swordfish

Happy Valentine's Day!!

Always knew of him and a few of his songs, but it wasn't until the tributes last evening that I became aware of the multitude of songs he wrote and the amount of artists who became famous with his songs. Truly amazing.

At least LeBron's kids know who the GOAT is......

A $200,000,000 Stealth Fighter (in case the balloon was armed I'm sure) fired a nearly $400,000 missile at a balloon. (After it left US land and would have completed any surveillance it was conducting) JMHO

The wagons are circling to try and protect the Bidens as the President becomes more and more useless and even a true liability to the Democrats......Any guess as to where the funding for this is coming from? https://nypost.com/2023/02/02/hunter-bidens-legal-threats-have-no-merit-raises-political-questions/ Hunter Biden appears to have finally achieved clarity. Months after The Post’s October 2020 reporting, Biden was warning reporters that his “alleged” laptop might be Russian disinformation — or it might be his. He seemed tortured by doubt in a 2021 CBS News interview: “For real, I don’t know. I don’t have any idea — I have no idea whether or not.” It now appears he does know “for real.” His lawyers sent letters Wednesday requesting investigations into figures associated with former President Donald Trump who have used information from the laptop. The first son’s sudden shift to the offense follows a meeting of a Legion of Doom of Democratic operatives reportedly planning attacks on potential witnesses against Hunter. At the same time, Biden agents are planning to create a large legal fund for the next stage. In a city where influence peddling is the leading industry, Hunter’s plight could easily become a cause célèbre. Indeed, there hasn’t been a greater sense of urgency or outpouring of humanity since the Kato Kaelin housing crisis. The letters to federal and state prosecutors seem to confirm the plan for a scorched-earth strategy. The Biden lawyers accuse people using the laptop contents of possibly violating federal and state laws “in accessing, copying, manipulating, and/or disseminating Mr. Biden’s personal computer data.” The Biden team is also threatening media that have covered the story, including Fox News, with defamation lawsuits. (For the record, I appear as a legal analyst on Fox News.) And it’s asking the IRS to consider removing the tax-exempt status of groups that used the material such as Marco Polo, a charitable organization run by Garrett Ziegler — in a letter copied to the agency’s criminal investigation unit chief. The letters raise serious constitutional and political concerns. Critics using publicly available material are allowed to reach their own conclusions about the implications of these files. The Biden team, for example, threatens a lawsuit against Fox News host Tucker Carlson while demanding a retraction of “false and defamatory statements.” It maintains Carlson falsely portrayed Hunter Biden as involved in a “money laundering scheme to finance President Biden’s lifestyle” by paying him $50,000 a month in rent. It claims the story was debunked. But Hunter Biden is a public figure who must shoulder a high standard for defamation of “actual malice,” requiring that a false statement be made “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” Courts are highly protective of the exercise of opinion, particularly on subjects of great political significance like influence peddling. The laptop’s legal status is also key. To all appearances, Hunter abandoned the laptop at John Paul Mac Isaac’s Wilmington, Del., computer repair shop. That’s different from the claims of Hunter’s sister, Ashley, who triggered a nationwide FBI investigation into the theft of her diary. While she left her diary at a third party’s home, she insists she did not abandon or forget it. Under standard terms of the agreement, an item left beyond a certain number of days at a business or rental housing becomes abandoned property. It can generally then be left on the curb, sold, or given away. What’s most striking about the Hunter Biden claim is the delay. For more than two years, Hunter has refused to admit the laptop is genuine despite email recipients confirming the content of the communications. The laptop also shows Hunter engaged in potential crimes from drug use to prostitution offenses. Yet he insisted it might all be those pesky Russians again. Now the laptop is his, and he is fighting mad. Indeed, he’s shocked that anyone would treat his property in this fashion — a property he left at a computer shop and failed to claim for years. In the effort to target Marco Polo, the Biden team insists it “has operated as little more than a thinly disguised political operation to attack the Biden administration and the Biden family.” That sounds more vindictive than virtuous. Indeed, if the Biden administration started yanking the tax-exempt status of Biden critics, it would trigger an outcry over weaponizing the IRS. (A similar controversy during the Obama-Biden administration involving IRS official Lois Lerner led to a financial settlement with targeted conservative groups.) Biden’s team seems at points as conflicted as its client. After denouncing the use of his personal property and files, it suggests they might not be his files at all. It claims that “downstream recipients of what has been purported to be Mr. Biden’s hard drive have reported anomalies in the data, suggesting manipulation of it.” You certainly do not want to be downstream in any Hunter Biden scandal, but this raises questions as to whether these files are authentic while claiming ownership of them. Notably, Biden has not brought a civil lawsuit for a privacy tort claim despite the bluster and bombast of these letters. The reason is simple: He does not have a privacy case against the media or critics. Under the tort of “public disclosure of embarrassing private facts,” you can be sued for publishing even true statements that a reasonable person would find offensive. Showing Hunter’s selfie videos allegedly having sex with prostitutes would qualify as embarrassing to most people. But the tort has an exception for “newsworthy” stories or matters of great public interest. Biden may not be the energy or transportation expert his previous positions suggest, but he is most certainly newsworthy.

