swordfish

Come on - you laughed.....

The original "All By Myself" artist........ https://www.wndu.com/2024/03/12/eric-carmen-raspberries-frontman-all-by-myself-singer-dies-74/?fbclid=IwAR3GuuDLq99WTTjn5hxka9qnIWlRjjaksJBhZ9fuE9UEFrXG33J-KOnDByE (Gray News) - Eric Carmen, frontman for the pop rock band the Raspberries, has died at 74, his family announced. Carmen’s wife Amy confirmed the news with a statement on the singer’s official website. “It is with tremendous sadness that we share the heartbreaking news of the passing of Eric Carmen. Our sweet, loving and talented Eric passed away in his sleep, over the weekend. It brought him great joy to know, that for decades, his music touched so many and will be his lasting legacy. Please respect the family’s privacy as we mourn our enormous loss. ‘Love Is All That Matters...Faithful and Forever.’” Carmen’s cause of death has not been released. Carmen was born and raised in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland and gained fame as the frontman of the Raspberries and as a solo artist in the ‘70s and ‘80s. “All by Myself”, a single from his debut album, reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and sold more than 1 million copies before it was certified gold by the The Recording Industry Association of America. “Hungry Eyes,” which was featured on the “Dirty Dancing” soundtrack, peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Nothing will change in DC until congressional term limits are put in place.

John Kerry claimed that people would "feel better" about the ongoing war in Ukraine if Russia would "make a greater effort to reduce emissions." Scary to think this guy was once (kinda) close to being our President....... https://www.foxnews.com/politics/john-kerry-says-people-feel-better-about-ukraine-war-russia-reduce-emissions?fbclid=IwAR1oRgSm8MwmMpxivaQ-ye883M74oB7gt9nsB-6gdheDmBgm6SMnDXedeRw Outgoing Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC) John Kerry claimed that people would "feel better" about the ongoing war in Ukraine if Russia would "make a greater effort to reduce emissions." "If Russia wanted to show good faith, they could go out and announce what their reductions are going to be and make a greater effort to reduce emissions now," Kerry said during a foreign press briefing on Tuesday in Washington, D.C., his last as the SPEC, as he departed from the position Wednesday to reportedly join President Biden's presidential re-election campaign. "Maybe that would open up the door for people to feel better about what Russia is choosing to do at this point in time," he said.

Nikki Haley will not be down for breakfast......Now comes the head-to-head rematch New thread time - where SF wonders how long Biden is going to last in this race before the DNC removes him.......Will he last until the convention? Will he ever debate Trump? Trump has already shifted his focus on Biden and time will tell how ugly it's going to get. Border, Inflation, Age, Abortion, Climate, January 6, Russia/Ukraine, Middle East. SF just got a new popcorn popper and am getting ready to use it! https://www.wndu.com/2024/03/06/nikki-haley-campaign-pushed-brink-after-super-tuesday-trouncing/ NEW YORK (AP) — Nikki Haley suspended her presidential campaign on Wednesday after being soundly defeated across the country on Super Tuesday, leaving Donald Trump as the last remaining major candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination. Haley didn’t endorse the former president in a speech in Charleston, South Carolina. Instead, she encouraged him to earn the support of the coalition of moderate Republicans and independent voters who supported her. “It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him. And I hope he does that,” she said. “At its best, politics is about bringing people into your cause, not turning them away. And our conservative cause badly needs more people.” Haley, a former South Carolina governor and former U.N. ambassador, was Trump’s first significant rival when she jumped into the race in February 2023. She spent the final phase of her campaign aggressively warning the GOP against embracing Trump, whom she argued was too consumed by chaos and personal grievance to defeat President Joe Biden in the general election. Her departure clears Trump to focus solely on his likely rematch in November with Biden. The former president is on track to reach the necessary 1,215 delegates to clinch the Republican nomination later this month. Haley’s defeat marks a painful, if predictable, blow to those voters, donors and Republican Party officials who opposed Trump and his fiery brand of “Make America Great Again” politics. She was especially popular among moderates and college-educated voters, constituencies that will likely play a pivotal role in the general election. It’s unclear whether Trump, who recently declared that Haley donors would be permanently banned from his movement, can ultimately unify a deeply divided party. Trump on Tuesday night declared that the GOP was united behind him, but in a statement shortly afterward, Haley spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said, “Unity is not achieved by simply claiming, ‘We’re united.’” “Today, in state after state, there remains a large block of Republican primary voters who are expressing deep concerns about Donald Trump,” Perez-Cubas said. “That is not the unity our party needs for success. Addressing those voters’ concerns will make the Republican Party and America better.” Haley has made clear she doesn’t want to serve as Trump’s vice president or run on a third-party ticket arranged by the group No Labels. She leaves the race with an elevated national profile that could help her in a future presidential run. By staying in the campaign, Haley drew enough support from suburbanites and college-educated voters to highlight Trump’s apparent weaknesses with those groups. In AP VoteCast surveys conducted among Republican primary and caucus voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, between 61% and 76% of Haley’s supporters said they would be so dissatisfied if Trump became the GOP nominee that they wouldn’t vote for him in the November general election. Voters in the early Republican head-to-head contests who said they wouldn’t vote for Trump in the fall represented a small but significant segment of the electorate: 2 in 10 Iowa voters, one-third of New Hampshire voters, and one-quarter of South Carolina voters. Haley leaves the 2024 presidential contest having made history as the first woman to win a Republican primary contest. She beat Trump in the District of Columbia on Sunday and in Vermont on Tuesday. She had insisted she would stay in the race through Super Tuesday and crossed the country campaigning in states holding Republican contests. Ultimately, she was unable to knock Trump off his glide path to a third straight nomination. Haley’s allies note that she exceeded most of the political world’s expectations by making it as far as she did. She had initially ruled out running against Trump in 2024. But she changed her mind and ended up launching her bid three months after he did, citing among other things the country’s economic troubles and the need for “generational change.” Haley, 52, later called for competency tests for politicians over the age of 75 — a knock on both Trump, who is 77, and Biden, who is 81. Her candidacy was slow to attract donors and support, but she ultimately outlasted all of her other GOP rivals, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Tim Scott, her fellow South Carolinian whom she appointed to the Senate in 2012. And the money flowed in until the very end. Her campaign said it raised more than $12 million in February alone. She gained popularity with many Republican donors, independent voters and the so-called “Never Trump” crowd, even though she criticized the criminal cases against him as politically motivated and pledged that, if president, she would pardon him if he were convicted in federal court

