WASHINGTON — FEMA, in coordination with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), will conduct a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) this fall.
The national test will consist of two portions, testing WEA and EAS capabilities. Both tests are scheduled to begin at approximately 2:20 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Oct. 4.
The WEA portion of the test will be directed to all consumer cell phones. This will be the third nationwide test, but the second test to all cellular devices. The test message will display in either English or in Spanish, depending on the language settings of the wireless handset.
The EAS portion of the test will be sent to radios and televisions. This will be the seventh nationwide EAS test.
FEMA and the FCC are coordinating with EAS participants, wireless providers, emergency managers and other stakeholders in preparation for this national test to minimize confusion and to maximize the public safety value of the test.
The purpose of the Oct. 4 test is to ensure that the systems continue to be effective means of warning the public about emergencies, particularly those on the national level. In case the Oct. 4 test is postponed due to widespread severe weather or other significant events, the back-up testing date is Oct. 11.
The WEA portion of the test will be initiated using FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS), a centralized internet-based system administered by FEMA that enables authorities to send authenticated emergency messages to the public through multiple communications networks. The WEA test will be administered via a code sent to cell phones.
This year the EAS message will be disseminated as a Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) message via the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System-Open Platform for Emergency Networks (IPAWS-OPEN).
All wireless phones should receive the message only once. The following can be expected from the nationwide WEA test:
Beginning at approximately 2:20 p.m. ET, cell towers will broadcast the test for approximately 30 minutes. During this time, WEA-compatible wireless phones that are switched on, within range of an active cell tower, and whose wireless provider participates in WEA, should be capable of receiving the test message.
For consumers, the message that appears on their phones will read: “THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed.”
Consider this a public service announcement so that you don’t freak out when this happens today.
Update: Bit of a snoozer, here. Just a text message that disappeared off my phone before I could read it, no alert noise because I keep my ringer off. And I rarely have the TV or radio on, so I didn’t get those alerts either.
I’ve posted no shortage of biased and shoddy journalism here, but today’s example is a pretty breathtaking example of basic journalistic incompetence, even though it comes from outside the world of politics.
This Sunday, the Texans beat the Steelers 30-6, thanks in large measure to continued strong play by Texans rookie quarterback C. J. Stroud. But after discussing that win, Timm Hamm of FanNation (owned by Sports Illustrated) wanted to talk about the offensive line in “Texans’ Pricey O-Line Is Making CJ Stroud A Star.”
Houston general manager Nick Caserio knew the importance of protecting the team’s investment at quarterback and paid special attention to improving the offensive line in the offseason.
In March, Caserio traded for Bucs right guard Shaq Mason, then extended left tackle Laremy Tunsil, making him the highest-paid offensive lineman in NFL history. A month later, Caserio moved up in the 2023 NFL Draft to take Penn State center Juice Scruggs.
“If you want to be a great offense, you got to have a great protector at the left tackle position,” coach DeMeco Ryans said, “and that’s what Laremy provides for us.” But Caserio wasn’t done yet. In the month following the draft, Caserio extended Mason and right tackle Tytus Howerd [sic. He means Tytus Howard.-LP].
For the third consecutive week, the Texans were forced to play without four starting offensive linemen. Laremy Tunsil missed his third consecutive game with a knee injury.
In addition to those starters missing time, the Texans also were without backup left tackle Josh Jones, who has a hand injury.
The Texans started 2022 sixth-round pick Austin Deculus at left tackle. Deculus was signed from the practice squad to the roster ahead of the game. The Texans also played Geron Christian Jr., who signed to the team’s practice squad and was called up prior to the game as a standard elevation.
Indeed, the truly amazing thing about Stroud and this Texans team’s success is how well they’ve done despite the O-line injuries, a rookie quarterback, a rookie head coach (DeMeco Ryans), and a rookie offensive coordinator (Bobby Slowik).
Will the Texans play better when their starting offensive line is healthy? Probably. But the entire point of the article, that Stroud was playing so well in some measure thanks to how much money Houston has put into the offensive line, isn’t supported by the facts because the very players Hamm just discussed weren’t in the game he was just talking about.
Is Timm Hamm an AI, or is this just massive journalistic incompetence? And how much massive incompetence in the media do we miss just because we’re not experts on the subject, or simply weren’t paying attention?
Well, I’ve had better weeks. In addition to my job ending, my dog had to get $1,700 worth of veterinary work done (removing and testing a lump on his chest, and while he was getting that I got his teeth cleaned). So feel free to hit the donation jar at the bottom of the post.
A prosecutor overseeing the Hunter Biden tax probe likely intervened to protect President Biden from Department of Justice scrutiny, Eileen O’Connor, former assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Tax Division, testified at the first House Oversight impeachment hearing Thursday.
The impeachment inquiry, which was formally opened earlier this month without a full House vote, builds on the committee’s months-long probe into Biden’s alleged foreign influence peddling.
U.S. attorney for the District of Delaware David Weiss led the investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes, which began in 2018, and was assisted by assistant U.S. attorney Lesley Wolf.
IRS whistleblowers who worked on the probe, and have since provided a trove of information to the committee, identified many deviations from standard procedure, which they claim were driven by Weiss and his staff as well as officials at main Justice in an attempt to slow walk or otherwise obstruct the probe.
The whistleblowers highlighted the fact that attorneys from the DOJ’s tax division suggested the removal of Hunter’s name from documents, including subpoenas, and pointed out that prosecutors at the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware prohibited IRS and FBI investigators from asking about or referring to “the big guy” or “dad” in witness interviews.
Wolf also ordered investigators not to escalate the tax probe into a campaign-finance probe, according to a document the GOP committee obtained from the whistleblowers. Specifically, she told them not to pursue the possibility that a hefty sum Hunter received from a major Democratic donor to pay his back taxes may have constituted an illegal campaign-finance contribution.
Why, it’s almost as if there’s a different rule for powerful Democrats than for other Americans…
“Adam Schiff Funneled Millions To Defense Contractors After Taking Donations.” Of course he did. “This financial maneuvering coincided with Schiff receiving $8,500 in contributions from PMA Group PAC and two family members of Paul Magliocchetti, founder and owner of the lobbying firm retained by both defense companies. In 2011, Paul Magliocchetti was sentenced to 27 months in prison for making illegal campaign contributions.”
