Friday eve, just before St. Patrick's day

I'll tell a story:

Last time I went to a party on Patrick's night, 
The place was supposed to have three bands over the evening.
It was so bloody packed you barely had room to lean on a wall,
If you wanted a drink or munchies, fight your way to the bar because the waitresses couldn't get around but about once an hour,
The chance of dancing?  Only if you threw a grenade to make a space.
And it was so damned loud, you could barely hear the music.
As I left after maybe fifteen minutes I said "Never again."

And now, we get to the 6th Evening stuff.

How stupid have leftists become?

Cleanliness has historically been used as a cultural gatekeeping mechanism to reinforce status distinctions based on a vague understanding of “niceness”: nice people, with nice yards, in nice houses, make for nice neighborhoods.

What lies beneath the surface of this anti-messiness, pro-niceness stance is a history of classist, racist and sexist social structures.
This is from a COLLEGE PROFESSOR-LEVEL stupid.

Seems a current leftist thing is "You can't even define 'woke', you right-wing jerk!"

Mostly because said 'woke' has become a problem, and lots of people, caught in a moment, do have trouble defining it.  Found this, which does a good job of why the left would like it to go away:
In 2014, after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the #staywoke hashtag became a digital rallying cry around Black Lives Matter activism. Then, in the Trump years, progressives freed the slogan from its BLM context and deployed it wherever needed. Which is why you’d see pieces in the New York Times such as, “In Defense of ‘Woke,’” by Damon Young. In 2017, a photo of a baby wearing a “stay woke” sign at a Women’s March event went viral. Stacey Abrams spoke at something called the “stay woke” rally in 2018. When the pandemic hit in 2020, #stayhome #staywoke hashtags appeared on liberal Twitter. By the time George Floyd was killed by Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis, every white liberal interested in signaling his revolutionary sympathies was advertising his wokeness. As Aja Romano noted candidly in Vox in October 2020, “‘woke’ has evolved into a single-word summation of leftist political ideology, centered on social justice politics and critical race theory. This framing of ‘woke’ is bipartisan: It’s used as a shorthand for political progressiveness by the left, and as a denigration of leftist culture by the right.”

That’s right. Back then, both sides understood that wokeness had become a leftist catch-all term. Conservatives still do, but the Left decided to erase its own role in this history. Why? Because soon after 2020, wokeness became an embarrassment and a political liability. The country started to reject the widespread radical project. In November 2021, Republican Glenn Youngkin was elected governor of Virginia. At the time, Democratic strategist James Carville was asked what went wrong. “Well, what went wrong is this stupid wokeness,” he said. “Some of these people need to go to a woke detox center or something.”
It's become a problem, so they want to change it to 'some right-wing thing'.
But short of detox, there’s always wishful thinking. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded to Carville by claiming that “woke” was “a term almost exclusively used by older people these days.” The Left has been trying to fight the term ever since, pretending that it’s something cooked up by racist right wingers to discredit their opponents. As we get closer to the 2024 election, we’re going to see more of this revisionism.

Sorry, wokesters. Live by the hashtag, die by the hashtag. It’s not our fault that you made yourselves easy targets of parody and derision. You took every scattered strain of ill-considered social-justice leftism—from defunding the police to erasing biological sex—put it in a box, wrapped it in a bow, and labeled it “woke.” And it turned out to be a gift to the right.

It appears some scientists implanted stem cells from deer to mice

to make them grow antlers.

Comment from the cat

analysis: true

 

A bit of news, as it's windy and damp out there

A lot of people really don't want the commoners to know what they've been up to.
The University of North Carolina is asking a judge to block the release of documents related to the research of Dr. Ralph Baric, a pioneer in the world of dangerous gain-of-function virus research.


More holes in the "We trans activists are the ones who care!" bullshit.
Dr. Susan Bradley, a Canadian psychiatrist and pioneer in child gender dysphoria treatment, came out against the popular model of affirming children’s transgender identities and putting them on puberty blockers — a practice she was once involved in — in an interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation.


Seven STupid Party members helping Biden out with a PRC connected nominee as ambassador to India.



That is quite a take, given the damage wrought by the collapse of the bank. SVB collapses, LGBTQ activists hurt most. Oh, yeah. Some others too. But damn SVB was great for activists.


And that's about all I can take for this morning.

Meanwhile, we can wonder just how deep Fauci & Co. are in this

The U.S. government may have made duplicate payments for projects at labs in Wuhan, China, through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), according to records reviewed by CBS News.

"What I've found so far is evidence that points to double billing, potential theft of government funds. It is concerning, especially since it involves dangerous pathogens and risky research," said Diane Cutler, a former federal investigator with over two decades of experience combating white-collar crime and healthcare fraud.