The views on voter ID laws from white folk at Berkley and black folk from Harlem. Very interesting comparison. My favorite line "Who don't have ID? That's ignorant to say we don't have ID" - "Who these people talking to?".

Can anyone anymore even be the least bit unconvinced the Biden family, led by "The Big Guy" Joe, was complicit in this corruption? This is about to come out as fact and may be the catalyst that ends the Biden Presidency. https://nypost.com/2024/03/04/us-news/hunter-biden-helped-hire-aides-who-mishandled-joes-classified-documents/ Within hours of the release of a special prosecutor’s report finding he “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials” as a private citizen, President Biden rushed to the White House podium to blame his former “staff.” “I take responsibility for not having seen exactly what my staff was doing,” the president maintained. Like Biden, these staffers have avoided any criminal charges. Who are they? Without identifying them by name, special counsel Robert Hur narrowed the suspects to two former aides: “Executive Assistant” and “Staff Assistant 3.” He said they gathered up more than 180 classified records totaling more than 600 pages and packed them into 15 boxes as Biden left the White House in January 2017. Gatekeepers Documents confirm that the staffers in question are Kathy S. Chung, who worked with Hunter Biden at the Commerce Department, and Anne Marie Muldoon, nee Person, who worked for him at Rosemont Seneca Partners, a key pass-through for foreign wire payments to Hunter Biden. Chung and Muldoon were the two most important people in Joe Biden’s office suite. They were the gatekeepers who controlled the front office that adjoined his West Wing office, and they stored his classified papers in file cabinets and in his safe. Biden trusted them implicitly since they came to him on the recommendation of his son Hunter. In effect, it was Hunter who placed them in their sensitive posts inside the White House, where they had unfettered access to “the most highly classified, sensitive, and compartmented materials recovered during our investigation,” Hur noted in his report. And they continued to communicate with Hunter throughout their tenure in his father’s office, assisting his foreign business schemes, according to emails obtained from his abandoned laptop and from the National Archives. Recommended Hunter got his old Commerce colleague Chung her White House job in 2012, the year before Hunter traveled with the vice president on Air Force Two to Beijing to seal a lucrative investment deal with the Chinese. Chung booked the trip, records show. The executive assistant post opened up in his father’s office in May 2012, and Hunter proposed his old chum take it. He described the job as replacing the “primary gatekeeper for the VP [and the] conduit everyone goes through to get to [Joe Biden].” In addition, she’d handle “all personal stuff” for the vice president, according to Hunter’s email to Chung. That meant, as it turned out, acting as the custodian of all of Biden’s White House records, including classified material. Chung was thrilled to be considered for the position, which required Top Secret security clearance — “Thanks for calling and thinking of me,” she emailed Hunter — and agreed to an interview. “I just met with your Dad again and he officially offered me the job,” she gushed in a June 13, 2012, email to Hunter. “I cannot thank you enough for thinking about me and walking me thru this.” Then in mid-2014, Hunter recommended Muldoon for the job of Chung’s assistant. At the time, she was working as Hunter’s aide at Rosemont Seneca. Her husband, Mike Muldoon, had also worked for Hunter at Rosemont Seneca years earlier. Family business Records show Chung and Muldoon still arranged overseas trips for Hunter Biden and his Rosemont partners while working in VP Biden’s office. They sent and received hundreds of emails with Hunter and Rosemont. Between July 2012 (when Chung came aboard) and April 2015, the latest data available, Rosemont Seneca shows up in a whopping 921 emails generated from the vice president’s office, according to a recent partial release of Vice President Biden’s records by the National Archives concerning “Hunter Biden, James Biden and their foreign business dealings.” The records reveal that, among other things, Chung and Muldoon fielded requests from Hunter for signed photos of Joe Biden, letters from the vice president for his associates and tickets to White House events, including several state dinners and luncheons with foreign leaders. In September 2015, for example, Chung emailed Hunter to invite him to a lunch with Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted by Biden. In August 2016, according to Secret Service visitor logs, Muldoon escorted into the West Wing James Bulger — nephew of the notorious Irish mobster Whitey Bulger — after Bulger and Hunter formed BHR Partners, an investment fund controlled by the state-owned Bank of China. A month after Chung oversaw the removal of the secret vice presidential papers in 2017, Hunter Biden attempted to poach her to work for him directly. “Come work with me,” he wrote, “so that I can make everybody money.” At the time, Hunter was courting Chinese businessmen who ended up paying him and other Biden family members $6 million for unspecified services. Though Chung said she was interested in Hunter’s offer, she ultimately stayed on as Joe Biden’s assistant at his new digs at the Penn Biden Center in DC, where Hunter had VIP access. It was there that Biden’s classified docs were first “discovered” by his lawyers, who were concerned about his own liability after the Justice Department raided former President Donald Trump’s home in Florida and seized boxes of classified papers. Cozy relationship Chung told Hur she never noticed any classified papers among the records she packed and unpacked, before filing them in unlocked cabinets and closets in Biden’s unlocked office, according to Hur. Just weeks before she and Muldoon boxed up Biden’s records, however, they received a Jan. 3, 2017, email from the National Security Council warning them not to pack anything classified and that “only unclassified personal records” could be removed from the White House at the end of the administration, noted Hur, who ultimately punted on indicting either of them, even for gross negligence. A lawyer for Chung — who now serves as a top aide to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin — did not respond to requests for comment. Attempts to reach Muldoon were unsuccessful. The issue of Hunter Biden’s cozy relationship with these aides could break into the open during Hur’s March 12 testimony on the Hill. Sources say lawmakers will press him on whether he investigated Hunter or his uncle Jim to see if either of them gained access to the stolen White House docs. Last week, the House Oversight Committee, as part of its joint impeachment inquiry, subpoenaed the attorney general for Hur’s investigative files, including recovered classified documents about Ukraine and China. In a statement, the panel said it is “concerned that President Biden may have retained sensitive documents related to specific countries involving his family’s foreign business dealings.”