Target closes nine stores in Portland, San Francisco, Oakland, Seattle and New York City, citing losses from crime.
States are fighting back against ESG companies trying to destroy their oil and gas industries.
“Oklahoma is a natural gas and oil industry state,” [Oklahoma State Auditor Cindy Byrd] said. “These things are very important to us, and we’ve seen that shut down over the last few years, which is really hurting Oklahoma.”
Increasingly, the environmental social and governance (ESG) industry is coordinating efforts among banks, insurance companies, and asset managers to cut America’s production of fossil fuels. It coordinates these efforts through a coalition of net-zero associations under the umbrella of the U.N.-affiliated Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ).
The net-zero clubs that are part of GFANZ encompass virtually all elements of global finance, including the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), the Net Zero Insurance Alliance (NZIA), the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative (NZAMi), the Net Zero Asset Owners Alliance (NZAOA) and the Net Zero Financial Service Providers Alliance (NZFSPA). Members of these alliances pledge to work together to achieve UN goals of net zero CO2 emissions by 2050 or sooner.
We thought about investments, getting good returns, trying to make money with your money, and that was the prominent thought when I first got in office,” said Kentucky State Treasurer Allison Ball. “I remember when I first started coming to events, I began to hear about an initiative called ESG, and I thought at the time that this was academic; I didn’t really take it very seriously.
“In the course of the last couple of years, it began to become very aggressively pushed,” she told The Epoch Times. “There’s been an effort to really make it the only game in town, to really shift that mentality from investing to make money, making sure you’re getting good returns, to using investments as leverage to push certain mostly political ideas.
“Coal and oil and gas industries, those are signature industries in Kentucky,” Ms. Ball said. “And they’ve been targeted very strongly by the E part of ESG, so I began to see real impacts on the economy of Kentucky, my home area.”
The felony convictions of four former Navy officers in one of the worst bribery cases in the maritime branch’s history were vacated Wednesday due to questions about prosecutorial misconduct, the latest setback to the government’s years-long efforts in going after dozens of military officials tied to Leonard Francis, a defense contractor nicknamed “Fat Leonard.”
U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino called the misconduct “outrageous” and agreed to allow the four men to plead guilty to a misdemeanor and pay a $100 fine each.
California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein dead at 90.
“A group of five Harris County residents filed a petition in state district court on Friday seeking to remove Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo from office, arguing that she has abandoned her duties and responsibilities as the elected chief executive of the state’s most populous county….petitioning to remove Hidalgo under Texas Local Government code allowing for removal of an unfit or incompetent elected official.” She’s been on “mental health leave” since July.
“Prosper ISD Taxpayers Debate Priciest High School Stadium in Texas.” As in $94.8 million pricey. And that’s after they already built one for $53 million, the fifth priciest in the state, that opened in 2019. And they’ve already built two high schools that cost $200 million each, presumably with gold-plated microscopes and Tito Puente as the music teacher…
There’s already been a lawsuit filed against Meta by Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman and Christopher Golden over using their material for training AIs, but there seems to be no mention of pirated books or book3.
The fact that Meta is not only training AI on author’s works without their permission, but using pirated copies to do so adds insult to injury.
And probably additional monetary damages from the resulting lawsuits.
I expect the latest piracy revelations to lead to whole host of new lawsuits…
I haven’t been covering the Ken Paxton impeachment because I don’t think I have anything novel to say about it that hasn’t been covered better elsewhere. Enjoy the Friday LinkSwarm!
U.S. credit card debt tops $1 trillion. Thanks, Joe Biden.
Truth about our current economic situation:
We went into a recession after two back to back quarters of -1.5 over a year ago. When this happened, the establishment changed the parameters that define recession. We’ve remained at a net loss with job creation and “Bidenomics”. This isn’t recovery and everyone knows it. https://t.co/RXltpBNxhp
The feature that really made The Daily Show famous was its masterful use of archival video clips to reveal the hypocrisy of the chattering classes. Stewart would set his target on some party shill or professional talking head being condescending, self-important, dishing out blame, kissing whatever ring he’d been paid to kiss. And then the show would play a clip of the same talking head’s appearance on a C-SPAN 3 four-in-the-morning call-in show from ten years ago, back when he’d been paid to kiss another ring, saying the exact opposite thing.
There was a clip, there was always a clip. And our righteous host would send these hacks packing.
Through all this, certain public figures would be transformed into storylines with narratives and characters, with inside jokes and recurring bits. The media’s storytellers became the subjects of a theater of the absurd. It got so that when certain figures would show up in a segment, you knew you were about to witness them receive their just comeuppance, a great spectacle of spilled archival blood. The audience would titter in excited anticipation.
It was a delight to watch.
Snip.
What had created a culture of “just talking on TV without any accountability,” as one Daily Show writer put it, was not only the sheer volume and speed of the news. It was this true fact that will sound insane to anyone under the age of thirty: People on television reasonably assumed that no one would hear what they had said ever again.
As essayist Chuck Klosterman records in The Nineties: A Book, the key characteristic of twentieth-century media was its ephemerality. You experienced it in real time and internalized what was important and what it felt like. Then you moved on. “It was a decade of seeing absolutely everything before never seeing it again.”
People used to argue with their friends about the plot of a show or what the score had been in the ball game because, well, how were you going to check? Unless you had personally saved the newspaper or recorded it on your VCR, you would need to go to a literal archive and pull it up on microfilm.
TV news was even shakier, as networks often recorded over old tapes. Some of this footage only exists today because of the obsessive efforts of one Philadelphia woman who recorded news broadcasts on 140,000 VHS tapes over forty years.
And so, if you were a pundit or a commentator or a “spin doctor” PR flak, you could say whatever suited your needs at the moment, or even lie with impunity — as long as your lie did not become its own pseudo-event. Your lasting impact was whatever stuck in viewers’ heads and hearts. And if you changed your tune in the months or years afterwards, who would remember?
