Living as I do out in the Alaskan woods, I'm not often exposed to hard-working, legal immigrants like these folks; I was pleased and, yes, honored to talk to them, and my parting statement to all of them was, "Thanks for talking to me, and welcome to America; I'm glad you're here." //
The United States is still the greatest country in the world. We have our issues, and we have our enemies — some of whom are from within — but the potential of America remains. These people came to America because they saw that potential. Now, they are here and working to make their dreams happen.
To be perfectly frank, plenty of young Americans could learn a thing or two from their example.
The Supreme Court will be hearing a J6 case called USA vs. Fischer in eight to ten weeks. They will give a ruling in June, and that will either bring down this entire house of cards, or it will bring down the pretense that we have a rule of law in our nation. //
The Department of Justice is using a sledgehammer to get people to plead to lesser charges by separating the concept of mens rea (“guilty mind” in Latin) from that of the act of the crime itself. Her question: Can a "subset of a statute be orphaned from its parent?"
This is absurd reasoning and is the best one-liner I've ever heard, "Congress does not hide elephants in mouseholes." It's crazy! //
anon-x8p1
18 hours ago
1962, JFK allowed government employees to unionize. America has never been the same since. 22 million people now work for the government at some level; most belong to a union - teachers unions, SEIU, AFSCME ....etc
That is your divide in America - those voting for their own vested interests taking more of our tax dollars for themselves and working hard to control all election outcomes. Including staffing virtually all county election offices who control counting the votes.
Think of the reach of their organized government employee union power today over every single aspect of our lives, and the fact they vote 99% Democrat.
Even the media are union members - SAG and AFTRA. There is your hive mind.
WhatsApp messages, emails, bank records, and testimonies show James and Joe were key players in the Bidens’ influence-peddling scheme.
Hannah Arendt once noted that Western intellectuals had adopted one of communism’s most effective tactics: making every debate about motive rather than the merits of an argument. This is the modus operandi of the modern leftist. You might be paid off by “dark money” or motivated by race (even unconsciously), but your arguments never really matter. Now the tactic is mainstreamed. When was the last time we had a real national debate on policy?
A responsible political media would treat allegations of Russian collusion as one does conspiracies about the moon landing or fluoride. Let’s face it, the biggest difference between Rachel Maddow and Alex Jones is aesthetics. Instead, no matter how many investigations disprove the conspiracy theory, no matter how many times its architects are caught lying, they keep being treated as good-faith political actors. The only way the media holds anyone accountable for the Russia collusion hoax, it seems, is to promote him. https://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2024/02/13/natasha-bertrand-promoted-to-cnn-correspondent/
In a statement, PILF President J. Christian Adams blasted federal law for “hamper[ing] states’ abilities to validate citizenship during the voter registration process” and called on lawmakers to change it so states can verify registrants’ citizenship.
“Arizona is limited to building imperfect systems to address the problem of foreign nationals voting,” Adams said.
Engoron easily could have employed a non-fraudulent, apples-to-apples methodology. That method would calculate Trump’s purported “ill-gotten” interest “savings” by comparing the recourse loan rates that Trump actually received from the lenders with the recourse loan rates Trump would have received had he not allegedly overvalued his assets. But the problem for Engoron is that applying this proper economic analysis would result in $0 of “ill-gotten gains” for Trump. //
Unlike Trump’s purported “overvaluations,” Engoron’s financial manipulation has actual victims — Trump, his family, and the Trump organization. But the harm goes much deeper than that. Made in an election year against a front-running major party candidate, Engoron’s ruling is a financial fraud on America.
Wade Miller
@WadeMiller_USMC
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Here @MSNBC helpfully makes it clear their disdain for Christians in America.
She says that if you believe that your rights come from God, you aren’t a Christian, you are a Christian nationalist.
Somehow they seem to not mention that our own founding documents make this… Show more
1:08 PM · Feb 23, 2024 //
According to the Founding Fathers, our rights came from God.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Per The Rights of the Colonists:
These [rights] may be best understood by reading and carefully studying the institutes of the great Law Giver and Head of the Christian Church, which are to be found clearly written and promulgated in the New Testament.
Lastly, per John Quincy Adams:
[T]he Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth. …[and] laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity.
They float the term "Christian nationalist" to scare the public from those who believe their Lord and Savior is Jesus Christ, and that, yes, our rights do come from God. The majority, if not the overwhelming majority of Christians believe that, whether they identify as nationalists or not. //
If Christianity ever becomes the minority in America, you will never hear about the religion from left-wing networks again because they will have achieved their goal.
Cloudflare committed $100K in bounties to “hamstring” another patent troll. //
In a blog post, Cloudflare announced that its most recent victory—defeating a lawsuit filed by Sable IP and Sable Networks in 2021—was largely thanks to participants of Project Jengo. Launched in 2017, Cloudflare's program offers tens of thousands of dollars in awards to activate an army of bounty seekers and crowdsource submissions of evidence—known as "prior art"—that can be used to overcome frivolous patent claims or even invalidate patents that never should have been issued.