SCOTUS says Individual States can't take the former President off the ballot by claiming insurrection. https://www.mediaite.com/trump/breaking-supreme-court-unanimously-overturns-colorado-ruling-throwing-trump-off-ballot/

It took a "study" to figure this one out? https://studyfinds.org/female-psychopaths-are-surprisingly-common/ Study: Female psychopaths are surprisingly common 44 MINS AGOADD A COMMENT by John Anderer CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom — While the word psychopath usually conjures up images of knife-wielding attackers and masked assailants for most people, not all psychopaths are serial killers. The vast majority simply blend in with the rest of society, all the while masking their cold and calculating true nature. Now, new research set for presentation at Cambridge may just disprove yet another psychopath falsity. Most depictions and popular examples of psychopaths in the media are male, but the study argues female psychopaths are up to five times more common than currently believed. Dr. Clive Boddy, an expert in corporate psychopathy from Anglia Ruskin University, is set to present his findings at the Cambridge Festival. While current estimates tell us male psychopaths outnumber females by roughly six to one, Dr. Boddy believes prior studies have failed to properly identify female psychopaths. This is in large part due to solely basing profiles around criminal and male psychopaths. Dr. Boddy posits the characteristics of female psychopaths are quite different from males. He also notes gender bias likely plays a role in the under-reporting, as society tends to ignore perceived male traits when they’re displayed by women. According to his latest research, the real ratio of male-female psychopathy may be roughly 1.2:1, or up to five times higher than previously estimated. He reached this conclusion by using measures of primary psychopathy, or excluding psychopathy’s antisocial behavioral characteristics and instead concentrating on its core elements. Referencing research pertaining to corporate psychopaths and how they operate in high-achieving roles in workplaces, Dr. Boddy explains female psychopaths tend to be more manipulative than males, use different techniques to create good impressions, and use deceit and sexually seductive behavior to gain social and financial advantages more often than male psychopaths. “People generally attribute psychopathic characteristics to males rather than to females. So even when females display some of the key traits associated with psychopathy – such as being insincere, deceitful, antagonistic, unempathetic and lacking in emotional depth – because these are seen as male characteristics they may not be labeled as such, even when they should be,” Boddy says in a media release. “Also, female psychopaths tend to use words, rather than violence, to achieve their aims, differing from how male psychopaths tend to operate. If female psychopathy expresses differently, then measures designed to capture and identify male, criminal, psychopaths may be inadequate at identifying female non-criminal, psychopaths,” he continues. “Female psychopaths, while not as severely psychopathic or as psychopathic as often as males are, have nevertheless been underestimated in their incidence levels and are therefore more of a potential threat to business and society than anyone previously suspected.” “This has implications for the criminal justice system because current risk management decisions involving partners and children may be faulty. It also has implications for organizational leadership selection decisions because female leaders cannot automatically be assumed to be more honest, caring and concerned with issues such as corporate social responsibility.”

