Great; so the diaper heads can destroy it

US seizes $1.6 million ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’ tablet from Hobby Lobby and will return it to Iraq.

A 3,500-year-old clay tablet that bears the text of one of the world’s oldest works of literature and was purchased by Hobby Lobby in 2014 for $1.6 million has been forfeited to the United States, the feds announced.

The tablet, which contains a portion of the “Epic of Gilgamesh,” came from the area of modern-day Iraq and was illegally shipped to the US in 2003, the Department of Justice alleged.

The tablet, known as the “Gilgamesh Dream Tablet” because it contains a portion of the poem in which the protagonist describes his dreams to his mother, was sold several times with a “false letter of provenance,” according to the DOJ, before Hobby Lobby purchased it at auction for $1.6 million.

Hobby Lobby purchased the tablet to be displayed at the Washington, DC-based Museum of the Bible, which is funded by the family of the arts and crafts chain’s founder, David Green.

In a complaint filed in May 2020, prosecutors said the 5-by-6-inch tablet is the property of the Iraqi government and should be returned. Hobby Lobby cooperated with the investigation, the DOJ said.

In April 2003, an unnamed antiquities dealer purchased the rare cuneiform tablet along with a number of other items from another dealer in London, prosecutors said.

In 2007, that dealer sold the tablet for $50,000 to another buyer, and allegedly provided a fake provenance letter, falsely claiming it had been legitimately obtained at an auction in 1981 before laws were passed restricting the importation of Iraqi artifacts.

The tablet was later sold by an unnamed international auction house to Hobby Lobby in 2014 for an eye-popping $1,674,000 to be displayed at the Museum of the Bible.

Three years later, a museum curator contacted the auction to clear up some contradictory information about the item’s origins.

Despite inquiries from the museum and Hobby Lobby, the auction house failed to disclose details about how it had obtained the artifact and withheld the false provenance letter, which it knew would not hold up to “scrutiny in a public auction,” prosecutors wrote in court papers.

You’ve got the Garden of Eden in Gilgamesh, plus the Great Flood, ark and all, and lots of other good stuff. While it’s possible the Muslim fanatics soon to reclaim the territory will respect it as part of Islamic heritage, they don’t have a good track record for honoring other religions; I’m guessing the tablet’s remaining lifespan will be no longer than our own Jefferson Memorial.

aluh akbar, baby!

Sale on Desiree

7 Desiree Drive, asked $3.795, got $3.775. Aside from its unfortunate name, Desire’s a nice street, and this is a nice house. Mark Mariani bought the 1966 structure in February, 2003, completed his patented Mariani Speed-Build rehab in five months, and sold it to these sellers that same year for $3.655.

So minus transaction costs, not a home run, but it did serve as a home for 18 years, and the fact that the owners stayed put all that time signals, to me, that they liked where they were. That’s a good testament to the qualities of the house itself.

There's something just so wrong with this picture (and the video at the link is even worse)

Masked gunman, provoked, no doubt, by systemic racism, opens fire in Brooklyn

Look at the guy, would you? What the Hell is that grip? His strong hand should be much higher, jammed against the grip safety, and where’s his second hand? Is that it on his right forearm? And his “stance”?!

Just like the politicians running our Democrat cities, I have absolutely no objection to gangbangers going at it: the fewer, the better, I agree, but for God’s sake, let’s get them some shooting classes. Their inability to deliver kill shots just tosses more paralytics on our welfare rolls, and the toll on innocent bystanders is simply awful: in this latest case, a mother with a baby in her stroller had to flee for her life, and a 53-year-old man was shot in the foot..

If asked nicely, I’m sure the NRA would be glad to supply some training to these wannabe shootists.

Or, if your target’s getting away on his street bike and a quick shot must be made …

To the extent that she and her fellow Democrats and the military officer class represent "the state", then she's right

Katie Benner: “Have I got a country for you!”

New York Times DOJ reporter labels Trump supporters “enemies of the state”.

And she and her crowd are enemies of the people; the battle lines are drawn.

Here’s what the Times calls “reporting”, not opinion:

“Today’s #January6thSelectCommittee underscores the America’s current, essential natsec dilemma: Work to combat legitimate national security threats now entails calling a politician’s supporters enemies of the state,” Benner wrote.

Benner explained, “As Americans, we believe that state power should not be used to work against a political figure or a political party. But what happens if a politician seems to threaten the state? If the politician continues to do so out of office and his entire party supports that threat?”

The Times’ DOJ reporter cast doubt that the Pelosi-appointed committee would resolve the “dilemma” since it remained “unresolved” following the Russia investigation and both impeachments of President Trump.