To find prior art, Project Jengo participants comb through academic papers, technical websites, and patent documents, helping Cloudflare explain in detailed petitions to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) why certain patents should be invalidated. //
In court, pointing to prior art and sharing a Cloudflare engineer's expertise, the Cloudflare legal team broke down for the jury "the many reasons why" Sable's patent "does not describe anything that Cloudflare actually does."
It took a jury two hours to decide that Cloudflare was right, not just dismissing Sable's claims but invalidating Sable's patent permanently because prior art showed that "Sable’s patent covered, at best, only technology that had already been described by inventors at Nortel Networks and Lucent Technologies—leading routing technology companies at the time."
So far, Cloudflare has awarded $70,000 to Project Jengo participants who helped the company defeat Sable. According to Cloudflare's blog, the company will announce the final $30,000 in awards after the "official conclusion of the case." //
Project Jengo's first success came in 2019 when Cloudflare defeated Blackbird Technologies. As a result of that victory, Blackbird "went out of business," effectively ending that company's meritless patent infringement claims, Cloudflare said. Now, Cloudflare has "invalidated significant parts of three Sable patents, hamstringing their ability to bring lawsuits against other companies," Cloudflare said.
Cops have alternative means to access encrypted messages, court says.
“The search for geologic hydrogen today is where the search for oil was back in the 19th century—we’re just starting to understand how this works,” said Frédéric-Victor Donzé, a geologist at Université Grenoble Alpes. Donzé is part of a team of geoscientists studying a site at Bulqizë in Albania where miners at one of the world’s largest chromite mines may have accidentally drilled into a hydrogen reservoir.
The question Donzé and his team want to tackle is whether hydrogen has a parallel geological system with huge subsurface reservoirs that could be extracted the way we extract oil. //
It turned out that over 200 tons of hydrogen was released from the Bulqizë mine each year. Donzé’s team went there to figure out where all this hydrogen was coming from.
The rocks did not contain enough hydrogen to reach that sort of flow rate. One possible explanation is the hydrogen being released as a product of an ongoing geological process called serpentinization. “But for this to happen, the temperature in the mine would need to reach 200–300 degrees Celsius, and even then, it would not produce 200 tons per year,” said Donzé. “So the most probable was the third option—that we have a reservoir,” he added. //
Bulqizë was entirely different. The gas pushed out of the Bulqizë mine is 84 percent hydrogen, one of the highest concentrations on record. Moreover, the hydrogen was not dissolved in water—it bubbled through Bulqizë’s underground pools, making them look like a jacuzzi. //
So Donzé’s team got busy looking for such places, and they found one. “There is a mine in Ural, central Russia, that has the exact same geological configuration as Bulqizë: harzburgite, dunite, and chromite,” said Donzé. “And guess what. They have a problem with explosions.”
Tips and tricks for making Microsoft leave you alone while you use your PC.
I’m back in that mood. Today’s AT&T cellular network meltdown was a reminder. It’s going down when we least expect it. //
tweet from Marco Rubio:
I don’t know the cause of the AT&T outage
But I do know it will be 100 times worse when #China launches a cyber attack on America on the eve of a #Taiwan invasion
And it won’t be just cell service they hit, it will be your power, your water and your bank. //
My prepping really hasn’t been for the “worst case scenario” – it’s been for the most likely bad scenario, mostly focused on energy grids on which we depend, and food. (I know, readers always tell me to focus on home defense, but that’s not something we talk about.) //
. it’s obvious that if we ever get in a hot cyber war with China they are taking down our electric grid as the first shot, and that will start everything spiraling downward. Of course our civilian infrastruture will be a prime target, and if this administration is too stupid to see that, we are in worse shape than I thought.
How the country is going K-nuclear //
In 1972 South Korea began construction of its first commercial nuclear power plant, at a time when the country’s per-capita income was slightly lower than that of North Korea. Since South Korea had a relatively small industrial base at the time, undertaking a large infrastructure project was risky.
Propitiously, the venture paid off, and South Korea’s daring has been an overture to success: the country’s industrial growth is largely thanks to nuclear power. With 25 nuclear reactors, South Korea is currently the world’s sixth-largest producer of nuclear energy. In 2022, South Korea ranked third worldwide in terms of the number of nuclear reactors under construction, following China and India.
The country has put a significant amount of effort into developing its nuclear industry, which is demonstrated by the three South Korean power plants in the top five on the list of leading nuclear power plants ranked by capacity in 2023.
After President Yoon Suk Yeol took office in 2022, the administration embraced nuclear energy fully. Speaking of the previous government’s stance against nuclear energy, Yoon pulled no punches, stating: “Had we not been foolish over the past five years and further reinforced the nuclear power ecosystem, we probably would not have any competitors now.” //
Standardisation is key to South Korea’s success with nuclear energy. This means building the same design, ideally using the same engineers who have become familiar with the design, repeatedly, and licensing multiple new reactors at the same time. A paper on standarisation in South Korea summarises that: “Where a number of nuclear power plants are constructed in series within the framework of a long-term national power development plan, nuclear power plant standardisation can definitely facilitate self-reliance in the technology.”