In light of the recent police beating of Tyre Nichols, SF is left wondering - WTF were the LEO's thinking? Benefit of the doubt - a "perp" (can't say he was a "perp" since there is no evidence to support that) runs after a traffic stop, and is caught, but then you subdue the guy (as humanely as you can) and begin the arrest proceedings. These guys just beat the crap out of him for no reason. (none that SF can see) 5 black LEO's - and SF was taught by the GID actors a loooooong time ago that a black person can't be racist. I'm not buying that one anymore, cause I can't see any other reason these officers did what they did. They were being no different in SF's eyes than any other run of the mill racist pig white guys to a guy that (maybe) deserved nothing more than a ticket or arrest for fleeing on officer. Prove me wrong.

Oh wait! - Yeah......Ivermectin (the old, non-patented, and inexpensive drug) does work after all........Well in Africa, but nowhere else apparently. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7968425/ https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.26.21254377v1 Conclusions The morbidity and mortality in the onchocerciasis endemic countries are lesser than those in the non-endemic ones. The community-directed onchocerciasis treatment with ivermectin is the most reasonable explanation for the decrease in morbidity and fatality rate in Africa. In areas where ivermectin is distributed to and used by the entire population, it leads to a significant reduction in mortality.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11646417/Joe-Biden-named-2017-email-discussing-multi-million-dollar-gas-deal-China.html Joe Biden was named in an email found on Hunter Biden's laptop discussing a 25 million-ton gas deal with China, DailyMail.com can reveal exclusively. In October 2017, Hunter and his uncle –Joe's brother Jim Biden – were brokering a multi-million dollar deal to supply gas from Louisiana to the country on behalf of their business partners, Chinese energy giant CEFC. At the time Joe Biden had finished his term as vice president and had yet to announce any plans to run for president in 2020. The texts AND the voicemails, now this - A far cry from what the former VP originally said about knowing or ever talking about his son's business dealings..........

One of the greats.....

Pretty sure the park will be scuttled. The dirt is certainly worth more without a tired unprofitable amusement park on it......

Nothing to see here...... https://www.foxnews.com/politics/matt-gaetz-classified-docs-scandal-feels-like-democrats-taking-out-joe-biden

https://nypost.com/2023/01/18/chief-covid-crazy-finally-admits-were-overcounting-cases-but-its-years-too-late/ Had she done less damage to our nation’s most vulnerable, it might be possible to applaud public health “expert” Dr. Leana Wen for her recent admission in The Washington Post and on CNN that the United States has been systematically overcounting the number of deaths from COVID by including deaths with COVID. The true toll of deaths and hospitalization, she notes, may be as little as 30% of the reported numbers. Horrifying? Yes. But more reason to fight back, tooth and nail, against any future effort to put kids and adults back in masks — as the feds are trying to do for air travel and as two of New Jersey’s largest school districts have done — or to lock down commerce and social life. Those policies, which had no significant measurable effect on bad outcomes, were always based on junk science. And Dr. Wen just admitted it for the world to hear. But her daring to speak this truth (obvious to any numerate person and long pointed out by The Post) comes years too late. Dr. Wen backed school closures and the CDC’s Orwellian “guidance” on indoor masking. She once infamously implied the right of unvaccinated people to go out in public should be restricted. She — along with the WaPo and CNN — was part of the establishment that fought to suppress “misinformation,” i.e. correct but controversial statements about COVID, and brand all dissenters as conspiracy theorists. What prompted Dr. Wen’s “Road to Damascus” moment? Was it a desire to help out Joe Biden by making it politically acceptable for left-leaning Dems to (gasp!) start thinking about going back to normal? Or maybe WaPo and CNN audiences were so dialed in on COVID propaganda that this really does come as news to them? We may never know. But this much is obvious. Their demure admission now, when the damage is done, that oopsie, we got the central statistic used to justify the destruction of life in America completely wrong! is as reprehensible as it is insufficient. Anyone else not surprised?

My comeback line to this line of thinking from someone thinking I owe them something - "I never owned slaves, and you for d@mn sure never picked Cotton for me or my parents".

Lest we forget - None of this "classified document discovery" would be occurring right now had Biden kept the "Executive Privilege" in place that was afforded to every former POTUS prior to Trump. https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-joe-biden-us-supreme-court-congress-capitol-siege-13803c23a094992233df3b6880d2808b Risky move: Biden undercuts WH executive privilege shield Biden’s decision not to block the information sought by Congress challenges a tested norm — one in which presidents enjoy the secrecy of records of their own terms in office, both mundane and highly sensitive, for a period of at least five years, and often far longer. That means Biden and future presidents, as well as Trump. While not spelled out in the Constitution, executive privilege has developed to protect a president’s ability to obtain candid counsel from his advisers without fear of immediate public disclosure and to protect his confidential communications relating to official responsibilities. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/aug/23/newly-revealed-memos-undercut-white-house-claims-b/ A newly revealed letter shows that President Biden authorized the National Archives and Records Administration to reject any executive privilege claims that former President Donald Trump might use to stop the Justice Department from accessing classified documents stored at his Mar-a-Lago estate. A letter posted late Monday on the website of conservative journalist John Solomon — one of the few people authorized by Mr. Trump to review National Archives records — revealed that Mr. Biden ordered the National Archives to share all materials it had requested from Mr. Trump to be shared with the Justice Department and the FBI. SF is pretty sure former POTUS(s) Obama and Bush are meticulously combing their files right now to avoid any potential conflict because of this dust-up (maybe).