The Daily Show would remember.
The explosion of live broadcast and cable news had created a new, completely under-valued resource for whoever thought to harness it: catalog clips. Soon, new digital technology could preserve content in amber, allowing for its retrieval, repurposing, or referencing at any time.
It’s a long essay, and I don’t necessarily agree with all the writer’s points, but it’s worth reading.
There was no state of emergency, no curfews, no orders to stay at home or shelter in place. Young Swedes were encouraged to continue with their sports training and events. Schools remained open, and so did offices, factories, restaurants, libraries, shopping centers, gyms, and hairdressers. As a rule, borders were not closed to fellow Europeans and public transportation kept running.
There were no mask mandates and not even a recommendation for the public to use masks—until January 2021, when they were recommended on public transportation during rush hours (7–9 a.m. and 4–6 p.m. on weekdays). While some other governments forced school children to wear face masks, Tegnell even warned against making children wear them, saying that “school is no optimal place for face masks.”6
One can see how Sweden’s path diverged from that of its peers by consulting the latest Human Freedom Index, which has data through 2020. During this first year of the pandemic, Sweden’s freedom rating only fell by 0.19 on a 10‐point scale, compared to 0.49 in Britain and 0.52 in the United States. The only rich country that saw a smaller decline in freedom than Sweden was Singapore, at 0.16.7
Snip.
Analysts from other countries—and even some Swedish scholars—predicted disaster. One influential Swedish model, inspired by the famous British Imperial College study, predicted that Sweden would have 20,000 COVID-19 patients needing intensive care by early May 2020 and a need for intensive care units around 40 times over capacity. By July 1, Sweden would have 82,000 COVID-19 deaths. The Imperial College model predicted between 66,000 and 90,000 deaths without mitigation efforts, and a peak demand of intensive care unit patients 70 times higher than capacity.
Snip.
When you look at excess deaths during the three pandemic years, 2020–2022, compared to the previous three years, you get a very different picture. According to this measure, Sweden’s excess death rate during the pandemic was 4.4 percent higher than previously. Compared to the data that other countries report to Eurostat, this is less than half of the average European level of 11.1 percent, and remarkably, it is the lowest excess mortality rate during the pandemic of all European countries, including Norway, Denmark, and Finland.
“Poland Aims To Create Largest Army In Europe Within Two Years.” Golly, who would need a large army with such historically peaceful neighbors as Germany and Russia?
e Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) declared a statewide lockdown of all its correctional facilities on Wednesday morning, citing increased contraband-related incidents and drug-related inmate homicides.
TDCJ said most inmate-on-inmate homicides “are tied back to illegal drugs … and over the last five years, the volume of illegal narcotics entering the system has substantially increased.”
In response to the drug and murder epidemic in Texas jails, TDCJ is implementing the following strategies to restore order:
Systemwide Lockdown: Each facility will limit the movement of inmates and their contact with those outside the prison. Inmates and staff will undergo intensified searches to intercept and confiscate contraband.
Digital Mail: TDCJ is completing the rollout of the digital mail program. Over the last few years, there has been a significant increase in paper soaked in K2 or methamphetamines coming into our facilities. The digital mail program will halt this contraband being sent through traditional mail. Effective September 6, 2023, all inmate mail should be addressed and sent to the Digital Mail Center. All mail received this week will be delivered to the digital mail processing center. More information about this program can be found here: TDCJ News – TDCJ Digital Mail Rollout.
Increased K9 Searches and Other Technology: To assist in contraband detection and outside funding related to contraband, TDCJ will be deploying additional resources. Specialized search teams and narcotic dogs will be deployed to units and staff will be subject to enhanced search procedures.
Comprehensive Searches: All persons entering our facilities at all locations will undergo comprehensive searches.
“Due to the fact staff will be concentrating on these search efforts, visitation will be canceled until further notice. Inmates will still have access to the phone system and tablets,” TDCJ said.
If drugs are getting into Texas prisons, there’s over a 90% chance correctional staff are getting them in there.
“There is no climate emergency,” the Global Climate Intelligence Group (CLINTEL) said in its World Climate Declaration (pdf), made public in August. “Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures.”
A total of 1,609 scientists and professionals from around the world have signed the declaration, including 321 from the United States.
The coalition pointed out that Earth’s climate has varied as long as it has existed, with the planet experiencing several cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age only ended as recently as 1850, they said.
“Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming,” the declaration said.
Warming is happening “far slower” than predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools,” the coalition said, adding that these models “exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases” and “ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.” For instance, even though climate alarmists characterize CO2 as environmentally-damaging, the coalition pointed out that the gas is “not a pollutant.”
Carbon dioxide is “essential” to all life on earth and is “favorable” for nature. Extra CO2 results in the growth of global plant biomass while also boosting the yields of crops worldwide.
CLINTEL also dismissed the narrative of global warming being linked to increased natural disasters like hurricanes, floods, and droughts, stressing that there is “no statistical evidence” to support these claims.
“There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. Go for adaptation instead of mitigation; adaptation works whatever the causes are,” it said.
“California mom Jessica Konen won a $100,000 settlement from her daughter’s school district, Spreckels Union School District, after Buena Vista Middle School had socially transitioned her 11-year-old daughter, Alicia, without her knowledge or consent.”
Remember how the UK was economically lagging other countries in Europe and Remainers blamed Brexit? Yeah, not so much.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) now says that the UK economy actually recovered from the pandemic recession back in 2021. It turns out that wholesalers and the healthcare sector, in particular, had produced much greater output than previously thought.
These updated figures suggest that the UK economy is as much as two per cent larger than previously believed. This means that the UK can no longer be considered the worst-performing economy in the G7. In fact, post-Brexit, the UK recovered from the pandemic at a similar rate to France and at a faster pace than Germany, Europe’s largest economy.
The ONS’s revision is extraordinary. As one leading economist put it: ‘The entire UK economic narrative – post-pandemic – has just been revised away.’ The very basis for the Remainer elites’ narrative of doom has now been shattered before our eyes.