Term Limits. Get someone who is actually interested in fixing things instead of lining their own pockets.....

Don't forget - there is no such thing as reverse - racism.......

Very interesting case - in order for the couples whose embryos were (accidentally) destroyed to get any serious monetary recompense, the court would have to determine embryos were actually human lives. This has nothing to do with the overturning of Roe V Wade, but the WH spokesperson had to draw a connection there anyway since this was Alabama...... White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the Alabama decision reflected the consequences of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and blamed Republican elected officials from blocking access to reproductive and emergency care to women. https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/20/us/alabama-embryo-law-ruling-supreme-court/index.html In unprecedented decision, Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled frozen embryos are children. It could have chilling effects on IVF, critics say

8th amendment anyone?

Who were the victims of this "crime"? Banks loaned money for a negotiated interest rate, Trump, Inc. paid them back and the banks profited. Why the $350 million fine for a $0, victimless "crime" that will eventually be overturned? What is SF missing here except that the "ruling class" really doesn't want him as President again? https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4473988-eric-trump-slams-new-york-fraud-ruling/ Eric Trump slammed the nearly $355 million fine levied on his father, former President Trump, by New York Judge Arthur Engoron Friday in the civil fraud trial, calling it “horribly sad.” “My father built a skyline of New York City. And this is the thanks he gets for doing absolutely nothing wrong, not a dollar of financial loss? The exact opposite, hundreds of millions of dollars in financial gain,” the younger Trump said Friday evening on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle.” “Every single witness testified we have nothing to do with this. They went in, witness after witness, this is not what they did in the company. It didn’t matter to this guy. You know, we were trophies on a wall for this guy,” he added. “This is the state of New York.” Eric Trump’s rebuke of the Empire State comes hours after the former president was ordered to pay more than $355 million for conspiring to inflate and deflate his net worth to receive tax and insurance benefits. Engoron had already found Trump, and his top executives — including Eric Trump and his oldest son Donald Trump Jr., who serve as executive vice presidents of the Trump Organization — liable for fraud before the months-long trial began. The verdict is less than the $370 million that Attorney General Letitia James (D) requested. However, once interest is applied, the office said the fine could reach about $450 million. Both of Trump’s adult sons were ordered to pay more than $4 million each and barred from serving in top business roles in the state for up to two years. The former president was banned for three years. Eric Trump railed against the state’s leadership, echoing his father’s claim that the lawsuit was political from the start. “I caution anybody. I caution anybody even thinking about moving to New York to just be careful. This is not the state that my father grew up in. This is not the state that we grew up in,” he told guest host Jeanine Pirro. “This is the demise of a politically weaponized system. And it’s horribly sad.” “New York is a hopeless place at this point. It’s so sad. This judge ruled against my father before we even went to trial. He ruled against our entire family. It was a setup from the very beginning,” he added. “This was never supposed to be in that court. It was supposed to be in the commercial division. They would never allow it to get there.” The younger Trump also vowed to appeal the decision, calling it “egregious.” “I promise you we’re going to get it overturned,” he said.

