Open Thread

That’s FBI Director Kash Patel to you, Liberals

Confirmed 51-49 because Collins chose this as her “I’m an independent” vote to retain electoral viability in Maine and Murkowski just hates the Republican party.

Remember, the Democrats have been mostly lock-step against our guys while Biden’s clowns almost all got significant GOP votes. That really has to stop. Until Democrats stop being vicious partisans, we have to be vicious partisans.

How does our Ruling Class view him? Well, they consider him a Conspiracy Theorist…mostly because Patel knows that 2020 was fraudulent, J6 was a set-up and he knows where the bodies are buried in the Trump-Russia op. In other words, he knows who the bad guys are – and the bad guys know he knows. And now he’s the director of the federal government’s most powerful law enforcement agency. A lot of people in DC are Googling defense attorneys today.

Reminder: the only good thing about Fetterman is that he’s not a raving anti-Semite. Other than that, he’s true-blue, fanatic Commie Left. He voted against Patel as he’s voted routinely against Trump’s other nominees.

The James Bond character has been signed over to Bezos…so, in keeping with the Rings of Power production, I now expect that while Bond remains a white male they add like 19 non-white and/or non-male characters to have 27 different story lines obscuring the main Narrative. That, by the way, is what was wrong with Rings of Power. I didn’t mind adding Hobbits though in Tolkien’s universe the played no role in the First or Second Ages. I don’t care about the black dwarfs and elves as its rather irrelevant (though the problem with the Elves in all of the Tolkien movies is that they don’t make them as god-like as they are in the story – these are tall, strong, beautiful people with no signs of aging at all…in the movies they just don’t capture this). But the story of the creation of the Rings of Power has one flaw for modern production codes: only one strong female in it, Galadriel…who I think they made into Feanor’s brother when she was actually his niece which is weird but I guess they needed that as they make her character into one driven by desire for revenge on Sauron when her actual motivation in life was dominion of her own outside control of the Valar…this motivation finally coming to an end when Frodo offers her the Ring and she refuses it (“I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel”). Anyways, what they tried to do with Rings of Power was simply too much so they could add one diversity hire after another so you barely get into Sauron and the making of the Rings. I expect the Bezos Bond will have at it with SPECTRE while his niece is doing the really important work of battling dead-naming at MI6.

17 thoughts on “Open Thread

  1. Retired Spook's avatar Retired Spook February 20, 2025 / 5:11 pm

    Kash Patel has the potential to be the best FBI director in my lifetime.

    • Rdm's avatar Rdm February 20, 2025 / 5:26 pm

      is there much competition for best?

      • Retired Spook's avatar Retired Spook February 20, 2025 / 5:29 pm

        Good point. I can’t think of anyone who would be a close second. The last two should both be in prison.

  2. Amazona's avatar Amazona February 20, 2025 / 8:14 pm

    Now you’ve got me interested in revisiting the whole Rings saga. Now that the grown-ups are running the country and the smart-ass kids are doing the mathy stuff I feel better about taking some time off to delve back into good fantasy.

    The wholly predictable Leftist meltdowns are reduced to what you see right before the marshmallow falls off the stick and the blog vandals can’t do anything but whine and whinge about the reasons they don’t like some people. That frees up a lot of brain bandwidth to have some fun.

    • Mark Noonan's avatar Mark Noonan February 20, 2025 / 10:27 pm

      LOL – to me, its always been fun…and after reading Tolkien and Lewis I heard they were inspired by the book Phantastes…which I read and, sure enough, pretty much everything Tolkien and Lewis have is based on things in that book (which was written in 1858)…and, of course, it provided the inspiration for my Mirrors series.

      The thing I like about Tolkien, especially, is that no intelligent species is immune from pride and folly. In the First Age, Morgoth was the enemy (clearly a devil-figure) but it was the overweening Pride of the Elf Feanor which caused the war and set the path for disaster after disaster. I tried to capture that (in my own much weaker way) in Mirrors in that Magic – short cuts – are always fraught with peril and should be left alone…plod along on God’s plan and just wait. But nobody ever does…as the very bizarre Doli says of Rajan: he’s you, human: you conjure him up with your folly. And in a way, we really do make our own devils.

  3. Amazona's avatar Amazona February 20, 2025 / 8:15 pm

    “the really important work of battling dead-naming at MI6.”

    Well done. Congrats

  4. jdge's avatar jdge February 20, 2025 / 10:50 pm

    “When we learned about the Biden Administration’s scheme to quickly park $20 billion outside the agency, we suspected that some organizations were created out of thin air just to take advantage of this.”

    “As we continue to learn more about where some of this money went, it is even more apparent how far-reaching and widely accepted this waste and abuse has been,” he continued. “It’s extremely concerning that an organization that reported just $100 in revenue in 2023 was chosen to receive $2 billion. That’s 20 million times the organization’s reported revenue.”

    Another Solyndra type example that received a $535 million loan guarantee only to go bankrupt in 2½ years. Only this one is far worse. $20 billion hidden taxpayer money.

