How can anyone justify the Dems policies of catch and release ?

Quote:Alphabet-owned YouTube has agreed to pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit that President Donald Trump brought against the company over the suspension of his account following the January 2021 U.S. Capitol breach, a court filing showed on Monday.
The deal makes Google the last of the three big tech companies to resolve lawsuits Trump brought in July 2021 accusing them of unlawfully silencing conservative viewpoints.
Trump had also sued Twitter, now known as X, and Facebook owner Meta, as well as Alphabet's Google, and their chief executives in July 2021.
Meta and X agreed earlier this year to pay to settle the lawsuits.
Under the YouTube settlement, $22 million will be paid on Trump's behalf to the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit that the filing says is dedicated to the construction of a $200 million ballroom that Trump is building at the White House.
Work on the 90,000-square-foot (8361.27 square meters) facility is expected to be completed "long before" Trump's four-year term ends in January 2029.
The remaining amount will go to other plaintiffs in the case, including the American Conservative Union, which sponsors the Conservative Political Action Conference, and U.S. author Naomi Wolf.

YouTube did not admit wrongdoing and will not make product or policy changes under the settlement.
Trump did not lose his YouTube account in 2021 but was suspended from uploading new videos; it was restored in 2023.
In January, Meta agreed to pay about $25 million, and X paid about $10 million in February to settle similar lawsuits by Trump.
Meta's settlement designated $22 million for a fund for Trump's upcoming presidential library in Miami.

Around 20 FBI agents who were pictured taking a knee outside their HQ during the Floyd demonstration in Washington have been fired according to reports , showing support for a dug addled career criminal is no longer acceptable it seems as they pay the price for their Woke idiocy.

Quote:An estimated 20 agents have been dismissed, according to The Associated Press, which reported that many of those terminated had already been reassigned to lower-profile duties in the years since. 
Reuters framed the number of fired agents as "more than a dozen."
The photographs at issue reportedly showed a group of agents taking a knee during one of the demonstrations in Washington, D.C., after the May 2020 killing of Floyd in Minneapolis. 

Kneeling was widely used by protesters and supporters after Floyd’s death to signal sympathy with the Black Lives Matter movement and a call for racial justice. 

Quote:You better believe Martha Stewart baked a cake last night — the lovely Gâteau Opéra perhaps? — when she got the news that the ham sandwich known as James Comey got indicted by a federal grand jury twenty-two years after that same ham sandwich indicted the goddess of hearth and home for lying to the FBI and the SEC over a trumped-up insider-trading rap, and sent her to federal prison for a five-month stretch plus five additional months of confined home-making and two years of supervised redecorating.

Mr. Comey’s indictment is probably just the opening salvo in what will be a barrage of indictments coming down against government officials who used their powers-under-law to harass, disable, cancel, dis-bar, bankrupt, persecute and ruin thousands of their fellow citizens, including especially the 45th president and the people who worked for him.

Jim Comey was the engine who pulled the choo-choo train of seditious fakery known as RussiaGate (Donald Trump colluding with Vladimir Putin) into America’s public life, which then expanded into the years-long ass-covering operations of the Mueller Investigation, then Impeachments One and Two, then the J-6 FBI-engineered “insurrection,” then Nancy Pelosi’s Congressional J-6 committee gong show, and then the four various fugazi prosecutions against Mr. Trump in 2024 designed to derail his re-run for office, bankrupt his family, and stuff him in prison for the rest of his life.

Mr. Comey and his associates must be astounded that none of that worked. It really was a mighty organized criminal endeavor. And, as such, it stands to be prosecutable under the RICO statutes, which means that these current two charges against Mr. Comey should be a preview of attractions to come against him and many other familiar characters, possibly including his successor as FBI Director Christopher Wray. (The Blaze reports overnight that the FBI deployed roughly 275 plainclothes agents into the J-6 protest crowd at the US Capitol, as opposed to the 26 agents that Mr. Wray testified about to Congress.)

