Exploring practical methods for preparing for the end times, including analysis of end time scripture and prophecy, current events, prepping and self-defense.
The Heritage Foundation released its annual assessment of U.S. military strength this week, and the results are damning. The "2024 Index of U.S. Military Strength" indicates the country's overall military posture "must be rated 'weak.'"
"This is the inevitable result of years of prolonged deployments, underfunding, poorly defined priorities, wildly shifting security policies, exceedingly poor discipline in program execution, and a profound lack of seriousness across the national security establishment even as threats to U.S. interests have surged," said the assessment.
The first and only other time the military has received a "weak" rating was last year.
While this weakness has been years in the making, significant American strength has been sapped in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Hamas' terror attacks on Israel.
For its assessment, Heritage measured American military power in terms of its capacity for operations, its capability for modernity, and its readiness to handle assigned missions. Scrutineers also factored in the capabilities and behavior of America's adversaries; existing alliances; regional political stability; the condition of key infrastructure; and the presence of U.S. forces.
Heritage rated the Air Force's capacity and capability "marginal," while noting its readiness was "very weak."
To manage more than a single major conflict, the assessment suggested the Air Force would need 1,200 active-duty, combat-coded fighter aircraft. Presently, the branch reportedly only has 897 at the ready and 64% of what would otherwise be an optimal inventory of bombers.
The Government Accountability Office published a "Weapon System Sustainment" report in late 2022 revealing that only a handful of Air Force aircraft associated with American air superiority "met their annual mission capable goal" in a majority of the years from 2011 through 2021.
In addition to a questionable fleet, the assessment indicated there is a shortage of pilots.
"There is not a fighter squadron in the Air Force that holds the readiness levels, competence, and confidence levels required to square off against a peer competitor, and readiness continues to spiral downward," said the report.
The Army alternatively had a readiness rating of "very strong" but was rated "weak" on capacity and "marginal" on capability. It is supposedly aging faster than it can modernize and continuing to struggle with recruitment.
The Navy was rated "very weak" on capacity, "marginal" on capability," and "weak" on readiness. It reportedly needs a battle force of 400 manned ships to satisfy expectations, but in actuality only floats a battle force fleet of 297 ships. Making matters worse, its former technological edge has been blunted both by age and by advances made by competitors such as China and Russia.
Space Force received a "marginal" rating across the board.
America's nuclear capability, treated separately, received an overall "marginal" rating.
While the Marine Corps received an overall rating of "strong," Heritage indicated it remains a "one-war force" on account of its capacity, adding that its strength would not be enough the compensate for the other branches.
I'm beginning to wonder why we even have a military. The primary purpose of any military is to protect against invasion and yet we are currently facing the greatest invasion in the history of the world across our southern border and the military brass are either silent or cheering it on in the name of diversity.
The Biden administration is preparing a wave of strikes and cyber attacks that could last 'weeks' in response to the Iranian-backed drone attack that killed three U.S. troops in Jordan.
U.S. officials have given public and private signals that the operation it is planning will be multi-faceted.
Officials told NBC News it will include Iranian targets outside Iran and would consist of both strikes and cyber operations.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said it will be 'multileveled' and the White House has said it would be 'tiered'.
Potential targets reportedly include Iranian commercial interests and proxy groups with forces in Iraq and Syria.
President Biden is believed not to be planning attacks inside the territory of Iran, despite the urgings of some Republicans in Congress.
It used to be that a war would boost a president's ratings among voters, but after so long of uninterrupted war, I don't know if that is true anymore.
Vox Day has been predicting for a while now that the "free content" based on the advertising model of revenue was going to disappear, at least for quality content on the Internet, and that content creators were going to have to move to some form of subscription type service to make any money. And that is exactly what we've seen: some content creators have moved to using Patreon or similar either to supplement income from advertising or replace it entirely, set up subscription based substack accounts or similar, or other means of requiring payment to access their content.
Cody Lundin has done something similar with his new "The Survival Show". The description reads:
Part parody, part variety show... all really far out! The Survival Show with Cody Lundin educates while it entertains, featuring survival tips, tricks, and techniques designed to help you survive emergencies in town or country. Join internationally - recognized survival instructor Cody Lundin, Dr. Dingle, the Mail Girls, Ded Fred, The Mansons, and the rest of the gang as you laugh while you learn! The Survival Show with Cody Lundin is the next evolution of survival television dedicated to teaching real people real skills! Watch Season One now!
There appears to be several options for viewing, including streaming or ordering a DVD. On the main page, there are two buttons for buying or renting the first season (for $29.99 or $19.99 respectively), which appears to be for the streaming. Renting gives you access to the content for 7 days. There is a tab at the top of the screen marked "DVD" which gives options for buying a DVD (or two) of the first season and/or merchandise. And the "Browse" tab takes you to a page that allows you to buy or rent individual episodes (there are 5 episodes in total). If you hold your cursor over the thumbnail photo for each episode, a brief description of the episode pops up.
