JAMES BOVARD: Trump indictment shows federal secrecy gone wild makes political lies — like Biden’s — harder to uncover.
Well, that’s the goal.
Archive for 2023
June 12, 2023
THEY TOLD ME THAT ONCE ROE WAS OVERTURNED, THIS WOULD HAPPEN ALL OVER. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Woman who took abortion pill after UK term limit sentenced to 28 months.
She had a conversation with a nurse at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), an abortion care facility, on May 6, 2020, PA Media reported. BPAS mailed her abortion-inducing medication after concluding she was about seven weeks pregnant, based on her answers.
Five days later, after the woman ingested the drugs, an emergency call was made saying she was in labor. Her child was born during the phone call, and was later pronounced dead at hospital following resuscitation attempts by paramedics.
The woman was between 32 and 34 weeks pregnant at the time, a post-mortem examination revealed. The baby’s cause of death was documented as still birth and maternal use of abortion drugs, according to PA Media.
Abortion laws in the UK stipulate that a person may be able to have a medical abortion at home if they are less than 10 weeks pregnant, according to the National Health Service. . . . She had pleaded guilty to dispensing drugs or using instruments to obtain an abortion. The maximum sentence in the country is life imprisonment.
Life imprisonment. I blame Donald Trump.
IS THIS WHY TARA READE FLED TO RUSSIA? “When Tara Reade fled to Russia last month and applied for Russian citizenship, we were left speculating about the reason she might have had to do such a thing. Some cited social media posts from previous years where she had praised Vladimir Putin and the Russian people. Others pointed to rumors that she had been dating a Russian citizen. But was there more to the story that we weren’t being told? According to her attorney, Dr. Jonathan Levy of London, there certainly was. He has released a letter that Reade sent to the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression. He claims that Reade was in ‘imminent danger’ of being arrested and persecuted for speaking out about her allegations of sexual assault at the hands of Joe Biden. . . . These are some heady allegations that Reade is making. It’s also not entirely clear what she hopes to do by going through the United Nations. She’s asking the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression to request an explanation from the U.S. envoys to the UN about these allegations. But the UN really doesn’t have any enforcement authority to do anything about it.”
PLAN FOR VICTORY: Biden admin preparing to evacuate Americans from Taiwan.
THE PUSHBACK GROWS: Half a British ladies fishing team walks off after trans allowed to join.
OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.
BYRON YORK: Courage, Pride, and the Biden White House. “What was going on? Shouldn’t there be some sort of internal balance in a White House so that the president of the U.S. does not heap more praise on the attendees of a ‘Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Pride Month’ gathering than on the Americans who stormed the beaches at Normandy? Shouldn’t there be some sort of governor who keeps the hyperbole machine from running out of control? Shouldn’t there be some sense of proportion?”
And the US military wonders why it has a recruiting problem.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: U.S. Space Force in talks with allies about how to jointly protect space assets.
GOODER AND HARDER, SAN FRAN: Westfield giving up S.F. mall in wake of Nordstrom closure, plunging sales and foot traffic.
Westfield is giving up its namesake San Francisco mall in the wake of Nordstrom’s planned closure, surrendering the city’s biggest shopping center to its lender after foot traffic and sales plunged during the pandemic.
The company stopped making payments on a $558 million loan, and Westfield and its partner, Brookfield Properties, started the process of transferring control of the mall at 865 Market St. this month.
“For more than 20 years, Westfield has proudly and successfully operated San Francisco Centre, investing significantly over that time in the vitality of the property. Given the challenging operating conditions in downtown San Francisco, which have led to declines in sales, occupancy and foot traffic, we have made the difficult decision to begin the process to transfer management of the shopping center to our lender to allow them to appoint a receiver to operate the property going forward,” the company said.
Nordstrom, which occupies 312,000 square feet in the mall, is closing in August after 35 years when its lease expires. The mall — which includes 1.2 million square feet of retail space and 300,000 square feet of offices — will be only 55% leased after Nordstrom’s departure, far below other U.S. Westfield malls that are, on average, 93% leased.
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Westfield’s pullout piles on to the economic turmoil battering the area around Powell Street. Park Hotels & Resorts stopped payments on a $725 million mortgage tied to the nearby Hilton San Francisco Union Square and Parc 55 hotels, two of the largest in the city, and plans to surrender them as well. Next to Westfield mall, Old Navy is also closing in a few weeks, and the April fatal shooting of Banko Brown by a Walgreens security guard on the same block underscored the crime and public safety challenges in the area.
Last month, Westfield blamed “unsafe conditions” and “lack of enforcement against rampant criminal activity” in part for Nordstrom’s departure from the mall.
Exit question: Vacant skyscrapers, empty trains: can San Francisco once again reinvent itself?
Detroit could not be reached for comment.
GEN. MICHAEL FLYNN: Barack Obama’s True Legacy. The seeds of the catastrophe now befalling our nation.
Several weeks after the highly questionable 2020 presidential election appeared to put his vice president, Joe Biden, on the path to the White House, Barack Obama told late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert that he would like to have a third term by proxy: “I used to say if I can make an arrangement where I had a stand-in or front-man or front-woman and they had an earpiece in and I was just in my basement in my sweats looking through the stuff and I could sort of deliver the lines while someone was doing all the talking and ceremony, I’d be fine with that because I found the work fascinating.”
Early on in Joe Biden’s calamitous presidency, it became clear that Biden was indeed someone’s proxy, and that someone was likely Barack Hussein Obama. Even if Barack Obama is not actually directing Biden’s actions from his basement, the Biden administration established itself immediately as the instrument for the resumption of the Obama agenda.
Read the whole thing.