The smuggery of this gang in the years since all this business started in 2016 has also been out of this world. Mr. Comey dropped one rancid video after another either making threats or sanctimoniously declaring his sainthood, as if he expected the dreadful day would never come that he might face charges. Likewise, former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe ran his mouth all over CNN for years, former CIA Director John Brennan spun fibs on MSNBC, while FBI RussiaGate straw-boss Peter Strzok rode shotgun regularly with fake news confabulator Rachel Maddow. All of it was designed to bamboozle the public, and it worked!

https://x.com/i/status/1971365832954609710

You can expect more than one RICO case to come because these crimes against our country occurred in many discrete episodes of organized misconduct over many years. The RussiaGate op involving Comey, Clapper, Brennan, Hillary, Obama, Biden, et al., was quite separate from Adam Schiff’s orchestrated seditious Impeachment #1 featuring CIA mole Eric Ciaramella, Col. Alexander Vindman, and ICIG Michael Atkinson. As was the activity of the Mueller group actually supervised by Andrew Weissmann (because Robert Mueller was secretly non compos mentis). As were the J-6 shenanigans of Mr. Wray’s FBI, including the DNC Pipe Bomb sideshow. As were the Lawfare exploits of Norm Eisen and Mary McCord conniving with “Joe Biden’s” White House to arrange the Trump prosecutions by DA Alvin Bragg and AG Letitia James in New York and DA Fani Willis in Fulton County, GA. As were the dark deeds of Merrick Garland and his Special Counsels Jake Smith, David Weiss, and Robert Hur. As were the 2020 and 2022 election-rigging capers of Marc Elias & Company. As were whatever peculiar directives were ordered by Alejandro Mayorkas to throw the US borders wide open. As were the “autopen” abuse by the White House staff and their cover-up of “Joe Biden’s” mental decline.

All of these vile pranks would have to be prosecuted in separate packets of cases. You might think it’s just too much for this Department of Justice, and that the three remaining years of Trump 2.0 are not enough time for so much action. But they represent extremely serious breaches of official duty verging on treason. There are probably aspects of it all and additional characters involved whom I have left out. They have gravely injured our country and turned us against each other. Their prosecutions will be heavy lifting, but it has to be done.

One prediction I’ll venture. Jim Comey’s defense will be based on “altitude sickness.”

Brave dealer talking to a Brit journalist who knows nothing about guns other than what her British upbringing has given her.

Quote:Gretchen reveals how Thor Arms sells AK-47 rifles to governments across the globe from Arkansas. Secretive deals and strict export rules explain the business of weapons and the moral questions it raises. Stacey Dooley Investigates: The Whale Hunters E00 0:00 – Life Inside Thor Arms In Arkansas 4:50 – Gretchen Thor On Family And Guns 9:20 – International Deals And India Contracts 13:40 – 9/11 Memories And Fear Of Attacks 17:00 – Saudi Arms Sales And Moral Questions 20:30 – Factory Tour And Serial Number Tracking 27:20 – Building Bullets And Ethical Concerns 31:00 – New Zealand Shooting And Gun Laws 35:00 – Shooting The Thor M408 Sniper Rifle 41:10 – Final Reflections On Weapons And War

I thought I would give DI another try.

However, the last few days on DI have been just stupid.  It seems from the time of the Kirck murder certain threads just get derailed to orange man bad.

Any attempt to have an actual discussion and exploration of facts for specific thread topics just leads to two or three accounts just derailing the thread and trying to control the narrative with whataboutisms.  

I wouldn’t normally be like this.  There are days I post way too often. But the minute by minute responses hour after hour to derail is just crazy. I don’t think they are right out bot accounts.  But they seem to be accounts augmented by bots.  It’s just crazy stupid that threads can’t even stay halfway on topic.  The James Comey indictment thread on last checking turned to Stormy Daniels.  A subject already done to death.

I like being challenged in my beliefs, but constant derailment to off topics is the kind of crap you would expect from a hack flat earth site.  Not DI?  

I’m not sure what you think about Metabunk.  But I like that they limit how often you respond.  Makes you really think about what you’re going to post.

Quote:The federal government’s new warning that taking Tylenol during pregnancy may lead to autism should prompt the revival of lawsuits from mothers who allege Tylenol caused their children’s autism or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), attorneys for the families said in a new filing.
Federal officials on Sept. 22 moved to update labeling for Tylenol and other drugs containing acetaminophen, which are used for pain and fever relief. Regulators said that “the use of acetaminophen by pregnant women may be associated with an increased risk of ... autism and ADHD in children.”
During a press conference announcing the moves, Food and Drug Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary quoted Dr. Andrea Baccarelli, a dean at the Harvard School of Public Health, who said in his expert opinion in the legal case that “there is a causal relationship” between in utero exposure to acetaminophen and neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism.
“Expert opinion that is sound enough to persuade every Senate-confirmed federal scientist easily clears Rule 702(d)’s bar,” the attorneys said in the filing on Wednesday, referring to a rule governing the use of expert witnesses in litigation.
“Reasonable scientists can continue to debate Dr. Baccarelli’s conclusions. But affirming a decision characterizing his approach as ‘junk science’ would pose grave separation of powers concerns,” the attorneys said. “The executive branch safeguards public health from dangerous pharmaceutical interventions. A decision holding that a jury may not hear the same expert evidence that the executive branch credited will badly damage the public trust required for the executive to take care that the public-health laws are faithfully executed.”
The lawsuits in question alleged that retailers and Kenvue, which makes Tylenol, failed to warn people that drugs containing acetaminophen could cause autism or ADHD. U.S. District Judge Denise Cote ruled in 2023 that Baccarelli and other experts offered by plaintiffs cherry-picked and misrepresented the results of studies. She later dismissed the cases.