Mark Felton visits Buckingham Palace, and is Not Amused. “The rooms open to the public are, of course, lavishly decorated. The amount of gold painted furniture, pianos and urns, similar to what I imagine Liberace’s house look like. The walls are hung with the usual assortment of well-fed Hanoverians.” Plus: No bathrooms for you, lowly peasant!
I’ve watched the occasional Wranglerstar video for homesteading and prepping information, but never noticed any bomb-throwing proclivities. But the Rolling Stone piece by Miles Klee seems to be a blatant hit piece.
One of the main contentions is Klee’s portrayal of Crone’s comedic or satirical videos as factual and instructional. The blending of satire with fact can often create misleading perceptions. It’s important for journalists to differentiate between the two, rather than painting everything with the same brush.
Moreover, Klee’s article leans heavily on the negative aspects of Crone’s channel, with little consideration of its broader context. For instance, discussions about preparedness or self-defense can be essential for people living in remote areas, where reliance on immediate help might not always be feasible. The article also fails to mention the vast amount of educational content Wranglerstar has provided over the years, focusing solely on the more controversial topics.
The growth of platforms like YouTube and TikTok allows for diverse content and narratives. However, it’s essential for journalism to remain objective and provide a balanced view. Misrepresentation not only undermines the credibility of media outlets but can also unjustly tarnish the reputation of individuals who rely on these platforms to share their voice and experiences.
It is also important to note that Klee recently openly mocked and ridiculed the movie, “Sound of Freedom”. “I watched Jim Caviezel’s QAnon-ish child-trafficking drama “Sound of Freedom” with the kind of muttering, coughing, “Amen!”-bellowing boomers who have made it a right-wing indie hit. Hard to overstate just how disgusting it was!” Klee wrote on his Threads account.
So Klee is evidently someone that hates preppers and movies about people who fight sex trafficking equally.
Here’s Wranglerstar’s own response, how received tons of threats after the Rolling Stone piece, how law enforcement offers reached out to him with credible threats against him and his family, and how he initially took down his videos, then regretted doing so.
The amazing thing to me is how Rolling Stone, a theoretically still-important member of the Fifth Column Fourth Estate, literally went after a random guy on YouTube for daring to suggest prepping for hard times and potential government oppression. So much for those “counterculture” roots, Rolling Stone declares itself firmly in the camp of Team Bootheel and seems very, very concerned that some random guy in Washington state might not knuckle under to The Man…
Still more Biden corruption comes to light, Yellow goes belly-up, things get worse in China, and a truly horrifying food discovery. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The Biden family and its business associates received millions of dollars from oligarchs in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine while Joe Biden was vice president, according to bank records obtained by the House Oversight Committee.
With the new payments included, the committee says it has now identified more than $20 million in payments from foreign sources to the Biden family and their business associates. Those foreign sources include not only the three aforementioned countries, but also China and Romania as well.
Hunter Biden’s former business associate Devon Archer previously testified that then-Vice President Biden joined roughly 20 phone calls on speakerphone with Hunter Biden’s foreign business associates and attended dinners with foreign oligarchs who paid large sums of money to Hunter Biden.
The foreign funds were sent to accounts tied to Devon Archer that used the Rosemont Seneca name and were then doled out in incremental payments to Hunter Biden, the records show, in what the committee suggests was an attempt to hide the source and size of the payments.
Those payments included $3.5 million sent from Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina to the shell company Rosemont Seneca Thornton in February 2014. Roughly $1 million was transferred to Devon Archer, while the rest was used to fund a new account Rosemont Seneca Bohai, which was used by both Archer and Hunter Biden to receive other foreign wires.
After Baturina sent the massive sum to Rosemont Seneca Thornton, then-Vice President Joe Biden attended dinner with Baturina, Archer, Hunter Biden, and others at Cafe Milano in Washington, D.C.
Then-Vice President Joe Biden attended dinners with Hunter Biden; Archer; Baturina; Burisma executives; and Kenes Rakishev, a Kazakhstani oligarch, in the spring of 2014 and 2015 at Cafe Milano.
In February 2014, Hunter Biden met with Rakishev at the Hay Adams Hotel in Washington, D.C. In emails to Archer discussing the D.C. meeting, Rakishev, who was a director at Kazakhstan’s state-owned oil company KazMunayGas, asked that then-Secretary of State John Kerry visit Kazakhstan. Archer said, “if we have some business started as planned I will ensure its planned soonest.”
So members of the extended Biden business family were asking the Secretary of State of the United States of America to visit a foreign country so the Biden clan could do business. Are all American institutions now corrupted for the sole purpose of enriching Democratic Party insiders?
In April 2014, Rakishev wired $142,300 to the Rosemont Seneca Bohai account. The figure amounted to the exact price of Hunter Biden’s sports car that the account purchased one day later.
After receiving the payment, Archer and Biden arranged for executives at Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma to visit Kazakhstan in June 2014 to discuss a deal between Burisma, a Chinese state-owned company, and the government of Kazakhstan. Rakishev had a working relationship with Karim Massimov, who became prime minister in April 2014. Earlier this year, Massimov was sentenced to 18 years in prison for treason, abuse of power, and attempting a coup.
Also in spring 2014, Archer and Biden joined the Burisma board of directors at a salary of $1 million per year each. President Biden visited Ukraine soon after Archer and the younger Biden received their first payments — payments that were sent to Rosemont Seneca Bohai and later sent in incremental amounts to Hunter Biden’s different bank accounts.
The committee confirmed IRS whistleblower testimony that Archer and Hunter Biden received $6.5 million in funds from Burisma, which is owned by Mykola Zlochevsky, a Ukrainian oligarch who bribed officials $6 million over the investigation into the natural gas company.
Archer told the committee last week that Hunter Biden’s value on Burisma’s board was “the brand.” Archer said then-vice president Biden was “the brand.”
“Burisma would have gone out of business if ‘the brand’ had not been attached to it,” Archer said, according to the committee.
We can’t let corrupt foreign companies that keep Hunter in cocaine go tits-up, can we?
Text messages that have recently been given to the FBI show that a Chinese energy company sought to utilize its connections to Hunter Biden in order to purchase domestic energy assets within the United States.