Did the fourth quarter Gross Domestic Product (GDP) 2023 report actually show wonderful economic growth? Not when put in context. You see, all that “growth” is really government spending (taxpayer) money it doesn’t have. Every $1 of GDP growth cost taxpayers $1.69 in new debt. To observe that sort of “growth” isn’t sustainable is a massive understatement.
The article explains that GDP is not really a measure of economic growth but of spending, whether by companies, individuals, or, relevant here, the government.
“‘In the past 12 months the federal deficit increased by $1.3 trillion. Yet we only got half that in GDP — about $600 billion. In other words, everything else shrank. It’s even worse for that brave and stunning Q4 — there we got just $300 billion in extra GDP for — wait for it — $834 billion of new federal debt,’” Tucker quoted. Indeed, the Q4 increase in public U.S. debt was $834 billion, or an estimated 154% more than the GDP increase. Future American taxpayers will have to pay $957,100.48 for every new job we created!
The publication asserts that the African corps will bolster Russia's military presence through a network of bases under the control of the Russian Ministry of Defence, as part of Moscow's efforts to revive its influence amid a rapid decline in Western influence.
"It would also allow the Kremlin to consolidate control of Wagner’s business network in Africa, including potentially lucrative mining interests, following the death last year of the group’s founder Yevgeny Prigozhin," the publication writes.
Here in Boston, we know just how corrupt the FBI can be.
For instance, framing innocent men for murders they did not commit, or providing explosives for gangsters to use to kill reporters.
Or taking payoffs to set up informants to be rubbed out by serial-killing cocaine dealers, and then after committing such crimes being promoted to director of the FBI training academy in Quantico, Virginia….
I could go on and on about the Boston FBI office. But you get the picture.
Still, as bad and as overrated as the G-men have always been, they’re worse now.
And how are they worse?
“The FBI,” the Judiciary committee reports, “has lost its way in a toxic culture of dysfunction unable to find the courage to remedy recruitment and selection processes that have become self-destructive.”
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Claudine Gay could not be reached for comment.
“The FBI does not appear to be getting experienced, ‘mature’ candidates, such as the former cop, former military person, the professional career person, the lawyer, accountant or engineer.”
Sound familiar? The U.S. Army has the same problem. The brass can’t seem to recruit anybody who can do a push-up. Who in their right mind wants to risk their life by joining an organization run by entitled, shiftless incompetents who despise them?
“The FBI is now a joke among other law enforcement agencies because of its apparent investigative failures, political targeting of certain individuals/groups, and woke adoption… The FBI is considering hiring candidates not accepted by other law enforcement agencies.”
The G-men have Diversity Recruitment Events — “straight white males may not attend.”
In other words, there’s no room for a modern-day Inspector Lew Erskine. But Dylan Mulvaney or Jussie Smollett — come on down!
The FBI denies that they’re having problems recruiting qualified people. But then, the G-men lie about almost everything, as you may have noticed. It’s part of their “sources and methods.”
The article goes on to relate information revealed by an anonymous FBI informant about how they are being forced--not by market forces but by directions from above--to recruit and keep diversity hires that are, variously, obese, mentally unstable, illiterate, lacking work ethics, and more. Read the whole thing.
Speaking of corruption in the FBI: "FBI Tied January 6 Pipe Bomber To Metro Card Of Ex-Gov Official, But Blocked Interview Of Him, Former Agent Says"--The Daily Wire. Using security footage of the man planting the pipe bombs, they were able to track the man to the DC metro and link him to a metro card. The card allowed them to identify where the man got off the train, where they again used surveillance footage to track the man to where he got into a car. "Both the car and the fare card were in the name of the same person — a retired Air Force chief master sergeant who was now working as a contractor with a security clearance, they said." But the team was not permitted to question the former chief master sergeant and, later, were reassigned to track down protestors that had attended the J6 rally. Reading between the lines, the pipe bomber must have been yet another government agent provocateur.
And more FBI news: "Charles McGonigal sends top FBI bosses into a frenzy as they're now trawling through 22 years of high-level investigations for fear they were compromised by convicted bureau spy"--Daily Mail. McGonigal become the supervisory special agent in the counter-espionage section at FBI headquarters in Washington in 2002, was promoted to field supervisor of a counter-espionage squad at the Washington field office four years later, then moved to running the bureau's cyber counter-intelligence coordination section before finishing his career as chief of the New York office's counter-intelligence division, before retiring in September 2018. But unsatisfied with the $200,000 per year salary he was earning at retirement and the $850,000 he was earning after retirement, he turned to more lucrative, but illegal work, including "concealing a $225,000 bribe from an unnamed former Albanian spy while he was working for the FBI" to arrange a meeting with Nikki Haley, then the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., and later "digging dirt for notorious [Russian] oligarch Oleg Deripaska, sanctioned over his country's occupation of Crimea."
His downfall may have been an affair, however. The article relates:
However the other woman once in his life, ex-mistress Allison Guerriero, wants him to receive another five years on top, telling DailyMail.com exclusively: 'What the government is asking for is not nearly sufficient for the American people to receive justice.'
