IT’S TIME FOR VICTORIA TAFT’S West Coast, Messed Coast™—Kommie Kamala’s Border Disaster Edition
Author Archive: Stephen Green
August 23, 2024
Details about the forgotten radios were included in a recent report from Rep. Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican member of the congressional task force investigating the events of that day. Higgins claims that a county emergency services commander had “personally reminded” Secret Service counter-sniper teams to pick up their assigned radios at a command post located at the Butler County Fairgrounds. “It didn’t happen,” according to Higgins’ report.
That detail was confirmed to CNN by Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger.
“I can confirm that the Butler County ESU team made radios available to the Secret Service and that they were not utilized by the Secret Service,” Goldinger said in a statement. While it’s unclear if Secret Service would have gotten the warning about a man on the roof had they picked up the radios, Goldinger said, “It is safe to assume that if a holder of an ESU radio was paying attention, they would have received the call.”
It probably isn’t practical to disband the Secret Service and use competitive bidding to hire private security — but it sure is tempting.
PAULA BOLYARD: The Nightmare Has Come full Circle.
BREAKING: RFK Jr. announces in Pennsylvania court filing that he will endorse Donald Trump.
More:
It took them a month to twitch aside a sitting POTUS. Don't expect anyone to stop now. It's too late.
— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) August 23, 2024
And:
This implies that future challenges to the DNC will be big, radical challengers. Not a Romney but a Trump on steroids. As the system rolls out of control an ever bigger brake is needed to slow it down. Donald was inevitable, seen in this light.
— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) August 23, 2024
Kennedy voters won’t come out for Harris — not after this. But can they be persuaded to come out for Trump?
FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY: Is That a Pizza in Your Pocket or Are You Just Happy to Fleece Me? “Florida Man Friday is usually reserved for our VIP supporters but everybody needs a little extra fun after four days of the Democratic National Convention, so how about I open it up to everybody this week?”
PRIORITIES:
A regime always reacts most strongly against those who threaten its future, and most leniently against those who promote it. pic.twitter.com/5aWbyvmmlR
— Dissident Soaps (@DissidentSoaps) August 23, 2024
Britain’s Conservatives governed like Labour Lite, so frustrated voters gave power to Labour — which they’ll come to regret.
Then again, conservatives who govern like soft-leftists eventually always lose out to hard-leftists.
THE PRESS DIDN’T SEEM TO MIND GETTING USED (AGAIN): The DNC ‘Special Guest’ Rumor Turned out to Be a Con Job for Ratings.
This sums it up even better:
The DNC telling young voters “just wait, we have a super secret surprise guest for you if you keep supporting us!” And then there being nothing is just a bit on the nose.
— e-beth (@ebeth360) August 23, 2024
BIDEN’S PRICY PHOTO-OP: US military asking contractors to help haul boats used in troubled Gaza pier mission back to the US.
Three boats deployed in March for the mission: the US Army Vessels Monterrey, Matamoros, and Wilson Wharf. The Pentagon had previously said that all personnel and equipment used with the temporary pier — called the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS — were scheduled to be home by mid-September.
It’s unclear how much the contract to bring the vessels back will cost the military. A spokesperson for Military Sealift Command told CNN the contract is “currently in the procurement phase, which means it is out for competitive bids.”
Retired Marine Corps Col. Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the CSIS International Security Program, estimated that the contract would go for $300,000 per float-on/float-off vessel, which would be used to transport the three boats. The contract description says it is for “multiple awards up to two vessels or until the Government’s needs are met,” meaning it could come out to roughly $600,000 total if two vessels are required.
The pier was announced by President Joe Biden in his State of the Union address in March.
“A temporary pier would enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day,” Biden said.
But in the end it was only operational for roughly 20 days at a cost of the $230 million and did little to alleviate the grave humanitarian situation in Gaza as the war between Hamas and Israel, which has claimed thousands of civilian lives, continues.
Plus: “Unless the whole unit is deploying somewhere, that means these boats are in rough shape.”
The video included several quotes from critics panning Coppola’s previous work — but none of the phrases, attributed to the likes of Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael, could be found in any of their reviews.
Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman was incorrectly cited as calling the 1992 film “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” “a beautiful mess” and highlighting its “absurdity” when he reviewed the film for Entertainment Weekly, where he worked at the time of its release.
“Even if you’re one of those people who don’t like critics, we hardly deserve to have words put in our mouths. Then again, the trivial scandal of all this is that the whole ‘Megalopolis’ trailer is built on a false narrative,” Gleiberman said of the trailer’s falsified quotes. “Critics loved ‘The Godfather.’ And though ‘Apocalypse Now’ was divisive, it received a lot of crucial critical support. As far as me calling ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ ‘a beautiful mess,’ I only wish I’d said that! Regarding that film, it now sounds kind.”
It’s not clear where most of the quotes featured in the trailer came from — with the exception of Roger Ebert’s comment, “a triumph of style over substance,” which was actually pulled from his 1989 review of “Batman,” and not about “Dracula,” as indicated in the trailer.
You have to suspect that somebody used an AI to cull quotes instead of doing their own research, and… well, you know the rest.
SHE ALSO SET A NEW LAND-SPEED RECORD FOR FLIP-FLOPS LAST NIGHT: Lies, Damned Lies, and Kamala’s Propaganda About Gaza and Israel.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: SLS contract extension hints at additional Artemis delays.