A basic difference between the Trump classified documents and the Biden classified documents - Trump was a President before the documents were in his possession. He had the ultimate power of declassifying anything he chose to. Biden was a former VP, he did not have the same authority, in fact he had no authority over classified documents. BUT - at least they weren't "in the streets".....

Could the latest (2) "classified documents" scandal(s) be the catalyst for this theory? https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/ag-garland-expected-address-biden-classified-documents-matter/story?id=96391629 He sure takes his classified documents seriously........Biden has defended storing the documents at a storage space in his home garage, saying on Thursday that "it's not like they're sitting in the street." So Trump had classified papers locked in a secured room that the FBI approved once then felt they had to come back and raid Mar a largo. Biden had classified papers in his locked garage next to his Corvette.

https://nypost.com/2023/01/11/penn-biden-center-is-dark-money-nightmare-patronage-mill/ The Ivy League think tank where lawyers found classified materials linked to the Obama White House is a patronage mill for the Biden administration, raising suspicions among critics that its establishment attracted tens of millions in donations from anonymous Chinese donors. The Department of Justice is probing how “a small number” of classified documents from President Biden’s years as vice president ended up at the Washington, DC, think tank that bears his name, the White House confirmed Monday. A second batch of papers was found at an additional location, it was reported Wednesday. The University of Pennsylvania received more than $30 million from Chinese donors shortly after the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, which functioned as an office for Joe Biden before he was elected president, was announced in 2017, according to public records. “The Penn Biden Center is a dark-money, revolving-door nightmare where foreign competitors like China donated millions of dollars to the university so that they could have access to future high-ranking officials,” said Tom Anderson, director of the Government Integrity Project at the Virginia-based National Legal and Policy Center. The University of Pennsylvania raked in a total of $54.6 million from 2014 through June 2019 in donations from China, including $23.1 million in anonymous gifts starting in 2016, according to public records. Most of the anonymous donations came after the university officially announced in February 2017 that it would create the academic center named for Biden, whose term as vice president under Barack Obama had just ended. In addition to leading the think tank, Biden was named a professor at the school. The Ivy League institution received $15.8 million in anonymous Chinese gifts in 2017 and one $14.5 million donation in May 2018, three months after the center opened, records show. “The Penn Biden Center has never solicited or received any gifts from any Chinese or other foreign entity,” said a spokesman for the University of Pennsylvania. “In fact, the University has never solicited any gifts for the Center. Since its inception in 2017 there have been three unsolicited gifts (from two donors) which combined total $1,100. Both donors are Americans. One hundred percent of the budget for the Penn Biden Center comes from university funds.” The center does not list any of its fellows or administrators on its website, and does not have separate financial filings. It operates under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania with a mission of engaging “fellow citizens in shaping this world, while ensuring the gains of global engagement are widely shared,” according to its website. Meanwhile, former fellows and administrators of the Penn Biden Center now have key positions in the Biden administration. Michael Carpenter, the former managing director of the Penn Biden Center, was named the US ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, based in Vienna, in 2021. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also briefly served as director of the think tank before joining the Biden administration in January 2021. Before that, Blinken was a policy adviser for Biden’s 2020 campaign. Juan Sebastian Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the center from April 2018 to September 2020, is special assistant to the president and the national security director for the Western Hemisphere at the White House, according to his LinkedIn page. The sensitive material at the center was discovered by Biden’s personal lawyers on Nov. 2, 2022, while they “were packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space,” according to a statement from Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president. Sauber said Biden used the Washington, DC, office space from “mid-2017 until the start of the 2020 campaign” in April 2019. After Biden was elected president in 2020, the center said it would operate “completely independent of the Biden administration.” Yeah - I'm pretty sure the former Vice President surely wasn't keeping classified documents there. I mean he was the VP, not POTUS, so he really didn't have the clearance anyway, right? I meant the generous Chinese would have given millions of dollars to the university anyhow......Yeah, nothing to see here.....But - TRUMP - What's he doing?!!!!

It would create a new commission, made up primarily of lawmakers, charged with studying the state's current tax climate. In addition to looking for ways to eliminate the state's personal income tax, the commission would also examine the state's unfunded pension liabilities, debt obligations, property tax structure and overall financial position. It would not, Holdman said, impact local income taxes that vary by county. Should the bill pass, the commission would meet over the next two years with the goal of delivering findings and recommendations to the legislature by Dec. 1, 2024 — just in advance of the state's next two-year budget writing session. (Not just a unilateral effort to eliminate it, but a commission to test the validity of such an idea and whether a form of it could be implemented - why wouldn't a taxpayer want this?)