Guerriero, a former vice president of US operations for Israeli security firm Mifram, previously told DailyMail.com after the New York sentencing: 'I cannot wipe the smile off my face knowing that he is going to be incarcerated.'
The 50-year-old former mistress, who was with McGonigal for 18 months before ending their relationship in December 2018, may have sparked the investigation into the former FBI chief.
She discovered a bag containing $80,000 in rolled up bills at the apartment they were sharing in Brooklyn – and alerted authorities some months after the split.
At the time they were together, McGonigal's wife Pamela was living with their children at the family home in exclusive Chevy Chase, Maryland, just outside Washington DC. The spook went back to his wife after his affair ended.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
Reminiscent of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the 1980s: "Israel Military Sees It Taking All of 2024 to Eliminate Hamas Threat, Or Longer"--Bloomberg. The article is behind a paywall, but the headline sums it up. After a terrorist campaign against the PLO in the early 1980s to goad the PLO to "attack" Israel, the IDF finally succeeded and got the war they wanted. The resulting invasion into southern Lebanon was supposed to be a limited incursion but kept expanding its aims until the IDF finally advanced to Beirut and laid siege to part of the city with the intention of exterminating the PLO. But the wanton killing of civilians finally turned public opinion against Israel with the result that Israel was forced to stop its advance and let the PLO forces and leaders, including Yasser Arafat, to evacuate from Lebanon, leaving the U.S. to try and clean up Israel's mess.
The IDF has hunted down and killed its own with the same zeal it has reserved for letting the blood of Gaza’s civilians. A preliminary IDF Report about those Israeli “hostages killed by soldiers, as they waved a white flag, and yelled for help in Hebrew,” revealed the following: “IDF soldiers had spotted a building two days prior with the inscription ‘SOS’ and ‘Help! Three hostages,’ inscribed on a wall.” (Ha’aretz, Sat., 16.12.023) On encounter, the three had indeed waved a white flag, and had stripped down to their skinny torsos. Still, the IDF opened-fire on them. The hostages were hunted down. They died running from the Jewish State’s soldiers.
The IDF’s appetite for destruction is worse than unwholesome. The near-gleeful chase and murder of hostages by IDF soldiers exists on a continuum of depravity. Extrapolate one can from this—the IDF’s killing of surrendered, manifestly unarmed men—to the IDF’s Rules of Engagement with Gaza’s civilians, evident in the orgiastic bloodletting and heartless ethnic cleansing winding to a close (as there are no more ethnic Gazans to uproot). Killing their own with such unexamined ease says something about this army’s Rules of Engagement with its prey, Gaza’s civilians.
And:
Americans are hardly deficient in their solidarity for the Jewish State and for Jews, in general. American society is philosemitic, even Zionist. If anything, it is not antisemitism that plagues American institutions, but systemic anti-whiteness. Jews, generally, offer daggers if one dares to suggest that gifted Caucasian American men are being ejected from all echelons of society.
Good thing Canada has all those strict gun laws: "Canadian security guard opens fire and throws a Molotov cocktail inside city hall after going on anti-woke, pro-Gaza rant on social media"--Daily Mail. Fortunately he only intended to draw attention to his protest and didn't want to kill anyone--there were no casualties. The article notes that the shooter, Bezhani Sarvar, "was a Canadian Corps of Commissionaires employee - which is a non-profit security company originally created to employ ex-military members." The National Council of Canadian Muslims immediately tried to distance itself from the attacker, calling him out as "alt-right".
China’s population fell by two million in 2023, marking the second straight year of decline. Statistics suggest that China’s total fertility rate, which has steadily declined from 1.5 births per woman in the late 1990s to 1.15 in 2021, is now approaching 1.0—far below the replacement level of 2.1 that would maintain current population levels. Naturally, China’s trajectory is far from unique. It is following the broad pattern seen throughout East Asia, with birth rates declining to the lowest in the world, and national populations poised to age rapidly in the coming decades. Such trends point to major economic, social, and political challenges ahead for both China and the region—including increasingly unsustainable pension systems, surging eldercare needs, and rapidly aging workforces.
Perhaps unappreciated is the extent to which current official population projections actually underestimate the extent of these challenges, precisely because they bake in shaky statistical assumptions that fertility rates will “rebound” in coming decades. China’s own long-term plans include similar assumptions. The 2016-2030 population development plan issued by the State Council assumes that China’s fertility rates will rise from 1.5-1.6 (in 2015) to around 1.8 by 2020 and 2030. Wenzhou’s corresponding municipal plan issued in 2022 assume that the total fertility rate will rise back to around 1.35 by 2035.
Absolutely nothing like these trends have been observed anywhere in East Asia over the past decades. Indeed, fertility rates are going in exactly the opposite direction. Fertility rates in Taiwan and South Korea, which hovered in the 1.1-2 zone in the early years of the 21st century, have steadily declined over the past two decades—reaching 0.87 in Taiwan (for 2022) and 0.72 for South Korea (in 2023). Even Japan, which had registered total fertility rates between 1.3 and 1.4 since the late 1990s, is now in the seventh year of a steady decline, reaching 1.26 in 2022.