NASA, in an Aug. 14 procurement filing, announced its intent to extend that contract to at least September 2026. That would allow Teledyne Brown to complete work on the third and final LVSA “as well as to ultimately conclude LVSA activities” under the contract.
The proposed extension also includes several options for additional extensions. The first is a nine-month extension that would allow the contract to run through June 2027. That would be exercised “in the event an extension is necessary to conclude Artemis III launch and post-flight analysis in support of NASA Administrator Bill Nelson’s public announcement on January 9, 2024, in relation to the current SLS launch manifest,” the filing stated.
That is a reference to the announcement by the agency of delays in both the Artemis 2 and 3 missions. At a Jan. 9 briefing, NASA said that Artemis 2 would launch no earlier than September 2025, with Artemis 3 to follow no earlier than September 2026.
The agency has not updated those launch dates since then. However, NASA has yet to publicly resolve one of the issues that prompted the Artemis 2 launch delay, erosion to the heat shield of the Orion spacecraft on the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission in 2022. It is also unclear if development of key elements for Artemis 3, notably the Starship lunar lander by SpaceX, are on a schedule that could support a mission in late 2026.
Meanwhile: China on track for crewed moon landing by 2030, space official says.
It’s a real race.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Harris’s Acceptance Speech Was a Cliché Lib Facebook Post. “I’m going to air some familiar gripes about all of what went on because I want the intergalactic aliens who discover my body of work a thousand years from now to have a clear picture of just how awful the Democrats and their flying monkeys in the mainstream media were.”
CHANGE? Colorado Springs City Council sends recreational marijuana sale ban to the voters.
The Colorado Springs City Council voted 8 to 1 to send a question to the ballot that would ban recreational marijuana stores in the city’s charter. A charter amendment would trump a city ordinance.
The vote followed extensive public testimony that touched on the potential harms of marijuana, the benefits of expanding sales in town and letting voters decide how to regulate marijuana.
At the same time, a citizen’s group has submitted signatures to put a question on the ballot to allow recreational marijuana stores in town. The citizen’s proposal would only allow the existing medical marijuana shops to transition to selling marijuana recreationally. The revenues would support public safety, mental health services and the post-traumatic stress disorder treatment programs for veterans.
City Clerk Sarah Johnson said the city verifying signatures on Tuesday so she couldn’t say if the citizen’s question would make the ballot. The citizen’s group was about 8,800 signatures short, she said.
Two years ago, city residents turned down a question to legalize recreation[AL] marijuana sales in town with 57% voting against it.
Outside of the Denver-Boulder Axis and its resort-town annexes, Colorado is still pretty conservative.
BUT NOTHING WILL CHANGE: NOW They Tell Us: State-Run Media Admits Kamala Insiders Lied All Along About Joe’s Dementia.
Michigan Secretary Of State Tries To Rush Potentially ‘Illegal’ Rules To Rig The November Election.
The bill’s effective date is 91 days after the final adjournment of the 2024 regular session. Because the legislative session is still ongoing, the bill will not go into effect until well beyond the November election. Nonetheless, confident of the bill’s passage and eager to expedite implementation, Benson’s office already had a first set of rules relating to the conduct of election recounts in the can and ready for public comment before Gov. Gretchen Whitmer even signed SB 603 into law on July 8.
A mandatory hearing for comment on this set of rules — which reflect the new law’s provisions drastically limiting the opportunity for recounts, the definition of fraud, and the ability of canvassers to investigate — was set for June 17. The SB 603 rules were then also sent to Michigan’s Board of State Canvassers for approval.
The board, composed of two Republicans and two Democrats appointed by Gov. Whitmer, gave the green light to Benson’s rules within two weeks of the bill being signed into law. Neither of the Republicans, Richard Houskamp and Anthony Daunt, responded to a request for comment regarding the approval of the rules.
The new board-approved rules regarding the conduct of election recounts concentrate power at the state and county levels. Michigan Fair Elections Founder Patrice Johnson noted this potential danger.
Read the whole thing.
ROBERT SPENCER: PBS’s Failed Attempt to Cook Up a New Trump Scandal Shows Again How the Media is Worse Than Useless. “What is noteworthy is that PBS was clearly caught out because it thought it had a sensational story, one so useful to the leftist cause that it just had to be true. Any critical eye it might once have had is long gone, and now PBS and the rest judge stories only on the basis of how bad they make Trump and other patriots look.”
August 22, 2024
LET THE JOY AND THE VIBES END HERE: DNC Grand Finale Live Blog.
PETER THIEL: California As Saudi Arabia. “It’s not the way you might want to design a system from scratch, but it’s pretty stable. People have been saying Saudi Arabia is ridiculous, it’s going to collapse any year now. They’ve been saying that for 40 or 50 years. But you know, if you have a giant oil field you can pay for a lot of ridiculousness… I think that’s the way you have to think of California. There’s things about it that are ridiculous, but there’s something about it. It doesn’t naturally self-destruct overnight.”
MEMORY-HOLED:
All merchandise for #StarWars ‘THE ACOLYTE’ has been removed for the Disney Online Store pic.twitter.com/qRkG47NS3U
— ScreenTime (@screentime) August 21, 2024
Disney has been memory-holing embarrassingly unloved streaming shows like “Willow” to save money. It looks like “The Acolyte” might be next.
The eight-episode first only season reportedly cost $180 million to produce — not including marketing expenses.