Maybe since some of the shooters/suspects involved in this tragic event (that MSM coverage is now being focused on the victims, not the perps) were minors, the focus can perhaps now be on the topic of how minors (who are not allowed to legally purchase the weapons apparently used here) got those weapons and who the original purchaser was. Only when the prosecution of those responsible for the distribution of weapons to minors are brought to trial and prosecuted can this lunacy begin to recede. Enforce the law(s) already in existence! Kids aren't allowed to purchase guns - How did they get em? The problem isn't the guns, it's the criminal misuse of them. FWIW - SF felt good seeing the crowd spring into action and catching that perp, and the one guy who actually said "It felt good" when he threw a punch or 2 at that dude laying on the ground. There is no easy resolution to the gun debate. It’s estimated that there are about 398 million guns in the United States, and about 397.999 million of them are kept peaceably and responsibly for home protection or sport. Maybe gun haters need to start talking to those gun owners as allies rather than enemies. https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/02/16/chiefs-parade-gun-control-debate/ Once again, the belligerent minority ruled. A handful of querulous malefactors drew smoke from their pockets on a Kansas City sidewalk, and now it threatens to end victory parades in all 50 states. Remind me of exactly when anyone got to vote on that. Police believe the shooting that killed Lisa Lopez-Galvan and injured 22 others at the Chiefs victory parade Wednesday stemmed from “a personal dispute.” The unceasing personal grievances of the belligerent few have just about chained us to our houses, made it impossible to go to a park, a train station, a school event, without our shoulders tensely riding up around our ears from the fear of violence. Public officials have responded to the Kansas City parade shooting by wondering whether such public gatherings should be shut down. That’s exactly the wrong answer. It gives the belligerent minority a near-total tyranny over the rest of us. The occasion should have been exultant, bonding and at worst a little tipsy. But the actions of three or four dissolved a parade enjoyed by 1 million into a stampeding horror. How do we react to that going forward? Maybe there was a clue in that crowd. Didn’t you feel a twinge of something deeply gratifying — and inspiring — in the way ordinary crowd members chased down a suspected gunman and collectively smothered him? They undertook momentary personal risk and sacrifice and then found greater safety in numbers, as helper after helper piled on until the suspect disappeared under their collective weight. That’s real authority, and it didn’t come from a law or a cop. The problem with the incessant argument over guns is that it invariably dissolves into fractures as it becomes ever more personal, the endless incessant pitting of personal rights against personal rights. The fractures grow larger; the majority gets weaker; and the belligerents get stronger and more terrifying. There is no easy resolution to the gun debate. It’s estimated that there are about 398 million guns in the United States, and about 397.999 million of them are kept peaceably and responsibly for home protection or sport. Maybe gun haters need to start talking to those gun owners as allies rather than enemies. We can’t dictate what any city’s — or for that matter, any family’s — tolerance for risk should be. That just leads to an endless cycle of dispute. Northeasterners will talk past rurals, and everyone will feel challenged personally in one way or another. This was already starting Thursday. Sen. Bill Eigel, a Republican candidate for Missouri governor, posted a warning on social media about the “liberal gun grabbers” coming for your weapons. “NOT IN MISSOURI,” he wrote. No one captured this fracture better, or was a more interesting commentator on it, than the late author and columnist for Harper’s Dan Baum. Both a gun enthusiast and an advocate for gun control, Baum wrote, “Shooters see their guns as emblems of a whole spectrum of virtuous lifestyle choices — rural over urban, self-reliance over dependence on the collective, vigorous outdoorsiness over pallid intellectualism, patriotism over internationalism, action over inaction — and they hear attacks on guns as attacks on them, personally.” Personally. So perhaps the smarter conversation about how to manage public risk in this country is the one in which people put aside their personal feelings and rights for a moment, to make a couple of concessions in favor of the majority public interest. Perhaps gun haters could concede that too many anti-gun screeds push gun owners into a “defensive crouch,” to quote Baum, and that too many gun control proposals betray ignorance about specifics of actual guns. But in that conversation, perhaps gun owners could concede their gun is not a bulwark against a tyrannical government and in fact that gun recklessness is becoming a source of tyranny by the minority. Surely, both reasonably can agree that guns should be kept locked up and gun owners liable for failing to secure them, seeing as how so many gun crimes are committed with stolen ones. Reach a consensus on that, and perhaps gun owners can become allies in the matter of gun control, the way those strangers allied in the moment in Kansas City. The alternative is … what? No police force, no law, can truly enforce public safety. It has to be a mutual compact, a moral blockade. That might sound like a small miracle, but it happens every day across the country in our sports stadiums. People congregate in rivalrous hundreds of thousands every week, far outnumbering the law enforcement inside the stadiums and arenas, and typically do no worse than jeer at each other, without anarchy or arson. Underneath it all is a silent agreement. Football stadiums are miniature social compacts. No matter how aggrieved or unjustly wrong he or she may feel, everyone cooperates and abides (mostly) peaceably with each other. That’s what those ordinary runners from out of the Kansas City crowd threw down on that suspected shooter: their own compact. And in doing so, they gave the feeling that, just maybe, there can be more parades.

Sorry - Couldn't help myself........Stop it - your laughing too!

So who would you rather have - The "well meaning" elderly man with a poor memory, or someone competent enough to stand trial? (even if the trial is so obviously frivolous)

SF just can't let this one go.......The headline was just too enticing......A guy/girl is ticked off because his/her girl/boy friend won't giver her nuts back to her/him..... “I can put a dollar amount on, say, if you were missing work at $16 an hour,” he said. “But as to testicles, I can’t really put a number on it.” She told him her surgery at Henry Ford Hospital in March 2022 cost $20,000, but noted that the state covered the charge because she’s disabled, according to the outlet. “The state paid for that, you didn’t. You’re not going to be unjustly enriched,” the judge told her. https://nypost.com/2024/02/09/news/transgender-woman-loses-bid-to-sue-ex-over-surgically-removed-nuts/ Transgender woman loses bid to sue ex for throwing out her surgically removed testicles: ‘We’re talking about my nuts’ A transgender Michigan woman who sued her ex-boyfriend for discarding her surgically removed testicles had her case tossed out by a judge — who also rejected the ex’s counterclaim for being “humiliated” by the case. Brianna Kingsley, 40, last year filed a small claims petition alleging her ex, William Wojciechowski, 37, “retains possession of my surgically extracted testicles, preserved in (a) Mason jar, kept in (the) fridge next to the eggs.” The Pontiac resident demanded the immediate return of her “human remains specimen” in her handwritten affidavit, in addition to $6,500 in damages. “We’re talking about my nuts. … I wanted them in my fridge — not his,” Kingsley told a court hearing. “The damages were the loss of these nuts.” Wojciechowski, meanwhile, said he’d already tossed out the testicles — and filed a counterclaim for the same amount, claiming he’d been “humiliated” by coverage of the nutty case by “worldwide news outlets,” the Detroit News reported. The judge noted how hard it was to calculate potential damages in the bizarre case. “I can put a dollar amount on, say, if you were missing work at $16 an hour,” he said. “But as to testicles, I can’t really put a number on it.” The judge said Kingsley had the chance to retrieve her testicles when an Oakland County sheriff’s deputy accompanied her to her former beau’s home in January 2023. At the time, Kingsley had just gotten out of jail, where she spent three days and was fined $100 for violating a personal protection order he had filed against her, the Detroit News reported. “We allow a one-time visit with a sheriff’s officer in situations like that for people to go back to get their belongings,” Bowie said. “Ms. Kingsley failed to retrieve the testicles from the refrigerator at that time. … If they were so important to her, she had the opportunity to grab them, and she didn’t,” he said during the hearing. Wojciechowski told the judge he tossed out the testicles in July. “They were rotting in my fridge, and it was disgusting — I’ve got food in there I wanted to eat,” he said. “She didn’t keep them in a biohazard container like she was supposed to.” She told him her surgery at Henry Ford Hospital in March 2022 cost $20,000, but noted that the state covered the charge because she’s disabled, according to the outlet. “The state paid for that, you didn’t. You’re not going to be unjustly enriched,” the judge told her.