JAXA [Japan's space agency] successfully established communication with the probe on Sunday night, and the craft has resumed its mission.
After a last-minute engine failure caused the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, to make a rougher-than-planned landing, JAXA used battery power to gather as much data as possible about the touchdown and the probe's surroundings.
The craft was then turned off to wait the sun to rise higher in the lunar sky in late January.
With power, SLIM has continued work to analyze the composition of olivine rocks on the lunar surface with its multi-band spectral camera, seeking clues about the Moon's origin and evolution, the agency said.
Earlier observations suggest that the moon may have formed when the Earth hit another planet.
A black-and-white photo posted by JAXA on social media showed the rocky lunar surface, including a rock the agency said it had named 'Toy Poodle' after seeing it in initial images. The probe is analyzing six rocks, all of which have been given the names of dog breeds.
The article also notes that "SLIM carried two autonomous probes, which were released just before touchdown, recording the landing, surroundings and other lunar data."
Warming of the global climate system over the past half-century has averaged 43 percent less than that produced by computerized climate models used to promote changes in energy policy. In the United States during summer, the observed warming is much weaker than that produced by all 36 climate models surveyed here. While the cause of this relatively benign warming could theoretically be entirely due to humanity’s production of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning, this claim cannot be demonstrated through science. At least some of the measured warming could be natural. Contrary to media reports and environmental organizations’ press releases, global warming offers no justification for carbon-based regulation.
One of the joys of vacation--at least when flying--is dealing with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). On this trip, I had the added pleasure of the feds conducting a 100% passenger drug sweep. This meant that, just before going through the TSA screening, passengers had to walk two at a time through a cordoned off area past a drug sniffing dog to make sure that no one was smuggling marijuana out of Nevada. The last time I saw this, the added delay resulted in lines extending all the way out to the checked baggage counters. This time, to speed up the process, the TSA dispensed with having people remove shoes, jackets or belts, and shuffled everyone through metal detectors instead of the regular scanners. Which indicated to me that even the TSA did not believe that any of the aforementioned security measures were actually necessary.
The TSA was created by the Aviation and Transportation Security Act passed by Congress following the 9/11 attacks and signed into law by President George W. Bush on November 19, 2001. Before the attacks, screening was minimal and mostly intended to stop persons from carrying firearms onto planes. You could accompany a loved one to a loading gate to bid them farewell or meet them at a loading gate when they returned from a trip. Heck, you could just walk through airport terminals just to watch airliners land or takeoff (a cheap date back when I was in high school). Even citizens were allowed into terminals without a boarding pass or identification.
And, of course, there was none of this nonsense of having to take off shoes, belts and jackets, and load everything into filthy bins to go through an x-ray machine, or having your sexual organs groped because of a "suspicious" bulge, or standing with your arms above your heads and legs apart while you were scanned--something previously only seen in dystopian science fiction movies.
It might be tolerable if it served some useful purpose, but it appears to be empty "security theater" intended more to humiliate and denigrate the public than to protect.
U.S. airlines lost $8 billion in 2001. The industry wasn’t profitable again until 2006. Losses topped $60 billion over that five-year period and airlines again lost money in 2008 during the Great Recession. Job cuts in the wake of 9/11 were in the tens of thousands and workers faced massive pay cuts. ...
U.S. airline employment even before the pandemic still hadn’t recovered to the 2001 peak.
The financial turmoil sparked a wave of bankruptcies and consolidation among airlines that left four carriers, American, United, Delta Air Lines and Southwest Airlines in control of about three-quarters of U.S. commercial air travel market by 2018.
In the years after 9/11 several major airlines stopped serving free meals and instead started selling food, and charging customers to check bags to help offset higher fuel costs and other financial strain. During a 10-year profit streak that was stopped by the Covid-19 pandemic last year, airlines carved up the coach cabin into smaller classes, began charging for certain seats, even those without extra legroom, as well as early boarding and other perks.
The article goes on to observe that when metal detectors were instituted in the 1970's after a wave of aircraft hijackings, "[a]irlines told passengers to arrive 15 to 30 minutes earlier than usual for the new screenings, according to a January 1973 article in the New York Times." Now it is suggested that we check in at least 2 hours early.
That means 4 additional hours to add to a round trip flight. Is it any wonder why people stopped taking the shorter flights?
The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." Nevertheless, like so much else in the Bill of Rights, those sentiments are no longer valid, especially when you're shuffling your way, shoeless and beltless, through the sheep pens of the Transportation Security Administration, George W. Bush's gift to the American traveling public.
To be fair, the 4th Amendment was pretty much dead letter law before 9/11 thanks to the "war on drugs." The Patriot Act and related "security" laws were just the coup de grâce.