Cutler found evidence of possible double payments as she investigated U.S. government grants that supported high risk research in China leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic. She was hired by Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, who took her records to USAID and the internal watchdog at USAID, which launched a new probe, details of which have not been previously reported.

Talk about a chickenweasel in the henhouse

BREAKING: Public defender for Zachary Rehl--whose emails were surveilled by FBI and apparently shared with prosecutors--filed motion this morning to dismiss case against him

And just to add to the fun, a little further down is this:

Thomas Massie
@RepThomasMassie
·
22h
Just got off of a zoom meeting with Fed, Treasury, FDIC, House, and Senate.

A Democrat Senator essentially asked whether there was a program in place to censor information on social media that could lead to a run on the banks.
"We must control what the commoners hear, lest they act in ways we do not approve of!"

Yes, there will be more Twitter Files,

and it's previewed here:
...When I asked Allred’s permission to point out that he’d just demonstrated that a proper forum for dealing with campaign abuses already existed in the court system, he basically told me to shut up.

“No,” he said, “you don’t get to ask questions here.”

I then had to keep my mouth shut as an elected official shifted to Dad mode to admonish me to “take off the tinfoil hat,” because “there’s not a “vast conspiracy,” by which he meant he apparently meant my last three months of work.
...
Most disturbing was a letter to a long list of academics, tech executives, and communications specialists from a staffer for the non-profit Institute for Defense Analysis. It referred to a new type of online influencer, “some of whom enjoy reach commensurate with mass media channels”:

In an age of declining trust in media, government, and institutions, influencers occupy a position of trust and enjoy a perception of authenticity. In addition to the rise of influencers, now-prevalent online crowds have been transformed into a significant force in shaping narratives; they are persistent and can be leveraged to achieve amplification of particular messages in the battle for attention.

“Online crowds have been transformed into a significant force in shaping narratives” is just another way of saying, “independent groups now have politically effective ways to organize,” which the authors clearly saw as a problem in itself.
To them, it really is.

Blogger bloggered up and didn't publish the 7th evening stuff, so here it is late

Analysis: true Updated

 

And they really hate people talking about it.

Update is here

Among the things from Taibbi testifying before Congress is that a bunch of Democrats follow the new standard

of declaring "Your speech is a danger to someone!" in an attempt to shut people up.
She claimed that Republicans brought “two of Elon Musk’s ‘public scribes'” in “to release cherry-picked out-of-context emails and screenshots designed to promote his chosen narrative – Elon Musk’s chosen narrative – that is now being parroted by the Republicans” for political gain.

“I’m not exaggerating when I say you have called two witnesses who pose a direct threat to people who oppose them,” Plaskett said after the video.
I'd say exaggerating AND lying.

And, further down, we find this in the 'Big Tech/.Gov Censorship Gathering':
The Woodstock of the Censorship-Industrial Complex came when the Aspen Institute – which receives millions a year from both the State Department and USAID – held a star-studded confab in Aspen in August 2021 to release its final report on “Information Disorder.”

The report was co-authored by Katie Couric and Chris Krebs, the founder of the DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Yoel Roth of Twitter and Nathaniel Gleicher of Facebook were technical advisors. Prince Harry joined Couric as a Commissioner.
I agree with the gentleman from Battleswarm: what the HELL is effing Prince Harry doing in a group who wants to decide what Americans can say and hear?

Once again that time of week is here

And I did labor to gather these study materials

Here's a clue: If you want the penalties for carjacking reduced,

you don't give a damn about the general public or the 'good of society', you want to make it less risky for criminals to carjack people.

At best, you're an idiot.

Aw, are the poor proggies all upset at being told 'No'?

Why yes, yes they are.
A new Washington Post report slammed “conservatives and libertarians” on Wednesday for working to legally block future pandemic lockdowns and other epidemic related mandates after seeing their effects during the COVID-19 outbreak.

The paper accused them of engaging in a “populist rejection” of pandemic measures that have left American’s public health institutions “defanged” and unprepared for a subsequent pandemic.
You're welcome.

The article, by Lauren Weber and Joel Achenbach, made the complaint, “Not even the president can force federal agencies to issue vaccine or testing mandates to thwart its march.”

It then blamed right-wingers, saying, “Conservative and libertarian forces have defanged much of the nation’s public health system through legislation and litigation as the world staggers into the fourth year of covid. At least 30 states, nearly all led by Republican legislatures, have passed laws since 2020 that limit public health authority.”
Note: If a lot of said authorities hadn't been such lying bastards, it would've made a real difference.
The story hammered the point that “health officials and governors in more than half the country are now restricted from issuing mask mandates, school closures, and other protective measures or must seek permission from their state legislatures before renewing emergency orders,” thanks to conservatives.
Again: you're welcome.