“At trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” the report says. Holy Shnikies - This guy is our President........ https://nypost.com/2024/02/08/news/special-counsel-robert-hur-issues-report-on-bidens-mishandling-of-classified-documents/ WASHINGTON — President Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials,” special counsel Robert Hur found in a bombshell report released Thursday — though Hur recommended against criminal charges, in part because a jury might find Biden to be an “elderly man with a poor memory.” Biden, 81, flouted legal restrictions on sensitive documents throughout his 36 years in the Senate and eight years as vice president — stashing them in cardboard boxes in his garage in Wilmington, Del., and other locations, the 388-page report said, with photos showing Biden’s storage practices. Investigators even uncovered a recording of Biden confiding in his ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer in April 2017 — after leaving office as vice president — that he still had official records because “I didn’t want to turn them in” — similar to former President Donald Trump, who faces 40 criminal charges and up to 450 years in prison for resisting handing over documents after leaving the White House in 2021. Zwonitzer also told Hur’s investigators that he deleted some audio files of Biden after the special counsel investigation began — and was aware of the probe when he did so. “I’m not going to say how much of the percentage it was of my motivation,” the writer said, according to the report. Material mishandled by Biden implicated the nation’s most guarded secrets, the report said, with authorities finding “information in [recovered] notebooks [that] remains classified up to the Top Secret level and includes Sensitive Compartmented Information, including from compartments used to protect information concerning human intelligence sources.” But perhaps most damangingly for the president, Hur — a former Maryland US attorney, — suggested that jurors would not hold Biden liable for his actions on account of his perceived mental decline, even though he is seeking a second four-year term in November. “At trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” the report says. When Biden sat for questions with Hur’s investigators over two days in October, he presented himself as confused on many points — though the White House has regularly maintained he is mentally fit for office despite similar public errors. Biden “did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘if it was 2013 – when did I stop being Vice President?’), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘in 2009, am I still Vice President?’),” the report says. “He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died [May 2015]. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him. Among other things, he mistakenly said he ‘had a real difference’ of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact, Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Biden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving [2009] memo to President Obama.” Although Biden’s lapse of memory may be useful for avoiding criminal liability, it is likely to be a serious political problem, as national polls already show large majorities of voters believe he is too old, infirm, or both to hold office.”If you’re too senile to stand trial, then you’re too senile to be president,” said Alex Pfeiffer, spokesman for the pro-Trump Make America Great Again PAC. Trump himself fumed about what he called a double standard. “THIS HAS NOW PROVEN TO BE A TWO-TIERED SYSTEM OF JUSTICE AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL SELECTIVE PROSECUTION!” the 77-year-old wrote on Truth Social. “The Biden Documents Case is 100 times different and more severe than mine. I did nothing wrong, and I cooperated far more. What Biden did is outrageously criminal – He had 50 years of documents, 50 times more than I had, and ‘WILLFULLY RETAINED’ them. I was covered by the Presidential Records Act, Secret Service was always around, and GSA delivered the documents. Deranged Jack Smith should drop this Case immediately. ELECTION INTERFERENCE.” Biden said in his own paper statement: “This was an exhaustive investigation going back more than 40 years, even into the 1970s when I was a young Senator. I cooperated completely, threw up no roadblocks, and sought no delays” “Over my career in public service, I have always worked to protect America’s security,” the president added. “I take these issues seriously and no one has ever questioned that.” Hur, whose report was released by Congress after the White House declined to assert privilege of any of its contents, found that classified records hoarded by Biden included documents concerning military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, as well as notebooks with handwritten entries about national security and foreign policy issues “implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods.” According to the special counsel, Biden kept the documents to inform the writing of two memoirs published in 2007 and 2017, as well as “to document his legacy, and to cite as evidence that he was a man of presidential timber.” “In a recorded conversation with his ghostwriter in February 2017, about a month after he left office, Mr. Biden said … that he had ‘just found all the classified stuff downstairs,'” the report noted. Hur’s investigation into the 81-year-old president was notably quiet, with few leaks to the media — unlike the headline-grabbing probe of former President Donald Trump on similar grounds. When taking note of evidence that “Biden knew he could not keep classified handwritten notes at home after leaving office,” Hur highlighted the president’s reaction to the classified document ordeal engulfing his predecessor. 13 Hur reported that Biden presented himself during the interview as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Sensitive records from Biden’s vice presidency and Senate tenure were stored without proper safeguards at his residence in Wilmington and at his pre-presidency office in DC provided by the University of Pennsylvania. Hur’s investigation into the president was notably quiet, with few leaks to the media — unlike the headline-grabbing probe of Trump on similar grounds. When taking note of evidence that “Biden knew he could not keep classified handwritten notes at home after leaving office,” Hur highlighted the president’s reaction to the classified document ordeal engulfing his predecessor. “Asked about reports that former President Trump had kept classified documents at his own home, Mr. Biden wondered how ‘anyone could be that irresponsible,’” the report archly noted. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Hur to investigate Biden’s handling of records dating to his vice presidency and Senate years on Jan. 12 of last year — after sequential admissions of new discoveries by the White House. Biden was interviewed by investigators in October — roughly a year after he chided Trump as “irresponsible” for retaining classified documents. Biden’s lawyers said they initially found classified documents on Nov. 2 while clearing out his former office at the Penn Biden Center near Capitol Hill. The discovery, six days before the midterm elections, was kept quiet until CBS News broke the story Jan. 9. Additional Biden classified documents were found on Dec. 20 in his Wilmington garage, followed by a series of additional discoveries at the home, including by the FBI, which also searched Biden’s Rehoboth Beach, Del., vacation home and left with written notes. Biden sought to downplay the controversy, telling PBS last February, “To the best of my knowledge, the kind of things they picked up are things that — from 1974, stray papers.” “There is no there there,” Biden told reporters last January. Biden first publicly acknowledged the discovery of classified documents at the Penn Biden Center at a Jan. 10 press conference in Mexico City. In his initial remarks, Biden didn’t say that a second cache of classified documents had been found in his Wilmington garage. Biden admitted on Jan. 12 that records were found next to his classic Corvette in Wilmington, but denied he was reckless with the nation’s secrets. “My Corvette is in a locked garage, OK? So it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street,” Biden said. The White House said at the time that searches for records were complete, but additional documents were found by Biden’s lawyers. An FBI search found six more items with classification markings. Trump, 77, is seeking a rematch against Biden in the November election and has alleged a double standard. The 45th president faces 40 criminal charges and a maximum penalty of 450 years in prison for allegedly mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021. The FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm beach, Fla., to retrieve documents in August 2022 — just months before the revelation that Biden had stashed classified documents at various locations, including in his home garage, which lacked Secret Service protection for a period of time. The ex-president allegedly hindered attempts by the National Archives to retrieve the documents, which he argued he was entitled to keep under the Presidential Records Act.