Walsh continues:
In retrospect, it's clear that Osama bin Laden emerged the victor of 9/11. He brought down the Twin Towers and took a chunk out of the Pentagon, severely wobbled the American economy, destroyed the freedom of the skies, set the American government haring after all sorts of villains but not a single enemy it would name, and made himself a martyr. Worst of all, because of the actions of 19 Muslim hijackers, most of them Saudi nationals but all of them members of the Islamic ummah, he panicked the U.S. government into presumptively criminalizing more than 300 million American citizens with the passage of the Patriot Act and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and of the TSA, a mortal sin that will live in infamy.
What about safety? Surely you jest. To previous generations of Americans, the idea of trading liberty for safety would have been laughed out of court, but a fearful, feminized society won't even hesitate. Curtail your freedom of movement and subject yourself to intrusive, sometimes bodily, inspection every time you wish to travel by plane? Why not? If it saves just one life...
More than twenty years later, it's clear to everyone who flies that what we have is not safety, but safety theater -- the illusion of safety, conducted by uniformed government employees of last resort whose mission as it has evolved is not to provide the phantasm of "security" but to obstruct, hamper, harass, and hinder Americans as they attempt to go about their lives. ...
... From 1968 to 1972 there was a spate of airplane hijackings by Cuban radicals; "On to Cuba!" became a punch line on late-night comedy, and the introduction of metal detectors at airports and the presence of sky marshals put an end to it. After 9/11, the appearance of one failed "shoe bomber" has meant your shoes come off forever. ... Possibly [the TSA] has discouraged a few terrorists from attempting to emulate the late sheikh of Araby, but why bother? After all, why hijack a plane when you can just walk across the undefended, roundheeled southern border, get free transport -- no ID necessary! -- into the interior and there bide your time?
Walsh goes on to address the leftward course of our government, intent on surpassing the worst excesses of other Marxist movements and governments; not the least of which has been the use of anti-discrimination laws and DEI to produce "a profoundly anti-egalitarian nation with a two-tiered system of justice that stands in open violation of every Constitutional principle." And, as he points out, without the public acquiescing to the TSA and its dehumanizing practices, the Covid lockdowns would probably have been impossible. Thus, he concludes:
Dismantling the Surveillance State and its bureaucratic accretions like Homeland Security is, alas, the work of years, decades -- if it even can be done. The guiding principle of all toxic amoebas, even those as gargantuan as a federal department, is self-preservation. Once birthed, they aspire to immortality. The western Roman Empire maintained the fiction of consuls right to the end. But we have to start somewhere, and the noxious TSA is as good as place as any.
Additional Reading:
"Why Does Asymmetric Warfare Exist? It Works"--Wilder Wealthy & Wise. Taking us through the how and why of the TSA, YouTube censorship and boycotts, and more, to examine the efficacy of asymmetric warfare.
A hearty thank you to my loyal readers. I'm back from a much needed vacation. As you know, I participate in a podcast with John Wilder of the Wilder Wealthy & Wise blog and his wife, the Mrs. Since the podcast had been on hiatus for a bit, I made sure to be available for last week's podcast, literally phoning it in.
Back in October, the U.S. Border Patrol was ordered to cut razor wire that the State of Texas had installed. Thanks to the efforts of wrongly impeached Attorney General Ken Paxton, the State of Texas successfully sued and was granted a stay against the federal government removing the razor wire. Now, on Jan. 2, 2024, the federal government has gone back to the federal judge who granted the stay and is seeking permission to begin cutting wire again.
The federal government is not oblivious to what is happening. That is why, despite the ongoing crisis, the Biden administration has decided they would rather sue the State of Texas than allow it to protect its own citizens. Just this week, Biden’s partisan and weaponized Department of Justice (DOJ) sent a letter to Governor Abbott claiming that the Biden DOJ will “pursue all appropriate legal remedies to ensure that Texas does not interfere with the functions of the federal government.”
If it was not already clear enough, the federal government has openly declared war on our citizens, valuing future political power and drug cartel profits over our very lives. The federal government is now the enemy of the citizens of Texas and the nation.
The future is not looking so good for the Left: "Population-Growth Patterns Paint Grim Picture for Democrats"--US News. Basically, census data shows that Red states are growing in population while Blue states are shrinking. Projecting forward to the next census in 2030:
Among red states, Texas would gain four electoral votes; Florida would gain three; Idaho, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah would gain one each.
Among blue states, California would lose four seats, New York would lose three, Illinois would lose two, and Minnesota, Oregon and Rhode Island would lose one seat each.
Which must be why "WEF Calls for AI to Replace Voters: 'Why Do We Need Elections?'"--Slay News. "World Economic Forum (WEF) founder and chairman Klaus Schwab has called for members of the general public to be excluded from election processes, arguing that voters could be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI)," according to the article.
Citizenship brings privileges: "New York Cuts Money From Schools to Pay for Migrants"--Frontpage. New state budget cuts state funding to 44 Long Island school districts to pay for freebies for illegal aliens.