    This type of revelation, believed by many to be just the beginning, was previously without enough hard evidence or vital control to get the details… until now. This is certainly a significant contributing factor in why the swamp has been able to retain so much power while scamming the system. What is still not know and probably won’t be for quite some time is the extend of the deception, the people involved and the damage caused. However, the current administration now has key people in place willing and able to use the necessary force to turn over stones and prosecute the guilty – finally! The left will surely scream “political vendetta” hoping the public buys the sob stories, but I think the scope of the damage committed and its exposure will be far too big for them to manage.

    https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2025/02/20/doge-abrams-linked-group-n2652530?utm_source=breakingemail&utm_medium=email&tpcc=breaking022025

  5. jdge's avatar jdge February 20, 2025 / 11:38 pm

    There is mounting evidence to suggest that U.S. intelligence interfered in Pope Benedict’s resignation and the conclave that followed in 2013.

    I’m not aware of any specific details, but, given the state of the Catholic Church, the direction it’s heading, the monetary influence that’s been infused into the Church by the US government, the path the current pope has taken on many leftist issues and the blackmail yet to be exposed, it certainly fits. Should Trump’s administration investigate, one begins to wonder just how many investigations they’ll will have to undergo to realize the extent of all the corruption we face.

    • Mark Noonan's avatar Mark Noonan February 21, 2025 / 1:24 pm

      I won’t be giving a dime to Catholic Charities until there is massive reform…it is clear that the quest for government money has become paramount in that organization. As per usual, I assert the average Catholic in the pews is just trying to help…but malevolent actors have taken charge of Catholic Charities. It would not surprise me in the least that plenty of outside forces are passing the cash around the Church…

      • Retired Spook's avatar Retired Spook February 21, 2025 / 4:00 pm
  6. jdge's avatar jdge February 21, 2025 / 12:21 am

    Woman Sues IVF Clinic After Giving Birth to Someone Else’s Baby

    This is just one of many concerns using IVF. The extent of screw-ups is not currently known and in some cases, the mix-ups will not be revealed until much later in life if ever, denying biological parents their rights. I know Trump recently signed an EO in relation to IVF availability but there are so many dangers, not the least which is man attempting to play god, intentionally destroying a multitude of conceived children. Besides these type of “accidents”, there are many on-going disputes related to frozen embryos, how long they are kept and what happens to them when it’s decided to eliminate them. On top of all of that, as noted in this article the woman was trying to have and raise a child on her own, a not so uncommon occurrence for using IVF. Given that there are strong damaging statistics about children being raised without fathers, I would think society would strongly frown on such activity.

    https://www.lifenews.com/2025/02/20/woman-sues-ivf-clinic-after-giving-birth-to-someone-elses-baby/?cmid=9d3270ef-f9a4-41d7-93da-31d3f4fb0231

  7. Amazona's avatar Amazona February 21, 2025 / 10:34 am

    My reaction to Trump’s re-election was more relief than celebration. Oh, I was thrilled, but my emotions were more aligned with gratitude that the long dark years of Biden were not going to be repeated.

    But today, reading Jeff Childers on Coffee and Covid, I was actually excited by what he had to say about the latest of Trump’s moves. Really really excited.

    The newest executive order is titled, “Ensuring Lawful Governance and Implementing the President’s “Department of Government Efficiency” Regulatory Initiative.” They had no idea this was coming. It stacked on several previous EOs and relies on last year’s terrific Supreme Court decisions about agency powers. We will need to peek inside it to find all the presents.

    First, the order began with the shot-heard-round-the-Swamp. The war on the Deep State has entered its public phase. Trump’s forces fired on Fort Sumter. It was an open declaration of war:

    image 6.png

    Boom. “It is the policy of my Administration … to commence the deconstruction of the overbearing and burdensome administrative state.”

    The “overbearing and burdensome administrative state?” That’s a synonym for the Swamp, the Deep State. Trump is commencing its deconstruction.

    Section two begins the order. “Agency heads shall, in coordination with their DOGE Team Leads and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, initiate a process to review all regulations … for consistency with law and Administration policy.”

    They are going to review all the regulations. All of them.

    During that comprehensive review, seven categories of regulations must be identified for the chopping block. I couldn’t pick a favorite example, so here they all are:

    image 7.png

    In the meantime, Agency heads are ordered to “de-prioritize enforcement” of any regulations that exceed constitutional or statutory authority —based on the Supreme Court’s latest trimming of agency authority— or that do not comply with Administration policy.

    Those seven categories not only encompass my wildest hopes for a new administration, they expand them to levels I never dreamed possible.

    Forget the Lightbringer’s <strike> promise </strike> threat to “fundamentally transform” this country. Trump is promising to RESTORE the nation to its core political identity and values, and is acting, with incredible focus and energy, to do just that, and he is targeting the very elements imposed by the Left that have shoved this country off course.

    I’m not into day drinking but my celebration might start a little early today.