Over at the Fox story,
Conservative and libertarian forces have defanged much of the nation’s public health system through legislation and litigation as the world staggers into the fourth year of covid.

Well, y'know, if those authorities and politicians you're so enamored of hadn't been such lying, control-freak asshats, we would not BE 'staggering'.  So screw you.

Short version: "You can't be independent, you will be properly controlled

by the government and our partner unions."

Once again, the leftists show what they really want: total control of your life.  For your own good, of course.

Holy crap, a steam-engine powered motorcycle!

That's... amazing.

I'm pretty sure that if you told them '1984' was not a damned how-to manual,

they'd arrest you for interfering with the coppers.
Jeremiah Igunnubole, who is legal counsel for a firm that has represented people who have been arrested for thought crimes outside of abortion centers, observed that the vote was a “watershed moment for fundamental rights and freedoms in our country.” Yes, indeed. In fact, it is a signpost of the end of freedom in Britain.

Igunnubole continued: “Parliament had an opportunity to reject the criminalisation of free thought, which is an absolute right, and embrace individual liberty for all. Instead, Parliament chose to endorse censorship and criminalise peaceful activities such as silent prayer and consensual conversation.” And of course, an extremely dangerous precedent has been set: “Today it’s abortion. Tomorrow it could be another contested matter of political debate.”

And some more

I feel like clearing some gifs today

 

Me: I need to take it easy on the legs the next day or two

Also me: I'm going effing nuts because I WANT TO DO STUFF!

Dammit.

A quick look at the news shows clowns like McConnell and some of the other pretend Republicans

having fits over the public actually seeing security video that shows things they don't want the peasants to see.  Schumer, of course, just had another fit on the Senate floor and actually called for censorship.  And that asshole Crenshaw from Texas(who's turned out to be a monumental disappointment) whining about "We've already seen this, why do people keep bringing it up?"  Asshole, if we'd seen all this WE WOULDN'T KEEP BRINGING IT UP."  

As Carlson put it,
“You don’t often see the Senate majority leader openly call for censorship on the floor of the Senate as if that was totally normal and didn’t contradict the spirit and the letter of the First Amendment,” Carlson said, before calling out Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Mitt Romney of Utah for siding with Schumer.
and
“From this, we learn two things: One, you’re getting close to what they really care about. And you have to ask yourself why? Why is it so important that they would degrade themselves by telling such obvious lies and calling for censorship? Why? What are they trying to protect?” Carlson asked. “That might be worth exploring and we plan to. And the second thing we learned from this is that they’re on the same side. The Senate majority leader joins the Senate minority leader. Thom Tillis, Mitt Romney. They’re all on the same side!”
Yes, they are.

Going after the assholes who actually did violence?  No problem.  Going after people who were LET into the building, walked through, and left?  Who did nothing?  While assholes like Ray Epps are protected?  Oh yeah, we've been lied to, and a bunch of our LE were/are quite willing to play Praetorian Guard, and it all needs to be brought out.  

Ah, the joys of being graceful

Which in this case involved a misstep coming down the stairs during the night.  Nothing horrible, but the landing jarred one knee(happily not the one most recently surgeried).

So I'm being easy on it, and hoping the meds for the back will also help ease this.  Which is making cleaning the place up difficult, among other things.

It would seem that if you have a credit card(or probably anything else) with Bank of America,

you might want to get rid of it.  At least if you give a damn about privacy, security, and not wanting a bank that has a nice fascist partnership with the feds.
An FBI whistleblower told congressional investigators that the D.C. field office pushed local offices to open criminal investigations into Americans based solely on financial transactions Bank of America tracked and voluntarily provided to the bureau, according to testimony reviewed by The Federalist.

“Bank of America, with no directive from the FBI, datamined its customer base,” whistleblower and recently retired FBI supervisory intelligence analyst George Hill told investigators for the House Judiciary Committee, according to Hill’s testimony.
...
According to the material reviewed, Hill testified that on either Jan. 7 or 8, 2021, Bank of America provided the FBI’s D.C. field office a “huge list” of individuals who used Bank of America credit or debit cards in D.C., or the surrounding Maryland and Virginia areas, on Jan. 5, 6, or 7, 2021. Bank of America then elevated to the top of the list anyone who had ever (through Jan. 6, 2021) used a Bank of America product to purchase a firearm.

There was no geographic or date-range limit to the search for firearm purchases, Hill stressed, meaning the individual would be flagged at the top of the list had he “purchased a shotgun in 1999” in Iowa, and used a Bank of America credit card to check out of a hotel on Jan. 5, 2021, in the Northern Virginia area, following a trip that could be completely unrelated to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6.
It appears the Boston EffingBI office actually refused to open cases based on this, and held to it.  No telling what other offices said "Screw that Constitution thing we swore to uphold" out and did.