Wow - the former UN Ambassador lost the Nevada Primary to a (we assume) guy who wasn't even on the ballot..... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13059299/Trump-set-sweep-Nevada-caucuses-Nikki-Haleys-embarrassing-loss-no-one-senior-advisor-Kash-Patel-reveals-got-trounced-ex-president-wasnt-ballot.html Donald Trump is preparing for a second victory in Nevada as he heads to Las Vegas for the caucuses Thursday following his symbolic win on Tuesday. Republican voters in the Battle Born State selected 'none of these candidates' at a 32.9 percent higher rate than opting to vote for Nikki Haley in Nevada's primary election. Even Donald Trump's team was shocked by the amount of Nevada voters willing to cast their ballot for no one instead of former U.N. Amb. Haley, who is the final primary competitor for the former president. Kash Patel, a senior advisor to Trump, told DailyMail.com during an interview in Las Vegas on Wednesday that Haley 'overshot' by thinking she could avoid campaigning at all in Nevada and still win the primary on Tuesday. 'Maybe you wouldn't have got trounced by no one if you showed up and put in the work,' Patel said of Haley's campaign. 'This is emblematic of the whole entire thing. Like, where do you go with that? You, the billion-dollar candidate, lost to no one.' 'We convinced 45,000 people to circle 'none of the above' – that's insane,' he lauded. 'That's better than write-in candidate levels.' Donald Trump Senior Advisor Kash Patel led efforts to get 'none of these candidates' on Nevada's primary ballot on Tuesday. He told DailyMail.com on Wednesday that not even he expected that option to beat Nikki Haley by a 32.9% margin Without Trump on the ballot, Haley still managed to walk away in second place with 30.5 percent of the vote to the 63.3 percent that the option 'none of these candidates' received. The State of Nevada decided to run a primary election this year after decades of holding caucuses, leading to a slew of confusion and dueling primary and caucus contests. Instead of risking losing supporters to this year's kerfuffle, Patel and other Nevada Republicans launched an effort to educate voters on how they could participate in both the primary election on Tuesday, February 6 and caucuses on Thursday, February 8. The feat, Patel conceded, was not easy – with many Nevada voters remaining confused over this process up until election day. One Republican voter who spoke with DailyMail.com outside a polling place in Clark County on Tuesday was upset to find that Trump's name was not on the ballot when he showed up to cast his ballot. 'I don't know why they don't have Trump's name on the ballot, it's r****ded,' Robert Simonelli, 63, said before marching back into the library where he decided to vote for 'none of these candidates.' Haley was only on the ballot for the primary on Tuesday, while Trump is participating in the caucus on Thursday. The caucuses, the Nevada GOP determined, is the only way to earn delegates for the nomination this year.