According to the New York Post, which did some authentic street reporting on the impact of 2,000 illegal migrants in Brooklyn's Floyd Bennett Field:
Since mid-November, new lawlessness has plagued the area, with shoplifting, panhandling, gutter scams, and, according to some, signs of street prostitution.
And the once-serene, federally-run site — a historic former airfield off Flatbush Avenue near the Marine Parkway Bridge — has itself become an eyesore, where vicious brawls and pot-puffing are common, those living there said.
“This sh-t is out of control,” said a 20-year veteran NYPD cop when asked about the migrants at Floyd Bennett Field, a fraction of the 164,000 illegal border crossers bused to New York since spring 2022 — and 68,000 currently in the city’s care.
“That’s all these people do is rob and steal. They should feel lucky that they’re here, but they’re out there committing crimes. We don’t know anything about them. We don’t know what they’ve done in these other countries.”
They found hard police data to support the sentiment they found from the angry locals:
NYPD records from Nov. 27 through Jan. 7 show upticks in car thefts (37.5%), robberies (29.4%), and petit larceny (8.2%) in the 63rd Precinct, which covers the neighborhoods near Floyd Bennett Field, compared to the same period a year earlier.
RINO warning: "GOP candidate compared deporting illegal immigrants to Nazis, 'not opposed' to fast-tracking DACA citizenship"--MSN. The person in question is Pat Harrigan, a candidate running to represent North Carolina's 10th Congressional District according to the article. He's also ignorant of history. The Allies in WWII, after the war finished, drove populations from various countries--even if those populations had been there--back to their native countries. For instance, German populations in Eastern Europe were forced to move to Germany. It is pointed at as a factor for the long-peace Europe has experienced since WWII.
The future belongs to those that have children: "China’s Population Shrinks Some More—Decrease in Births, Increase in Deaths in 2023"--Time. The article relates that "China’s birth rate last year stood at 6.39 per thousand, down from 6.77 per thousand in 2022, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, as high costs of childrearing and record-levels of youth unemployment appear to be leading to an increasing aversion to having kids."
Newly leaked data reveals that China recorded fewer than 8 million births in 2023. If that figure is confirmed, it will represent a decline of 17 percent from 2022, and an unfathomable drop of almost 60 percent since 2016.
Yes, you read that correctly.
In 2016, China - which has about 1.4 billion people - reported 18.8 million births, according to Caixin, a Beijing-based investigative magazine. (Although every Chinese news organization faces government censorship, Caixin is still reasonably reliable.)
But by 2019, even before Covid and China’s harsh lockdowns, births had fallen to 14.7 million. Since then, they have plunged even faster. By one estimate, China had fewer children born in 2022 than it did in 1790.
As the article discusses, this is happening everywhere: Japan, South Korea, SE Asia, and Europe. And government subsidies don't seem to be helping. The author does not touch the real issues, but a couple of the people commenting do: it mostly comes down to a lack of faith.
Where did that come from, why is it important to address, and how do we do that? No, really - there are too many straight white older grognards making life difficult for everybody else. How do we deal with that, besides tossing OSR games out?
The leader of the panel is Victor Jason Raymond, who describes himself as "a sociologist, a LGBTQIA+ activist, a founder of the Carl Brandon Society, a writer and game designer, and (best of all) a 'bisexual Indian demon summoner'."
The convention organizer has a code of conduct that, among other things, states: "Discrimination (based on, but not limited to, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, or physical / mental disability) is not tolerated." It also prohibits harassment, including "offensive verbal comments about gender, gender identity and expression, sexuality, sexual orientation, disability or impairment, physical appearance, body size, race/ethnicity, age or religion." Unless you are white, older, and straight. Then they will hold a panel to discuss discriminating against and harassing you.
The report described a chaotic, unorganized scene in which there was no command and control by officers — during a period when children were calling 911 for help — and it put blame on the school's police chief who tried negotiating with a killer who had already shot his way into the classroom while having his officers search for keys to unlock the rooms. The report laid bare that, immediately after the tragedy, government leaders provided misleading and inaccurate information and in the months that followed, the Uvalde families were left to suffer by a lack of resources for trauma care and by those in charge of answering questions not providing a full accounting.
To compile the nearly 500-page report released Thursday — just blocks from the mass shooting site at Robb Elementary — the Justice Department’s team collected and reviewed more than 14,000 pieces of data and documentation, including training logs, audio, video, photographs, personal records and investigative records. On the ground, federal investigators conducted more than 260 interviews of people involved or affected, including police officers, elected officials, hospital workers and survivors.
And:
According to the report:
Eleven officers from the Uvalde school district and Uvalde Police Department arrived on the scene within three minutes of the shooter’s entry into the school. Five advanced initially and two were hit by shrapnel. Police made three attempts to enter the classrooms, which are adjoined by an interior door.
Pete Arredondo, then the chief of the Uvalde school district's police department, "directed officers at several points to delay making entry into classrooms in favor of searching for keys and clearing other classrooms,” the report found. He also tried to negotiate with the shooter and treated him as a barricaded subject instead of a continuing threat to children and school staff, the report says.