    • Mark Noonan's avatar Mark Noonan February 21, 2025 / 1:21 pm

      I haven’t paid too much attention to European politics of late because its so very depressing watching people turn themselves into slaves…but with the recent spate of “AfD is a Neo-Nazi party!” I decided to actually look at the AfD platform…expecting it to be pretty Left given the nature of European politics but it is not Left or Right…it is just a lot of common sense that, in theory, everyone across the political spectrum should support. One plank of their platform is to enforce strict separation of powers…I guess that you can be a quite senior bureaucrat in the German government and an elected member of the Bundestag. Can we say, “conflict of interest” boys and girls? Another thing they want – which would be impractical in the American system – is to allow direct votes of the people on some acts of the Bundestag – this is stripped out of the Swiss system where major issues get voted up or down by the people. I see AfD’s effort here to find some way to reign in the supremacy of the legislature. Most people don’t realize that parliamentary democracy means whoever has a transient majority in parliament has pretty much total control over what’s going to happen…not even really checked by the written Constitution as all of those Constitutions have exceptions which allow government to do whatever it wants in an emergency…with the government getting to decide what constitutes an emergency. Bottom line, though, is that AfD is not Nazi…but it is a massive threat to the Ruling Class of Germany…and that Class, right to left, is uniting against AfD.

      And that is what Trump is – and things like that order are a knife in the very heart of it.

      I just hope that everyone is on their toes – Trump, Vance, Rubio…the leaders of AfD as well as the anti-Establishment parties elsewhere in the West…the global ruling class will not go down easy and when their backs are to the wall, they will try to shoot their way out of it.

  8. Amazona's avatar Amazona February 21, 2025 / 11:36 am

    When I have commented on the assignment of vast powers to the EPA through Executive Orders, even this is beyond the former arrogance and abuse of power we have seen from this agency. However, this act by the Biden Administration firmly identifies the agency as a mere adjunct to Leftist political power grabs and hopefully will support even more Draconian efforts to strip it down to its bare bones and exert firm control.

    President Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency, in its final months, executed a financial maneuver of unprecedented scope and speed—one designed to ensure that $20 billion in taxpayer funds would be impossible for the incoming Trump administration to claw back. The mechanism? A deal with Citibank, in which the EPA transferred the massive sum into escrow accounts controlled by eight nonprofit organizations, effectively putting the money beyond reach before President Trump took the oath of office.

    Rather than allowing Congress or even career EPA officials to oversee the distribution of these funds over time, Biden’s EPA administrators raced to secure commitments that would leave the new administration powerless. The grants were announced just days before Trump’s inauguration, with Citibank designated as the financial agent responsible for holding and disbursing the funds—an arrangement that shielded the money from Treasury oversight. The timing was crucial: once allocated to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the funds would be legally committed, making it nearly impossible for the Trump administration to redirect or reclaim them.

    The implications of Biden’s last-minute maneuver extend beyond the immediate $20 billion at stake. By setting up financial instruments that ensure a continuous flow of climate investment outside of direct government control, the outgoing administration effectively seeded a parallel policy apparatus, one immune to electoral outcomes. This move is emblematic of a broader trend in Democratic governance: embedding policy mechanisms that function independently of political transitions, ensuring that even when Republicans win elections, the infrastructure of progressive policy remains intact.

    Biden’s unprecedented deal with Citibank and the network of Democratic-aligned NGOs is not merely a bureaucratic quirk; it is a calculated effort to cement control over climate financing, sidestep the will of voters, and create a financial fortress that shields progressive initiatives from accountability. In the coming months, the Trump administration will face an uphill battle in dismantling this structure—one that will test the limits of executive power and congressional oversight in undoing an entrenched bureaucratic machine.

    This determination to essentially govern the nation in many ways outside the Constitutional structure of governance is typical of the Left. I wonder if one approach might be to in some way sanction Citibank for its complicity.

    • Amazona's avatar Amazona February 21, 2025 / 11:40 am

      “The US government currently has ~4.6M active credit cards/accounts, which processed ~90M unique transactions for  ~$40B of spend[ing] in FY24,” DOGE said in a post on X on Tuesday. 

      I wonder how many of these cards are run through Citibank. This might be a clue. I wonder how much other federal money goes through Citibank accounts.

      Such as: General Overview
      This manual provides general guidelines to assist Agencies/Organizations in managing their
      Transaction Dispute Process for the Government Purchase, Fleet and Travel Card programs at
      Citibank®. These programs are designed to meet the following objectives:
      • Reduce paperwork associated with administrative costs for the Purchase, Fleet and Centrally/
      Individually Billed Travel Card programs
      • Streamline procedures associated with management practices regarding the purchase of goods
      and services, official Government travel and travel-related expenditures, and fleet services
      provided to the Agency/Organization
      • Provide procedural controls and feedback to improve management control and decision making
      regarding the Government Purchase, Fleet and Travel Card programs at Citibank

  9. Amazona's avatar Amazona February 21, 2025 / 11:57 am
  10. Amazona's avatar Amazona February 21, 2025 / 12:27 pm

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