In their appeal, lawyers for the families said that “a wealth of scientific evidence suggests that prenatal exposure to acetaminophen (APAP) causes autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).” They said the judge should not have dismissed the cases or rejected their expert witnesses.
Oral arguments in the appeal are set for Oct. 6 in New York City before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Attorneys for Kenvue told the appeals court in response to the new filing that the federal government’s actions do not establish a causal association, noting that the FDA said in its letter to doctors that “while an association between acetaminophen and autism has been described in many studies, a causal relationship has not been established and there are contrary studies in the scientific literature.”
“The statements of the government and Dr. Baccarelli himself confirm that the existing evidence does not support a causal relationship, and that the district court was thus correct to conclude it is not ’reliable to draw a causal inference from the associations that researchers have observed,'” the lawyers said. They said the appeals court should uphold Cote’s rulings.

Quote:Chadd talks about one the worst places he has ever been deployed to. Poverty, death, corruption, lies and filth cover this place, tune in to find out where I went and what we were doing there!

Quote:September 24, 2025 / Joseph P. Farrell

Amid the sad murders of Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk that have so rightly and justifiably preoccupied attention in the past few days, some stories managed to slip "under the radar", and I'm far from thinking that this fact was entirely coincidental or accidental. In the case of the murder of Mr. Kirk, there are growing indications that there was foreknowledge, and where there is foreknowledge, there is conspiracy, and where there is conspiracy, there is also usually someone willing to take advantage of the distracted attention of people to accomplish other objectives far removed from the purpose of the conspiracy itself.

In this case, the story is that of the Space Force Command seeking a legal name change from Congress, a name change that will explicitly feature the word "combat" in its name (story shared by E.E. with our gratitude):

Space Force considers adding ‘combat’ to command’s name

There is an amazing statement in this article, which I'm sure you have already spotted, and which I am certain is provoking the same questions in you as it did me. But before we get to that, it would be useful to rehearse a few of the salient moments in the establishment of this space force command. I am thinking of two events, in particular.

The first event was the speech given to the US Air Force Academy's graduating class in 2016, where general Mark "Thoroughly Modern" Milley gave his speech warning that the soldiers of the future would have to be able to fight "little green men." I blogged about that story, because the explanation we were given of the general's remarks was that "little green men" was simply military slang for the green camouflage uniforms worn by Russian and Ukrainian soldiers, as the countdown to that war was already well underway. I wasn't buying that explanation then, and am not buying it now. Milley - for whatever his faults as a policy-maker or military leader may or may not have been - was hardly so stupid as not to understand the ufological connotations of the phrase "little green men," and for that matter, nor were his Pentagon "handlers".  See my blog about that story here:

Quote:REMEMBER THAT GENERAL’S “LITTLE GREEN MEN” ...

Do you remember that US Army General who gave that funny little speech to military graduates to be prepared to “fight little green men”?

On this view, Milley was clearly preparing the narrative for the militarization of space by alluding to an extraterrestrial threat.

The second event was another statement, this time made by Mr. Trump during his first administration. You may or may not recall his appearance in California where he stated that America needed "another space force." Not a new service branch. Not a new space force (which we hadn't had until then), but another one. Again, most people ignored the remark, understanding it to be the typical slip of the tongue or misspeaking that one can do when one is extemporizing under pressure. That's certainly a possible explanation. But there is in law a doctrine that such statements, uttered under the pressure of the moment, and without "reflection", are the best indicators of the real truth, since they are made without the confabulation that often follows in the attempts to explain such remarks away (as with the case of General "Thoroughly Modern" Milley's remarks).

From that perspective, what Mr. Trump had let slip was the idea that the USA already had a space force, and now it needed "another" one, to fill a different mission set. By way of analogy, it would be akin to the difference in the two military service branches of the Coast Guard, and the Navy. The two have very different operational areas, and very different missions.  The military discipline and rank structure is more or less the same, but the missions and theaters of operation are completely different. So perhaps what Mr. Trump was proposing was that we already have the "coastal defense" version of the space force, now we need a deep water version, a "deep space" version; a navy.