WHEEL OF FORTUNE HOST PAT SAJAK, 76, RETIRING: ‘It’s been a wonderful ride.’ “Well, the time has come. I’ve decided that our 41st season, which begins in September, will be my last.”
ALEXANDER BUTTERFIELD, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Senator Grassley stated on the Senate floor that he has read the unredacted 1023 in the Biden family business case, and it says that the Burisma executive who allegedly bribed Joe and Hunter Biden says he has audio recordings of his conversations with them.
SOME PARTS OF AMERICA STILL WORK: With second launch of day, SpaceX marks 200th orbital-class rocket recovery.
THE PATRIOT MISSILE, finally living up to the hype.
Around 3:30 a.m. one recent morning, more than a dozen Russian missiles flashed on the radar screens of the Ukrainian air-defense crew defending this capital city.
The missiles were coursing toward Kyiv, some as fast as six times the speed of sound and many heading directly for the crew’s missile battery.
The Ukrainians didn’t panic, their commander said in an interview. They didn’t have time.
But they did have a U.S.-made Patriot surface-to-air missile system, which days earlier had, for the first time, knocked down an ultrafast Kinzhal ballistic missile. Also known as the Kh-47, the Kinzhal is one of Russia’s most advanced weapons.
Early that morning, May 16, the Patriot’s radar detected the missiles, including six Kinzhals, at a distance of about 125 miles. The system’s computer tracked the missiles and launched interceptors, destroying all of them, the last at a distance of about 9 miles—seconds before impact.
“No one was 100% sure that the Patriot was capable of destroying a Kh-47 hypersonic missile,” said Col. Serhiy Yaremenko, commander of the 96th Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, which defends Kyiv. “Ukrainians proved it.”
Forty years after it was brought into service, the Patriot air-defense system is finally doing what it was designed for. It is destroying incoming missiles and other aerial threats in Europe and proving indispensable to the Ukrainian forces defending their ground troops, cities and critical infrastructure.
Downside: “Each Patriot system costs about $1 billion and takes two years to build, while the interceptors run as high as $4 million apiece, according to Pentagon budget documents.”
NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE: Miami officials stress ‘law and order’ in preparation for Trump’s indictment hearing.
Far from the dismissive tone Mediaite has taken with respect to the Twitter show, Axios says, “The contract battle between Fox and its former top host — who was taken off the air in April, after the network’s historic Dominion settlement — has mighty repercussions for the conservative media ecosystem.”
“With ‘Tucker on Twitter,’ Carlson and his growing production team are working to elevate Elon Musk’s social media site as a news platform,” the outlet stated, adding that his first two episodes “drew a combined 169 million views.”
As it is continuing to pay Carlson, Fox News is arguing that, at least through December 31, 2024, his content must remain exclusive to the cable network, even if it refuses to air it, as per Carlson’s contract.
Carlson, on the other hand, maintains that he has a First Amendment right to post on Twitter, and is accusing Fox of material breaches of his contract.
Attorney Harmeet Dhillon, along with Bryan Freedman, represents Carlson and said Fox is guilty of ignoring “its shareholder obligations.”
“Fox News continues to ignore the interests of its viewers, not to mention its shareholder obligations,” Dhillon said in a statement to Axios.
Chadwick Moore, Carlson’s biographer, “was on OAN recently and said that the non-compete portion of his contract did not consider Twitter a competitor. And since Twitter didn’t hire him, he’s not an employee.”
DOUBLEPLUS GOOD! UPDATE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARIES ACCORDINGLY, COMRADES:
TERMINAL LUCIDITY: “For decades, researchers, hospice caregivers and stunned family members have watched with awe as people with Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia suddenly regain their memories and personalities just before death. To their family members it might seem like a second lease on life, but for many experienced medical workers, it can be a sign the end is near.”
So what you’re saying is Joe Biden is currently safe.
Southern Baptists are meeting in New Orleans for their annual convention this week. Megachurch Pastor Rick Warren, author of the bestselling book The Purpose-Driven Life, is waging war with the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), hoping to push the denomination to the left on the issue of female pastors.
Warren, now “retired” but still listed as the Founding Pastor on Saddleback Church’s website, is pressuring the SBC to allow female pastors, contrary to clear biblical teaching that pastoral roles are reserved for men.
Warren has been all over Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube this past week, viciously attacking his opponents (while calling for love and reconciliation). He’s become increasingly combative, calling his opponents “angry fundamentalists,” “angry fighters,” and “legalist showmen.” (I’ll leave it up to readers to determine who’s playing the role of “showman” in this debate.)
Warren also issued a veiled threat to leaders who oppose him. During a recent podcast with Christianity Today Editor-in-Chief Russell Moore, he warned, “We [Saddleback churches] don’t need the Southern Baptist Convention. They need the 6,000 purpose-driven churches that are in the Southern Baptist Convention in our fellowship, but we don’t need the Convention. It would be for the benefit of others, not for us.” In other words, if he doesn’t get his way on liberalizing the doctrine of the SBC, he’ll take his churches and go home.
Going woke is simply exchanging one religion for another.
DRUDGE REPORT BIAS MOVED FROM LEAN RIGHT TO CENTER: ALLSIDES ANALYSIS.
A new AllSides media bias analysis of Drudge Report found the news aggregator displayed articles from news sources with an AllSides Media Bias Rating™ on the left more than the center or right. A subsequent Editorial Review of Drudge Report found much sensationalism in the news aggregator’s story choices and word choices, and many story choices appealing to the right.
As a result of these analyses, the AllSides review panel issued an overall AllSides Media Bias Rating™ of Center (+0.93) for Drudge Report.
Flashback: Where’s Matt Drudge? “The Drudge Report reminds me of MTV in the early 2000s, a channel I returned to sheerly out of habit based on its greatness from decades before.”