It seems to be helping the back,

and if nothing else I slept really well last night.

Found thanks to Wirecutter,

A Brief History of Soap

Matt Taibbi has some of the Capitol video

and more on the "Let's shut people up on social media" crap from the .gov on this thread.

Oh my, it seems that Carlson has stirred the crap up a bit

I don't have cable, so didn't watch Tucker Carlson's show last night where he reported on what was a bunch of the Jan. 6 video that, for some reason, the J6CommitteeKangaroo Court didn't want people to see. Among those,
BREAKING: Never before seen January 6 footage shows Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick walking around the building after the time media outlets claimed he was killed by protesters.

The J6 Committee had access to this tape but refused to release it.

And
Newly revealed surveillance footage from Jan. 6, 2021, shows two Capitol police officers escorting Jacob Chansley, the be-horned so-called “QAnon Shaman” who has come to symbolize the riot, through the halls of the Capitol and to the very door of the US Senate.

The footage aired on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show Monday night shows the officers closely following Chansley as he wanders the corridors of the Capitol, bare-chested and wearing face paint and a luxuriant fur hat with Viking horns.

“Virtually every moment of his time inside the Capitol was caught on tape,” says Carlson, who was granted exclusive access by Speaker Kevin McCarthy to 40,000 hours of surveillance footage from that day inside and around the Capitol, which has never been seen before by the public.

“The tapes show the Capitol police never stopped Jacob Chansley. They helped him. They acted as his tour guides.”
And the real killer for this,
At one point, the officers are seen walking Chansley past seven other police officers milling around outside the Senate chamber, who barely give him a second look.

Then they escort him to various entrances of the chamber which appear to be locked. Eventually, they help him open a door, and he enters the chamber.
...
So we've got lying bastard politicians, and lying bastard cops.  Last I  heard lying under oath, verbally or in writing, is a criminal act.  Chances of these bastards being charged, let alone prosecuted: pretty much zero.

Oh, there's also video showing the Kangaroo Court and the EffingBI lied about Ray Epps.  And, far as I know, most of our Major Media clowns either didn't question any of this, or defended it.

If there was any question about why the Democrats and most of said Media had fits about this video coming out, this is why.

It's a long wait from the doctor saying "I'm putting in the prescription for you"

to the pharmacy saying "It's ready."

I have got either one hell of an allergy problem

or a plague.  Whichever, I could do without it.

Speaking of plagues, looks what the Brits have been turning up about their plague doctors:
The Lockdown Files – more than 100,000 WhatsApp messages sent between ministers, officials and others – show how the Government used scare tactics to force compliance and push through lockdowns.

In another message Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary, said that “the fear/ guilt factor” was “vital” in “ramping up the messaging” during the third national lockdown in Jan 2021.

The previous month, Matt Hancock, the then health secretary, appeared to suggest in one message that a new strain of Covid that had recently emerged would be helpful in preparing the ground for the looming lockdown, by scaring people into compliance.
...
The comment suggested that they believed the strain could be helpful in preparing the ground for a future lockdown and tougher restrictions in the run-up to Christmas 2020.

Mr Hancock then replied: “We frighten the pants off everyone with the new strain.”

Mr Poole agreed, saying: “Yep that’s what will get proper bahviour [sic] change.”

The discussion came two days after Mr Hancock was informed of the emergence of a new variant – known as alpha or the Kent variant, in Dec 2020. A surge in cases later led to the effective cancellation of Christmas on Dec 19.

Mr Hancock expressed his worry that talks over Brexit would dominate headlines and reduce the impact, and probed Mr Poole for his media advice. “When do we deploy the new variant,” asked Mr Hancock.
...
Psychologists have already warned that some Government messaging during Covid, including using alleged “fear tactics” in poster and health campaigns, were “grossly unethical” and that inflated fear levels contributed to excess non-Covid deaths and increased anxiety disorders.

The exchange was not the only time the former health secretary and other senior officials discussed tactics to frighten the public into compliance.
Gee, doesn't some of this sound familiar?

Hey, Gunsale2021, stop playing 'anonymous' and putting your fucking spam

in my comments.

How effing stupid are the greenies? "You can't use that anesthetic

because Climate Change!" stupid.
Scotland has become the first country in the world to stop its hospitals using the anaesthetic desflurane because of the threat it poses to the environment.

NHS data suggests the gas, used to keep people unconscious during surgery, has a global warming potential 2,500 times greater than carbon dioxide.

Banning it in Scotland – from its peak use in 2017 – would cut emissions equal to powering 1,700 homes a year.

UK hospitals have already cut down.
...
...Medical teams are now forbidden from using Desflurane, even if in their medical opinion Desflurane is the best anaesthetic for the procedure, so in that scenario at least, patient health comes second to the Scottish Health climate agenda.