This brings me to the remarks that caught my attention, and we begin with the headline itself: The Space Force Command is seeking, [i]through an act of Congress, to get the word "combat" added to its name: Space Force Combat Command. And the implications are immediately obvious: just who, exactly, is the potential enemy needing to be combatted. There are the usual suspects, of course, Russia, and China, and any other terrestrial power of group having a space-launch capability: Europe, Japan, India... again, the usual suspects. A glance at the article does indeed confirm that these are the "groups of concern".[/i]

Lest there be any doubt as to the intentions of the name change, it is to acknowledge that space, like it or not, is already weaponized and that further space militarization is all but an accomplished fact:

Quote:The service is considering changing Space Operations Command’s name to Combat Forces Command, pending Senate confirmation of its new commander, Space Force spokesperson Lt. Col. Victoria Porto said on Wednesday.

“The name change better reflects the field command’s critical responsibility as the Space Force’s proponent for combat space power, including generating and improving combat-ready forces to execute service and combatant command assigned missions,” Porto told Task & Purpose.

The command is tasked with generating and sustaining combat-ready intelligence, cyber and space forces and working with the rest of the U.S. government, allies, and commercial agencies to “project combat power in, from, and to space,” Porto said. (Emphasis added)

The projection of "combat power in, from, and to space" pretty well summarizes the fact that, insofar as Mr. Trump's remarks are concerned, we're dealing with that "Coast Guard" analogy, or in this case, "planetary" or "close defense" component.

Which leaves General Milley's remarks about "little green men" still hovering uncomfortably over the whole situation. And the bottom line there is that if, indeed, Mr. Musk or anyone else is ever seriously successful in getting humans to, and from, Mars, i.e., into "deep space", a "Navy" for protection will be needed. It's that possibility, in my opinion, that is the ultimate goal and objective behind all the shuffling of personnel and name changes... they're preparing for something, and its not just ground-based Chinese anti-satellite lasers.

See you on the flip side...

Quote:Why mistranslation, migration, and manipulation have a bad taste

Radio Far Side, Sep 24, 2025



One of my many guilty pleasures is crunchy peanut butter and Smucker’s Concord Grape jelly on crustless white bread. It’s one of my comfort foods from earliest childhood.

The problem is that the Indonesian language does not distinguish between jelly, jam and preserves. A single term—selai buah, which essentially means “fruit goo”—is used for all three condiments, so 90% of the times I order grape jelly, I get jam or preserves, as happened today.

This isn’t apropos of anything in particular, but I’ll try to work it into today’s rant so it doesn’t come off as completely gratuitous.

So, I haven’t watched the Charlie Kirk memorial, nor have I watched Trump’s UN rant, but I’ve certainly heard plenty of commentary and seen the highlight clips. By the way, Erica did not flash the “Satan symbol”. That hand gesture is American sign language for “I love you.” As with selai buah, it’s all in the translation (told you I’d tie it in).


Anyway, Trump got me to thinking—which is a dangerous thing. I was thinking that I can’t think of any other time in history when the leaders of so many countries were deliberately trying to destroy the countries they “lead” and the cultures they come from.

Now I can think of many examples where leaders tried to forcefully spread their cultures (see colonialism), and many who kicked off bloody internal conflicts to protect and defend their cultures from internal threats (see civil wars), but no evidence of a single—much less many—leader trying to purposely destroy their nation and culture, especially against the will of the home folks.

The issue of unfettered mass migration of folks who have no intention of integrating is beyond my ken. I have lived and worked in six countries, and in every case I’ve gone out of my way to learn the customs, traditions, history, and languages of my hosts. I’ve gone so far as to develop regional accents, according to native speakers.


On top of that, I’ve spent many hours and significant amounts of money maintaining a legal immigration status, abiding by the laws and regulations of my host country. Here in Indonesia, they are sticklers for legal status, and if you violate the laws, they will deport you at your own expense, or leave you to rot in jail.

I have exactly zero sympathy for folks being rounded up and deported from the US. Heck, I go to great expense and hassle to maintain Mrs. FarSide’s US visa, even though we haven’t been back since 2016. She gets five yeas of unlimited entry/exit with every renewal.

That said, what could possibly drive nations to commit cultural and economic suicide by not enforcing long-established immigration laws? What benefit could these countries possibly derive from such permissive behavior, especially against the clear wishes of their citizens? Even more puzzling is what could make all those natives knuckle under and accept the invasions, to the point of bankrupting their own social safety nets that they pay so dearly for?