As President Yoon puts it, "The competitiveness of our nuclear plant businesses lies in our ability to construct on time and on budget, which no other company in the world can imitate."
According to law professor Harvey Silverglate, as he wrote in his book Three Felonies a Day, had Milken not been famous and wealthy, critics might have taken a closer and more dispassionate look at the fabricated case against him. It now seems irrefutable that both Michael Milken’s financial success and Trump’s political success made them the targets of our weaponized system of justice. Milken was an easy scapegoat to satiate a growing public resentment over the so-called excesses of the 1980s.
In Trump’s case, an inability to effectively navigate the “political swamp” in Washington D.C. made him an easy target for ruthless Democrats eager to destroy him for having the audacity to win the White House in 2016 against the swamp’s anointed candidate, Hillary Clinton. Milken showed how you can raise capital outside of the large established New York investment banks, Trump proved how to win an election without the large establishment political donors.
The charges against Milken were more about taking down a high-profile figure than achieving true justice, according to numerous experts in business ethics, such as Professor Norman Barry, author of the book Business Ethics. //
By examining the cases against Donald Trump and Michael Milken, it becomes evident that targeting successful and or controversial individuals without solid evidence of criminal behavior does not advance the cause of justice; it undermines it. However, what is even more disturbing is how our justice system is used against people without any financial means whatsoever.
There are several lessons that the federal government can learn from the experience with fiscal rules in the states. First, a strong federalist system is required to restore fiscal sanity. This requires devolution of federal programs to state and local governments. The experience with welfare reform reveals that state and local governments can deliver these services more efficiently than the federal government.
Devolution must be accompanied by greater fiscal autonomy, shifting tax and expenditure powers from the federal government to state and local governments. Fiscal autonomy for state and local governments would restore the strong federalist system envisioned in the Constitution. //
Recent research discovered that more than the required number of states called for such a convention of states in 1979, yet Congress failed to act. Legislation introduced in Congress this year (H.C.R. 24) would require Congress to fulfill its obligation under Article V of the Constitution to certify and count state resolutions and call the convention.
Non-profit organizations are now working with state legislators in an appeal to the Supreme Court for a Declaratory Judgement that would require Congress to record and count the applications. State legislators and citizens must now step up and demand that Congress set the time and place for such a convention as required under Article V. That may be our only recourse to restore dynamically growing credence capital and fiscal sanity.
The time for action is now.
Lara Logan @laralogan
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Imagine if your enemies fear you this much? Tells you everything. They just made Clarence Thomas a legend. This is pure desperation on their part. As if Thomas would be intimidated by these tactics. He’s way too smart & been around too long. John who? This guy is nothing.
johnny maga @_johnnymaga
State owned “comedian” John Oliver offered Clarence Thomas a luxury RV and $1M a year to resign from the Supreme Court
“Get the f*ck off the Supreme Court!”
They’re terrified that SCOTUS is going to foil their plans to bar Trump from the presidency
Embedded video
7:37 PM · Feb 19, 2024 //
Carrie Severino @JCNSeverino
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Justice Thomas to his critics in the media:
“I will absolutely leave the Court when I do my job as poorly as you do yours.” //
Thomas said one of his responses to the media back then when they talked about how he does his job was, “I will absolutely leave the Court when I do my job as poorly as you do yours." Now that's the perfect burn, and Thomas wryly added, "And that was meant as a compliment," as he laughed with a deep, delightful laugh.
"It really is good to be me," Thomas said, continuing to laugh as he just squashed the media nonsense. //
Clare Boothe Lucid
2 hours ago
While offering the bribe Oliver alluded Thomas saying the job was not worth the grief. As usual a lefty takes a conservative’s words out of context. Thomas once said, “The job is not worth doing for what they pay. It’s not worth doing for the grief,” he said. “But it is worth doing for the principle.”
Under New York law, Trump cannot appeal this ruling without depositing the full amount, including interest, in a court account. Even for Trump, $455 million is hard to come by. Likewise, a bond would require a company to guarantee payment for a defendant who has been barred from doing business in New York and is facing the need to liquidate much of his portfolio. //
The judge's order also forbids Trump from borrowing from any financial institution chartered or registered in New York for three years, so he can't even borrow to pay any of it from any bank in New York, an additional unfair aspect.
So, who is going to issue a bond under such risky conditions? //
If the only protection in New York is the discretion of figures like James, few businesses would relish the future. The message is that you can expect blind and equal justice so long as you don’t run afoul of the Democrats in power.
We've had all kinds of men as president, but only one of them started a world war, prevented a military coup against the government of the United States, and used either a sword or pistol to convince a deputy sheriff that he had urgent business back at the office; that was George Washington, the original American badass.