Victims who had died were put on ambulances and sent to hospitals, while injured students were evacuated in buses. One adult victim was placed on the ground on a walkway to be attended to. She died there.
"The report concludes that had law enforcement agencies followed generally accepted practices and gone right after the shooter to stop him, lives would have been saved and people would have survived," Garland said.
Sabine Hossenfelder became disgusted over media articles hysterically claiming that anthropogenic global warming would lead to a runaway greenhouse effect and turn Earth into something like Venus. She explains in the video below why Venus suffered from a runaway greenhouse and assures us that no matter how much oil and gas we burn, it will not move the Earth close enough to the Sun to cause a runaway greenhouse effect.
Cody Lundin has announced on his YouTube channel that he will be in a new survival show. This is just a bare bones announcement that there is a show, but he indicates that there will be a future video with more details on the program and where to watch it. In the video description, however, he states that "[t]o my knowledge, you will soon be watching the only survival show on Earth that remains unmolested by corporate television executives, and therefore remains in a pure state of competence. It was created, produced, directed, and hosted by me. I have personally vetted my co-hosts, each of them bringing their own unique style of teaching to the show." Sounds good.
The migrant crisis in Denver has plunged the city's main public hospital deep into the red after patients received $136 million in treatment they couldn't pay for.
Denver Health lost $2 million in 2022 - but that was substantially-reduced by a $20 million cash injection from the state.
In 2022, the hospital system lost $35 million, with bosses warning of 'dire consequences' for the hospital if 2024 is as bad as the previous two.
The rise in costs has coincided with the unprecedented number of immigrants who crossed America's border and arrived in Denver. Around 36,000 have arrived so far - many of them bused from Texas - with 18,000 deciding to stay.
Denver Health CEO Donna Lynne said that 8,000 migrants who came to the city from Central America made around 20,000 visits to the health system.
These included trips for dental emergencies, mental health counseling and childbirth.
Dr. Taylor McCormick, associate director of Pediatrics Emergency Medicine at Denver Health, The Denver Gazette: 'Overall, these patients don’t have medical insurance. Denver Health is eating the cost for many of these visits.'
Just part of the cost of being a sanctuary city. The article notes that Denver Health is going to the state with open hands asking for another bailout, and the state is seeking money from the federal government. As for the City of Denver, the Mayor has slashed the budgets of city departments by 15% to pay for migrant related costs. You would think that with all the extra economic benefits brought by illegal aliens, including that they pay taxes (at least according to CNN), Denver would be rolling in extra dough, but I guess the Left lied to the public yet again. I think Texas needs to send more illegals to Denver until they learn their lesson about encouraging illegal immigration.
The world's biggest private equity fund has become the latest victim of America's hollowed out office culture after it marketed its landmark New York building for a quarter of what it paid.
Blackstone paid around $600 million for the 26-storey tower at 1740 Broadway in 2014 but is now offering it to anyone willing to pay the $150million left on the mortgage.
It comes just a week after Shorenstein put the 62-storey Aon Center in Los Angeles on the market for $153.5 million, down from the $269 million it paid ten years ago.
Persistent high mortgage rates and the millions of Americans still working from home have been blamed for the collapse in prices and an office vacancy rate reaching a record 19.6 percent in major cities earlier this month.
'I think this is an existential moment,' said RXR real estate boss Scott Rechler.
'This post-COVID world of higher interest rates, the changing nature of how people work and live, we're not going back to where we were, and it's going to be turbulent.'
Good thing we had all those Covid shutdowns. The article continues:
The collapse has been pronounced in the biggest cities with DC facing a 21.1 percent vacancy rate and San Francisco's 34 percent.
It has led to a 35 percent fall in office prices from their peak in early 2022 and left banks vulnerable to billions of dollars in shaky loans.
About $117 billion worth is expected to be due this year and needs to be repaid or refinanced, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
Economists last month found 40 per cent of office loans on bank balance sheets were underwater - owing more than the property is worth.
Smaller regional banks who loaned the money to buy them could themselves be at risk if the loans default as they are not big enough to handle the losses.
Even now, as a free man, Keith Harward finds it hard to explain what it was like to sit in a courtroom, on trial for a rape and murder he knew he didn’t commit, watching someone considered an expert testify with certitude that bite marks on the victim’s leg matched his teeth.
“I still to this day wonder what the hell just went on,” he told NBC News at his home in North Carolina. “Sometimes I break down and bawl, because I can’t explain to you or anybody else, other than people who’ve been in my situation.”
No evidence connected Harward to the horrific 1982 crime, but he happened to be among a group of sailors from a Navy ship in dry dock in Newport News, Virginia, who were required to give dental impressions, since the assailant had been wearing a Navy uniform. Two forensic dentists told two separate juries that Harward’s teeth matched “to a scientific certainty” a bite mark on the rape victim’s skin. Harward spent 33 years in prison until, with the help of the Innocence Project, he was exonerated in 2016 by DNA evidence that pointed to another sailor as the killer.