One common factor in all this is that the nations who are suffering the most from the insanity have all surrendered their right to self-defense. In recent decades, Canada, Britain and Australia have all given up gun ownership, and they are now swamped with invaders. Europe has long been a gun-free zone, and naturally the invaders are now the only ones with guns.

The worst parts of the US are the ones with the strictest “gun control” laws, while Texas and Florida are maintaining a tense balance because the citizenry are well armed and like target practice.

There is nothing more precious than one’s native culture. Some of my most enjoyable moments are spending time with the North Americans, and especially the Texans I know here. We can communicate on a level far more profound than most of my interactions with locals, because we have a broad and deep shared experiences and beliefs that allow us to bypass a lot of assumptions and agree on many foundational issues.

For instance, sharing a pile of BBQed brisket and a link of jalapeño and cheddar sausage smothered in jalapeño honey sauce with a hank of crusty bread and a side of potato salad with a fellow Texan is a rare and precious treat. We share an entire vocabulary that even the most skilled foreign speakers don’t understand. We know and assume certain knowledge that a non-native would never grasp.

It’s like the old joke: a man walks into a bar, and while he sits there, people were yelling out numbers and the whole place would erupt in laughter. He askes the man sitting next to him, “What’s going on? People yell out numbers and everyone laughs.”

“Ah,” replied the man, “We have all been hanging out together for so long we know all the jokes, so we assigned the jokes a number so we don’t have to repeat the entire thing.”

“Interesting,” said the stranger, who sat and thought about this for a while. Eventually, he got up the nerve to yell out, “16!” No one laughed.

“What did I do wrong,” he asked his neighbor.

“You’re really lousy at telling jokes,” said the man.

What possible benefit could “leaders” have for selling out their countries? I have a guess.

I am of the opinion that these “leaders” and the copious NGOs and “societies” that allow unmitigated invasions are getting kick-backs from all the money they dole out to the invaders. All of the “soft” money gets laundered through various organizations as “aid” for various causes, such as feeding and housing the invaders.

Then large amounts come back as “campaign donations” or just plain old transfers—say in cryptocurrencies that don’t go through banks. The remaining funds are used by the likes of Soros, Gates, and Schwab to fund sterilization and eugenics programs, or human experimentation on “marginal” populations.

In addition, various programs are funded and operated to destroy social and cultural cohesion, disrupt traditional families, and divide and conquer large populations. The reason for these efforts would be to wipe out the concept of nation-states and destroy the notion of cultural solidarity in order to institute a new global system of governance that would never work with traditional nationalistic ideas.

In AD 711, a force of mostly Berber Muslims under the command of Tariq ibn Ziyad crossed the Strait of Gibraltar from North Africa into the Iberian Peninsula. They defeated the Visigothic king Roderic at the Battle of Guadalete (711). Within a few years, most of what is now Spain and Portugal was under Muslim control, becoming al-Andalus. Eventually, parts of France, Ireland, England, Italy, and the Balkans were taken over, with the latter eventually becoming the Ottoman Empire.

The Muslim occupation of Europe lasted 781 years, until Ferdinand and Isabella (of Columbus fame) broke the Saracens’ hold and Reconquista began.

Call me crazy, but it sure looks like “someone” is trying to recreate that era, and European “leaders” are only too happy to play along, draining the treasuries into their pockets as they go. Maybe they think they’ll live out their days in tropical villas in Central and South America, while their former nations evaporate.

Anyway, I just finished a peanut butter and grape jam sandwich. It’s not perfect, but it will have to do, since my adopted culture has no history of preserving anything at all, much less fruit. With a year-round growing season and fruit dripping off the trees. The culture here—including the language—never had to deal with concepts like pickling, canning and preserving, because fresh was available anytime and anywhere you wanted it.

In fact, the only thing Indonesians have ever had to store was rice, which depended on the monsoon season. Cheese was introduced by Europeans, and Indonesians eat very little of it. Things like pressure cookers and pickling jars are as rare as hurricanes on the Moon. All the native dishes are designed to be eaten with the hands out of cone-shaped hats that serve multiple purposes as shade, water glasses and food bowls.

It’s a very strange culture (to me) because Indonesians have little or no concept of planning and maintenance, since they’ve never had to survive deep winters.

Vive la difference!

=====

Our film du jour is Children of Men (2006), loosely based on the novel by one of my favorite mystery writers P. D. James. A dark dystopian pscho-thriller, the plot revolves around mass infertility and authoritarian governments. Sounds a lot like today’s headlines. Some very good performances, and Alfonso Cuarón’s direction is spot on.