According to Just The News, the text exchange in question took place between two of Hunter’s business partners, James Gilliar and Tony Bobulinski, on Christmas Eve of 2015. This exchange was shortly after Hunter had first been told about the conglomerate, CFEC China Energy, led by wealthy businessman Ye Jianming.
“I think this will then be a great addition to their portfolios as it will give them a profile base in NYC, then LA, etc,” said Gilliar in the text message. “For me it’s a no brainer but culturally they are different, but smart so let’s see. … Any entry ticket is small for them. Easier and better demographic than Arabs who are little anti US after trump.”
This evidence further supports the bombshell claims made by another former business partner of Hunter, Devon Archer, in closed-door testimony before Congress earlier this week. Archer testified that Joe and Hunter Biden both actively sought to promote their “influence” to potential foreign partners, and that the two of them were considered a package deal in efforts to sell the “brand” of their family name and political power while Joe was Vice President.
According to calendar schedules from his abandoned laptop, Hunter eventually did have a meeting with CEFC Executive Director Jianjun Zang in December of 2015. By March of 2016, two of Hunter’s business partners, Gilliar and Rob Walker, drafted a memo for Hunter to sign and send to CEFC, to which Hunter agreed.
The text messages, exchanged between 2015 and 2017, eventually reveal that CEFC simply hoped to gain “influence” through its partnership with the Bidens, in order to eventually enter the American energy market with the purchase of energy assets in America and elsewhere in the West.
“Still closing the perimeters of ops with the Chinese, will know Thursday if we are driving U.S. investments,” Gilliar wrote to Bobulinski in May of 2016, adding that things might be “still a little premature.”
Want to know who funded that dirty Chinese bioloab in California? Would you believe Gavin Newsom?
Yellow files for bankruptcy, citing union contracts. Look how they shine for you. And all the things that you do…
Judge slams Southwest Airlines for ignoring ruling over firing an employee for daring to have wrongthink on abortion. “The judge said the airline acted as if its own policy limiting what employees can say is more important than a federal law protecting religious speech.” (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
Teacher who made racist statements and bragged about how she couldn’t be fired fired. (More.)
Title: Oppenheimer
Director: Christopher Nolan
Writers: Christopher Nolan, Kai Bird, Martin Sherwin
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Jason Clarke, Benny Safdie, Josh Hartnett, Alden Ehrenreich
I finally saw Oppenheimer, and if you have an interest in the subject, it’s well worth seeing. It’s a near-great film that’s great when it covers the atomic bomb project, and considerably less great when It Has Important Things To Say.
The movie covers much of the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), director of the Los Alamos part of the project to build the atomic bomb. The movie has a non-linear format, using the framing device of two different hearings (on the renewal of Oppenheimer’s security clearance, and the cabinet confirmation hearing for Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), who lured Oppenheimer to Princeton and oversaw the Atomic Energy Commission, and who is eventually revealed to be the film’s antagonist) interspersed with Oppenheimer’s life before and during the The Manhattan Project.
When the film is good, it’s flat out great. The scenes here tend to be small in scope, seldom more than a minute long, slowly building up Oppenheimer’s life, his love and study of physics, his dalliance with communism (he was a fellow-traveler who never joined the party, but did take a commie (Florence Pugh) as his first wife and an ex-commie (Emily Blunt) as his second), his dismay as a Jewish American at the rise of Nazism, and his involvement in the atomic bomb effort.
The brevity of the scenes is one of the film’s greatest strengths. Though mostly quiet and understated in themselves, they slowly build up a heady steam of narrative momentum. By the time they get to Los Alamos itself you’re absolutely riveted.
And it gets better. The scenes leading up to the Trinity detonation are a masterpiece of film editing, successfully ratcheting the tension higher and higher just by showing scenes of the elaborate preparations leading up to the blast, under-laid by Ludwig Göransson’s tense, violin-heavy score. I saw the film in IMAX, and I think I got my money’s worth out of that sequence alone.
But that headlong pace enfolds within it a problem: Things move so fast, that some scenes have a certain checkmark quality to them, so that you know exactly what’s coming. Gee, when commie girlfriend picks up a Sanskrit text, what do you want to bet that the passage he’s reading is “I am become death, destroyer of worlds?”
Please, no wagering.
But that’s a minor problem compared to the biggest flaw of Oppenheimer, which is what they chose to include as the main non-Trinity storyline. Why have the climax of your film feature the literal explosion of an atomic bomb when you can spend the rest of it on the pulse-pounding excitement of committee meetings?
To be fair to Nolan, this is obviously the film he wanted to make, and the film is called Oppenheimer rather than The Making of the Atomic Bomb. And the committee meeting scenes are as well-acted, well-directed and well-paced as you could reasonably ask of a big-budget, A-list Hollywood film. But the real reason they’re there is so the leftist screenwriters can Say Important Things.
Oppenheimer must feel massive guilt and remorse for having helped usher in the atomic age, because this is Approved Opinion. Leftists, even commies, must be shown in a positive light, because this is Approved Opinion. Likewise, McCarthyism must be shown to be Very Bad, so all the crimes of communism have to be kept offstage.
Indeed, an awful lot happens off-stage, including the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then again, Oppenheimer is the viewpoint character.
From my better-than-the-average-layman-understanding-at-how-an-atomic-bomb-works-but-hardly-an-expert vantage point, the historical accuracy for the film seems painstaking and effective. I understood why Klaus Fuchs was important when he was introduced, appreciated the Nixie tubes in the Trinity countdown, and figured out the guy with the bongos must have been Richard Feynman. Everything sure as hell looks accurate, and the New Mexico photography is gorgeous.
But with so much time spent on the commie and Strauss plots, and Oppenheimer having visions of particle physics (early) and atomic destruction (late), the rest of the film (the far more interesting part) feels a bit rushed. Plus the sheer smallness of the stakes that drive the frame-story/post-Trinity portion feels like a distinct anticlimax. Indeed, the primary subplot turns out to be (spoilers) Strauss secretly shiving Oppenheimer by getting his security clearance yanked for…his supporting export of radioactive isotopes to Norway? It’s like if during the climax of Kill Bill, you find out that the Bride’s entire motivation for her revenge spree was Bill never returning her DVD of Steel Magnolias.