Total EV's are a bust for carmakers - Ford is losing $47,000 per unit which is incredibly damaging to a manufacturer. SF, usually when renting vehicles while travelling, will many times opt for a hybrid, and really like the gas mileage they achieve, especially on the normal 2 - 3 hour drive from an airport to a customer. I have not tried an EV, and quite frankly would be terrified of the question of where to charge one when on the road in an unfamiliar rural area. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/cars/article-13056613/Ford-EV-Toyota-record-profits.html Ford has said it will slash spending on EVs because it can't sell enough to offset costs - as it revealed it lost $47,000 on each electric car it sold last quarter. CEO Jim Farley said Tuesday the company would instead ramp up investment in hybrid cars - copying a business strategy long favored by the drivetrain's godfather, Toyota. Starting with the Prius more than 25 years ago, Toyota has been a staunch proponent of hybrid cars and highly cautious of EVs. That caution may have been wise. Just this week the world's largest automaker forecast it will have its most profitable year on record thanks to hybrid sales - with earnings of $30.3 billion in the fiscal year ending March. Ford's 'Model e' division on the other hand - which oversees production of the fully electric Mach-E and F-150 Lightning - is deep in the red. In 2024, it lost an enormous $4.7 billion, Ford revealed in its fourth-quarter earnings report. This year, it expects total losses to increase to between $5 billion and $5.5 billion. In the last quarter of 2023, it sold just 34,000 cars but incurred losses of $1.6 billion, meaning it lost on average $47,000 for each electric car it sold. That is more than it lost per EV sale in both the second and third quarters of last year and means the company's electric division is moving in the opposite direction of profitability. While it's expected for a new EV maker to incur losses in the early stages of manufacturing, for the business to be viable in the long term those losses will eventually need to be turned into gains. Ford previously hoped it could bring its electric car division to earn profits of 8 percent by 2026, but Farley was frank in dashing those targets on Tuesday. 'I think that's clear. I don't think anybody believes that by 2026 we can bridge from here to 8 percent,' he told investors. As such, Farley said the company would invest more heavily in hybrids, since their margins are 'much higher than EV margins' and demand is high. 'Hybrids will play an increasingly important role in our industry's transition and will be here for the long run,' he said. When Toyota on Tuesday announced its huge profits, it emphasized how high demand for hybrids and limited production meant they were flying off dealer lots. 'As a realistic solution, hybrids are still favored by our customers,' said Toyota executive vice president Yoichi Miyazaki. In January, Toyota's former CEO and current chairman Akio Toyoda told reporters the Japanese company would not follow the West's example of focusing excessively on battery electric vehicles. Over the last year, Ford's share price has fallen by about 10 percent, while Toyota's is up by around 51 percent. While Ford is not abandoning its EV plans altogether, CFO John Lawley did say its new 'second generation' electric cars would not arrive until consumer demand was high enough. 'Our gen two vehicles... won't launch unless we can get to a profit,' said Lawley. In fact, Ford's huge third-quarter losses came even though year-on-year sales were up by around 4,000 units. Ford will now need to sell as many electric vehicles as possible to minimize its losses going forward. Selling EVs also allows the company to sell more internal combustion engine models without being penalized by federal regulators. 'We can sell up to a dozen [internal combustion engine] F-150s or other [internal combustion engine] profitable vehicles for every Lightning we sell,' said Lawler, referring to the fully electric version of its best-selling pickup truck. In fact, while the most recent quarter was bad news for Model e, Ford's other two divisions, 'Ford Pro' and 'Ford Blue' which sell gas-burning cars fared much better and enjoyed profits. They made $7.2 billion and $7.5 billion respectively. Ford Pro, which oversees the commercial side of the business, including Super Duty trucks, was described by Farley as a 'profit juggernaut' during the call.

SF - Frying up real pork bacon (murder meat) on the Blackstone.....Mrs. SF likes to have plenty murder meat in the freezer for quick fixins......

Dude robs a bank on a wheelchair......SMH Not sure whether to be feel sorry or think this is kinda funny.....He was on the run (roll) for 6 minutes..... https://www.953mnc.com/2024/02/07/elkhart-police-take-just-minutes-to-arrest-robbery-suspect/ Elkhart Police take just minutes to arrest robbery suspect elkhartpolice.org Elkhart Police officers only took minutes to arrest a suspect in a bank robbery Tuesday morning. At approximately 9:06 a.m. the Elkhart City 911 Communications Center received notification of a robbery in progress at the 1st Source Bank on Franklin St. The 911 caller reported that an unknown male suspect entered the bank and presented a note demanding money. The employee complied and the suspect left the building. Just six minutes later, at approximately 9:12 a.m., officers arrived near the bank and detained an adult male matching the suspect’s description. He was arrested and officers found the money allegedly taken during the robbery. No weapon was displayed or recovered during the incident, and the suspect was booked into the Elkhart County Jail on a preliminary charge of Robbery.