The Innocence Project says Harward is among at least 36 people who have been exonerated after having been wrongfully convicted based on now-debunked bite mark comparisons. One of them, Eddie Lee Howard, was on death row in Mississippi when he was freed in 2021 after crime scene DNA was matched to someone else.
Four separate governmental scientific bodies have concluded that bite mark analysis has no basis in science. That includes the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, which said in 2016 that “available scientific evidence strongly suggests that examiners not only cannot identify the source of bitemark with reasonable accuracy, they cannot even consistently agree on whether an injury is a human bitemark.” The National Institute of Standards and Technology, the gold standard of measurement science, said in 2022 that bite mark forensics “lacks a sufficient scientific foundation” because “human dental patterns have not been shown to be unique at the individual level.”
One 2016 study found that self-described experts couldn’t distinguish between human and animal bite marks. Others have documented how marks in human skin change over time through healing or decomposition.
As for why bite mark analysis continues to be used in courts, the answer is that prosecutors are, for the most part, more interested in gaining convictions than in justice, and bite mark testimony makes it easier to get those convictions. As for the courts, they mostly just prefer finality over determining guilt or innocence.
Jon Low often comments about how it is morally wrong (i.e., lying) to plead guilty to a crime you did not commit. So this part from the article impressed me:
Charles McCrory is spending his 38th year behind bars, convicted of killing his wife. The bite mark expert in his case recanted his testimony, saying he now knows he cannot say whether a bite mark on the victim matched McCrory’s teeth. Yet the Alabama courts have declined to free McCrory.
And yet the prosecutors refused to concede that their case was flawed.
Alabama’s Court of Criminal Appeals ruled earlier this year that the jury was capable of deciding on its own whether the bite marks matched, a finding that ignores science suggesting such perceived visual matches cannot be valid. The court also cited other evidence in the case, including a witness who said he saw McCrory’s truck at the house during the time of the murder. No physical or forensic evidence links him to the crime.
Three years ago, after the bite mark evidence in his case collapsed, McCrory was offered a deal: Plead guilty and walk free. He refused.
“I refused to take it because I didn’t kill her,” McCrory told NBC News from his prison facility. “I did not kill my wife.”
The Muscogee (Creek) Nation, an Indigenous tribe in the American Southeast that enslaved Black people in the 1800s, continues to engage in a legal battle with descendants of enslaved families. The descendants, known as the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Freedmen, have been feuding with the tribe for decades as they seek full tribal membership, Axios reported.
In September, the court granted citizenship to two Freedmen descendants. Muscogee Nation Attorney General Geri Wisner later released a statement to media outlets, saying the ruling was based on “deeply flawed reasoning.”
“The MCN Constitution, which we are duty-bound to follow, makes no provisions for citizenship for non-Creek individuals,” Wisner stated.
The Freedmen group cites the tribe’s Treaty of 1866, saying the descendants listed on the Creek Freedmen Roll have the right to tribal citizenship. Damario Solomon-Simmons, a descendant who is also a lawyer for the Creek Freedmen, said his group is being denied their rights because of hatred.
“There’s just a level of anti-Black hatred that permeates the Creek Nation that is almost unseen anywhere else in this nation,” Solomon-Simmons said in an interview with Axios. “They have erased and deleted the contributions of Creek Freedmen, of Black Creeks like we just never existed.”
The Comanche were another tribe heavily involved with slavery, although it was mostly Hispanics and other Indian tribes, but it would be ironic if the victims of the various tribes that engaged in slavery were to sue to be counted as members of those particular tribes as well.
As the Red State article explains, rather than designate the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), as Trump had previously done, Biden is instead declare them to be Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT). As the article explains:
The difference between the two designations is more than semantic.
Doing business with an FTO subjects you to sanctions, or if you are an American, to a lengthy prison term for material support of terrorism. Collaborating with an SDGT means nothing.
Key to the issue here--and why the weaker the SDGT designation--is that banks are required to seize the funds of FTOs. As I recently explained, Saudi Arabia is at a delicate juncture in its attempts to reach a peace deal with the Houthis; a deal that would involve Saudi Arabia transferring substantial sums to the Houthis. If the Houthis were designated as FTOs, requiring banks to seize those funds, it would scuttle the whole peace deal. And since Biden has sabotaged the U.S. oil industry so that we are again dependent on Saudi Arabia for oil, the U.S. has no choice but to act to protect the Saudi deal with the Houthis.
The U.S. Forest Service on Wednesday withdrew its approval of a right-of-way permit that would have allowed the construction of a railroad project through about 12 miles (19 kilometers) of roadless, protected forest in northeastern Utah.
The decision affecting the Ashley National Forest follows a U.S. appeals court ruling in August that struck down a critical approval involving the Uinta Basin Railway, a proposed 88-mile (142-kilometer) railroad line that would connect oil and gas producers in rural Utah to the broader rail network. It would allow them to access larger markets and ultimately sell to refineries near the Gulf of Mexico.