All that said, this is still an exceptionally good film, and even the ostensibly bad guys Have Their Reasons. Even hydrogen bomb father Edward Teller (Benny Safdie), who the writers must have been tempted to turn into a secondary villain, comes across as a smart, sympathetic figure. And history validates both his and Strauss’ view that America was right to move forward on the H-Bomb, as the Soviets were utterly untrustworthy as arms control treaty partners.
I expect Oscar nominations galore.
If you’re the kind of person that would watch a three hour movie on the making of the atomic bomb, this is the one to watch.
Almost immediately, the rifles were plagued with problems. The L86A1’s bipod tended to fail to lock, were weak, and generally crappy. Additionally, the plastic melted when it interacted with bug repellant, and the metal rusted easily. The weapons were found to be unreliable in both arctic and desert environments.
The SA80 family used stamped steel, which the Brits had experience with in the form of the Sten gun. However, the Sten had much lower tolerances than the SA80. The tighter tolerances required more skilled labor and better machinery. This led to tons of waste and slow production of the SA80 family of rifles and squad support weapons.
Their first trial by combat came to be in the Gulf War and then later in African operations. It’s tough to say anything nice about these weapons’ performance in the desert. Both the L85A1 and L86A1 proved to be unreliable. The L85A1 worked best on fully automatic, and the L86A1 worked best on semi-auto. This created was the inverse of how the weapons were intended to be used.
The polymer furniture fell apart easily. The magazines and the magazine catch proved problematic. It was too easy to access and would cause soldiers to accidentally drop magazines. The top cover catch required tape to hold it in place. The weapons needed to be kept incredibly clean and could deform if gripped too hard.
The weapon overheated quickly, the firing pin was fragile and broke easily, and dirt could accumulate behind the trigger and prevent it from being pulled. The safety selector could swell when it got wet and render the weapon useless. SAS operator and Gulf War commando Chris Ryan stated that the SA80 was “poor-quality, unreliable weapons at the best of times, prone to stoppages, and it seemed pretty tough to have to rely on them.”
It’s easy to see why the rifles sucked. The British Ministry of Defence commissioned a report that stated,
“The SA80 did not perform reliably in the sandy conditions of combat and training. Stoppages were frequent despite the considerable and diligent efforts to prevent them. It is extremely difficult to isolate the prime cause of the stoppages.
It is, however, quite clear that infantrymen did not have CONFIDENCE in their personal weapons. Most expected a stoppage in the first magazine fired. Some platoon commanders considered that casualties would have occurred due to weapon stoppages if the enemy had put up any resistance in the trench and bunker clearing operations.
Even discounting the familiarisation period of desert conditions, when some may have still been using the incorrect lubrication drill, stoppages continued to occur.”
Commenter BigFire noted that Ian McCollum had done a video on the weapon, and he’s no less scathing:
“Can you hear that? I can hear it. That’s the sound of every former British service member cringing at the mere sight of this rifle. And it’s so loud you can hear it over the internet.”
“This is, probably more so than any other firearm in current service, a giant scandal of plastic and metal.”
They started with a proprietary 4.85mm cartridge, but eventually went with 5.56 NATO. Brits didn’t go with the M16 because they wanted a bull-pup (and presumably because they wanted to make them domestically).
Desert Storm: “The guns really performed poorly in the sand. And there was a report that was written detailing all of these problems and submitted to MOD in the aftermath of Desert Storm. And it got leaked to the public. And this document basically said, ‘These guns are a piece of junk, and they never work.'”
The Brits turned to Heckler & Koch (which was actually owned by a British company at the time) to fix the weapon. “And they came up with just a couple things to fix, namely everything. In the rebuild they either replaced or redesigned the bolt, the gas piston, the gas block, the front trunnion, the hammer, all of the springs, pretty much all of the pins, the magazine release, and the furniture [stock, grip and handguard], and the charging handle, and probably a couple other things that I’ve forgetting about. They basically kept the receivers as a shell and replaced everything else inside them.”
“They rebuilt about 200,000 of these rifles into what became known as the L85A2 configuration, for the cost of about £92 million.”
“They had far more problems than the M16 did in Vietnam, and yet still to this day we hear about the M16 being an unreliable piece of junk, because of some limited issues that were actually pretty easily fixed in the early days of Vietnam. Well, the L85 had much more substantial and severe problems to begin with. And even though the A2 appears to be a pretty darn good gun now, its reputation is dead forever … because of how bad the A1 was.”
Making simple weapons that can be turned out on prosumer grade CNC machines gets easier and easier every year, but designing automatic weapons that reliably work across a wide range of combat situations is still hard…
More Biden Crime Family evidence surfaces, another mysterious Chinese bio-lab (this one much closer to home than Wuhan), more blue city real estate disaster, and Tim Scott screws up. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
President Joe Biden vehemently denied ever talking business with his son, “or with anyone else” in the run-up to the 2020 election. In fact, Biden even fat-shamed an Iowa voter who approached the subject during the Democratic primaries. On the debate stage with Donald Trump, the former vice president peddled conspiracies of Russian interference when emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop revealed otherwise.
On Sunday night, the New York Post reported on anticipated testimony from Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Devon Archer. The 48-year-old who went golfing with the Bidens in 2014 is expected to tell the House Oversight Committee how Hunter Biden put his father in contact with foreign businessmen and potential investors at least 24 times. According to the Post, such meetings were either in person or by speakerphone, with Hunter Biden often dialing in Joe.
Beyond those meetings, there are more than 180 other episodes where the president interacted with his son’s business partners, contrary to his campaign claims of “absolute” separation.
As the evidence for at least an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden mounts, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and co-host Ben Ferguson discussed the latest bombshell – 170 suspicious activity reports (SARs) from six banks over the past few years – on their podcast with House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY).
As Townhall reports, these SARs are submitted and sent to the Treasury Department when banks “have a strong suspicion” that a crime has been committed, so as to protect the bank.
As Comer emphasized, these are submitted “very seldom.”
If someone were to have two, the chairman explained, it would be hard for that person to open up a bank account.
Submitting an SAR, Comer added, also is “inviting the regulators to come in and regulate,” which is the last thing banks want.
The full transcript from Devon Archer’s sworn testimony before the House Judiciary Committee from Monday, July 31, has been released. During that testimony, Archer told Rep. Dan Goldman that Hunter Biden had been placed on the board of directors for Ukrainian energy company Burisma in order to “legally” intimidate people.
During that question period, Goldman asked Archer “So based on everything you saw, heard, and observed, did you have any knowledge of Joe Biden having any involvement with Burisma?”
Archer said that while he did not have “direct” knowledge, it was his view that Burisma would not last were in not for Joe Biden’s involvement. “My only thought is that I think Burisma would have gone out of business if it didn’t have the brand attached to it. That’s my, like, only honest opinion,” Archer said. He went on to say that the company was able to survive for as long as it did because Hunter was on the board.
“Just because of the brand,” Archer said. The “brand” refers to the Biden name. Speaking with The Post Millennial, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said that the brand was not only Biden, but the vice presidency during Biden’s tenure.
“How does that have an impact?” Goldman asked.
“Well, the capabilities to navigate D.C.,” Archer said, “that they were able to, you know, basically be in the news cycle. And I think that preserved them from a, you know, from a longevity standpoint. That’s like my honest—that’s what I—tht’s like how I think holistically.”
“But how would that work?” Goldman asked.
“Because people would be intimidated to mess with them,” Archer replied.
“In what way?” Goldman pressed.
“Legally,” Archer said.
Archer also spoke about the meetings during which Joe Biden would call in, or be called. “He put him on speakerphone, again, occasionally. Specifics, like, you know, dinner—you know, dinners occasionally.” Archer was asked to describe the dinners, and said “I remember a dinner in Paris with a French energy company that was—we were speaking to an advisor, and then—we were speaking to. And it was really a Rosemont Seneca Advisors type of—a Rosemont Seneca Advisors kind of a pitch, at the end of the day. And there was a talk, and he said that we’re at this—you know, we’re at this restaurant in Paris, and he put him on the speaker. So that did happen. There were other people there.”
That dinner, specifically, was attended by “myself; Hunter; Eric Schwerin; and then the executives from the French energy company,” Archer said.
Another was in “Beijing, at, you know, some restaurant,” Archer said, “—or Chengdu or something like I don’t remember the—I don’t remember specifics. This was just—it was not—t was like a, you know—especially with the time zone difference, there was—you know, there were meetings where his dad would call and he would be talking to him or put him on speaker. I’m not going to—you know, that’s—that happened.”
Archer said that the conversation at that dinner, with Jonathan Li, was primarily niceties. But it was his contention that getting the vice president on the phone, showing off that kind of access, was what those calls were all about. Archer testified that Hunter Biden would say things like “Hey, guys, my dad’s on the phone.”
Another call, which Archer revealed during questioning by Rep. Jim Jordan, took place in Dubai. During this impromptu meeting, Hunter Biden was contacted by Burisma’s CEO Zlochevsky, who said “We’re under pressure. We need to go—we want to talk to Hunter.” Hunter called DC, and Archer was “not in the earshot” of that call.
It was only 5 days after that call that Joe Biden “has a trip to the Ukraine, and he makes a statement: ‘It’s not enough to set up a new anti-corruption bureau and establish a special prosecutor fighting corruption. The Office of the General Prosecutor desperately needs reform.” That was in 2015, and Biden withheld $1 billion in loan guarantees from Ukraine until such time as the prosecutor Viktor Shokin was fired.
Bill Stevenson, who was married to Jill Biden between 1970 and 1975, told Newsmax last week that the president’s brother, Frankie Biden, tried to intimidate him during his divorce with Jill, and claimed the family threatened him with repercussions.
“Frankie Biden of the Biden crime family comes up to me and he goes, “Give her the house or you’re going to have serious problems,”” Stevenson said. “I looked at Frankie and I said, “Are you threatening me?” and needless to say, about two months later, my brother and I were indicted for that tax charge for $8,200.”
When asked to clarify whether he thinks Joe Biden was behind the tax charge, Stevenson told host Greg Kelly: “I not only think it, but I know it,” adding that he “could not believe the power of Joe Biden and the Department of Justice. I couldn’t believe it.”
Kelly also noted the parallels between Stevenson’s case and Hunter Biden’s ongoing tax troubles – noting that Hunter was hit with just two misdemeanor counts for $2.2 million in unpaid taxes, while Stevenson and his brother were slapped with two felonies for just over $8,000 in unpaid taxes.
This is a weird, disturbing story: Mysterious Chinese bio-lab discovered in Reedley, CA in the central San Joaquin Valley.
Court documents detail the horrors and dangerous nature of an illegal lab found in Reedley, California, exposed several months ago by a city code enforcement officer. What was found inside prompted the fire chief to send a letter to city officials describing it as a “potential disaster for the city.”
An investigation into the warehouse was prompted by a simple garden hose that was illegally attached and coming out of a wall in the back of the building.
“Frankly, we knew that should not have been there and when she went to investigate, she found that there was activity or operation or something happening within that building,” said Reedley City Manager Nicole Zieba.
The city then obtained a search warrant to look inside what should have been an ordinary warehouse. Inside, they found thousands of vials, many of which contained bio-hazardous materials like human blood, and other unknown substances.
“There was over 800 different chemicals on site in different bottles of different acids. Unfortunately, a lot of these are being categorized under ‘unknown chemicals,’” said Assistant Director of the Fresno County Department of Public Health Joe Prado. “A lot of these labels have been removed from bottles so there was only so much testing we could do [on] those chemicals.”
Health officials also discovered nearly 1,000 lab mice, 200 of which were dead.
Prado said the warehouse occupants claimed they were “doing some testing on laboratory mice that would help them support [and develop] the COVID test kits that they had on-site.”
According to court documents, officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tested what they could and determined that at least 20 potentially infectious viral, bacterial, and parasitic agents were present, including E. coli, malaria, and the virus that causes COVID-19.
“Scientists Call for Full Retraction of Nature’s Proximal Origin Paper, as Fraud Accusations Mount.” Their response was simplicity itself: They lied.
A growing number of people, including prominent scientists, are calling for a full retraction of a high-profile study published in the journal Nature in March 2020 that explored the origins of SARS-CoV-2.
The paper, whose authors included immunology and microbiology professor Kristian G. Andersen, declared that evidence clearly showed that SARS-CoV-2 did not originate from a laboratory.
“Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus,” the authors wrote in February.
Yet a trove of recently published documents reveal that Andersen and his co-authors believed that the lab leak scenario was not just possible, but likely.
“[The] main thing still in my mind is that the lab escape version of this is so friggin’ likely to have happened because they were already doing this type of work and the molecular data is fully consistent with that scenario,” Andersen said to his colleagues, according to a report from Public, which published a series of Slack messages between the authors.
Anderson was not the only author who privately expressed doubts that the virus had natural origins. Public cataloged dozens of statements from Andersen and his co-authors—Andrew Rambaut, W. Ian Lipkin, Edward C. Holmes, and Robert F. Garry—between the dates January 31 and February 28, 2020 suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 may have been engineered.
” …the fact that we are discussing this shows how plausible it is,” Garry said of the lab-leak hypothesis.
“We unfortunately can’t refute the lab leak hypothesis,” Andersen said on Feb. 20, several days after the authors published their pre-print.
The rap on Tim Scott is that he is too nice to be a modern Republican, but that’s wrong – he’s too weak to be a modern Republican. The man consistently defaults to submission to the woke left, but the times call for a warrior and his brand is soft surrender. Yeah, it would be nice to live in an era where we have the luxury of a president who dodged the draft in the culture wars, but we do not live in that time. Tim Scott needs to stay right where he is, an affable but unaccomplished senator firmly within the tradition of the political puffballs that South Carolina’s GOP inexplicably turns out. Let him be nice somewhere where his alleged niceness won’t shaft us again.
It could have been different, but that would require a different man than Tim Scott. There are moments that define a candidate, moments where they have a choice and the choice they make makes or breaks them. Kamala Harris decided to take what is essentially a footnote within the Florida history standards and contort it into some sort of lie about how Ron DeSantis loves slavery. It’s one of those issues where the claim is so facially ludicrous that you have to wonder if Kamala is stupid or cynical – and come to the conclusion that she is probably both. But she went with it and DeSantis pushed back and we were moving on when someone in the regime media asked Tim Scott about it.
This was his decision point. It was an opportunity to show who he is. And Tim Scott whiffed.
Taking the wrong side in the social justice war is disqualifying. Scott has gone from being maybe my third favorite candidate in the field and a strong Veepstakes possibility to being behind Doug Bergrum and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Oakland residents are sick and tired of our intolerable public safety crisis that overwhelmingly impacts minority communities. Murders, shootings, violent armed robberies, home invasions, car break-ins, sideshows, and highway shootouts have become a pervasive fixture of life in Oakland. We call on all elected leaders to unite and declare a state of emergency and bring together massive resources to address our public safety crisis…
Failed leadership, including the movement to defund the police, our District Attorney’s unwillingness to charge and prosecute people who murder and commit life threatening serious crimes, and the proliferation of anti-police rhetoric have created a heyday for Oakland criminals. If there are no consequences for committing crime in Oakland, crime will continue to soar.
People are moving out of Oakland in droves. They are afraid to venture out of their homes to go to work, shop, or dine in Oakland and this is destroying economic activity. Businesses, small and large, struggle and close, tax revenues vanish, and we are creating the notorious doom-loop where life in our city continues to spiral downward. As economic pain increases, the conditions that help create crime and criminals are exacerbated by desperate people with no employment opportunities.
We are in crisis and elected leaders must declare a state of emergency and bring resources together from the city, the county, and the state to end the crisis. We are 500 police officers short of the number that experts say Oakland needs. Our 911 system does not work. Residents now know that help will not come when danger confronts them. Worse, criminals know that too…
There is nothing compassionate or progressive about allowing criminal behavior to fester and rob Oakland residents of their basic rights to public safety. It is not racist or unkind to want to be safe from crime. No one should live in fear in our city.
Speaking of blue city retail apocalypses: “Field Office, a Trophy Complex Unable to Find Tenants, Defaults on $73.8 Million Loan. Goldman Sachs and Lincoln Property stopped making payments.”
The owners of Field Office, a 290,375-square-foot office complex near the Willamette River, have defaulted on their $73.8 million loan after being unable to find enough tenants, becoming the latest office owners to throw in the towel on Portland’s struggling office market.
Field Office is owned by New York investment bank Goldman Sachs and Lincoln Property Co., a Dallas-based real estate firm with operations in Portland. The pair bought Field Office from local developer Project^ and National Real Estate Advisors, an investment firm based in Washington, D.C., for $118 million in April 2019, according to public records.
Funny how letting antifa/#BlackLivesMatter rioters and crime run rampant through your downtown destroys property values. #ThisIsYourCityOnSocialJustice
Black Florida State University professor who published numerous studies on “systemic racism” is fired for just making shit up. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
You’re a Texas republican congressman who’s also an ER doctor and you try to assist a teenage girl having a medical emergency? That’s a handcuffing.
A former employee of a large food service corporation is suing the company in federal court after it fired her for refusing to participate in a program that discriminates against white male employees.
Courtney Rogers worked for Charlotte, North Carolina-based Compass Group USA Inc. from her home office in San Diego, California.
The company had more than 280,000 employees and $20.1 billion in revenue in 2019, according to its LinkedIn profile.
“Back in 2018, NBA megastar LeBron James opened his I Promise School in Akron, Ohio with the noble goal of transforming the lives of at-risk students and parents in his hometown. But it appears that the school has some major challenges five years into its existence. According to a report from the Akron Beacon Journal, the I Promise School’s fall class of eighth graders has has not seen a single student pass the state’s math test in five years – since the group was in the third grade.”