“That leaves it up to voters, making even more essential free, fair access to the polls,” Benner concluded.

Ms. Benner was born and raised in China, so her confusion on the proper roles of a country’s government and its citizens may be understandable, though that’s not an excuse for her editors. As someone pointed out, in response to the argument that opening up trade to China would cause that country to “westernize”, “we’re not exporting our values to them, we’re importing theirs”.

That process seems completed at the New York Times.

PSAKING BACK: Holden provides this link detailing Benner’s career with the CCP. Of course the times would hire her.

Calhoun Contract

9 Hobart Drive, $5.7 million, 56 days on the market. That’s slower than the 14 days it took to find a buyer in 2015, when it sold for $3.285, but if you’ll look at the picture from that listing, below, you’ll see that whoever redid the house this time made one, glaring error, and removed its prime selling point. Oh, what fools these designers be!

circa 2015 — who moved my zebra?!

It's all kabuki

From COVID to “Insurrection” to — well, anything our government and its useful idiots preach.

Remind me again how our Health Masters are encouraging the unvaccinated to take the dose

what difference, now, does it make?

CDC Health Director Rochelle Walensky admits that vaccinated people carry the same high viral load as the unvaccinated, and that “we’re only a few mutations away” before COVID vaccines are entirely useless.

“Of course,” Walenki told FWIW, “it’s all irrelevant anyway because settled science has announced that global warming killed the world in 2000. And if there are still some Republicans who don’t believe that, the world’s top climate expert, in Sweden, has proved that we’ll all drown no later than 2032.”

Monkeys see, monkeys do

Kamala Harris immediately puts on mask, forces reporters to as CDC pivot spurs confusion

The reporters could end this bullshit tomorrow by refusing to attend press briefings by Psaki or Harris and forcing them over to Twitter. They won’t.

Today, Indians, tomorrow, the NYT

And twerking in 2028

Break dancing will be an Olympic sport in 2024

I haven’t watched a second of the Olympics since that hockey victory in 1980? 81?, so I’ll put both these “sport” competitions on the “to be missed” shelf, right next to soccer and baseball. The biathlon is actually ahead of all three.

Why does anyone stilll believe these people?

Last Week: CDC Says 'Breakthrough' COVID Infections Are Virtually Non-Existent

Rick Moran, PJ Media: A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) document obtained by ABC News shows that “breakthrough” COVID-19 infections — among those who are already vaccinated — are extremely rare, despite headlines and scare stories in the media.

More than 156 million Americans have been fully vaccinated. The CDC estimates that there have been approximately 153,000 infections among vaccinated individuals — about 0.098 percent. This number comes from an unpublished internal CDC document obtained by ABC News.“The risk to fully vaccinated people is dramatically less than that to unvaccinated individuals. The occurrence of breakthrough cases is expected and, at this point, is not at a level that should raise any concerns about the performance of the currently available vaccines,” said Matthew Ferrari, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Pennsylvania State University.

The media hype suggests that it’s still not safe even if you’re fully vaccinated. This New York Times article — despite giving the obligatory nod to the rarity of breakthrough infections — still tries to gin up panic about the virus.

A wedding in Oklahoma leads to 15 vaccinated guests becoming infected with the coronavirus. Raucous Fourth of July celebrations disperse the virus from Provincetown, Mass., to dozens of places across the country, sometimes carried by fully vaccinated celebrants.

As the Delta variant surges across the nation, reports of infections in vaccinated people have become increasingly frequent — including, most recently, among at least six Texas Democrats, a White House aide and an aide to Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The reports are becoming “increasingly frequent” because the media is choosing to cover the issue. One supposes the justification is that the “man bites dog” story is newsworthy. But breakthrough infections are expected, which raises the issue of what’s so newsworthy about them. More from The Times:

But as worrying as the trend may seem, breakthrough infections — those occurring in vaccinated people — are still relatively uncommon, experts said, and those that cause serious illness, hospitalization or death even more so. More than 97 percent of people hospitalized for Covid-19 are unvaccinated.

TODAY: Via USA Today:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended Tuesday that fully vaccinated people wear masks indoors in areas with high transmission as COVID-19 cases continue to rise and vaccination rates wane.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said new data shows the delta variant, which accounts for more than 80% of the new infections in the U.S., behaves “uniquely differently” from its predecessors and could make vaccinated people infectious.

“Information on the delta variant from several states and other countries indicates that in rare occasions some vaccinated people infected with the delta variant after vaccination may be contagious and spread the virus to others,” Walensky said in announcing the new guidance. “This new science is worrisome and unfortunately warrants an update to our recommendation.”

But wait, there’s more! Like storms lined up in the Atlantic that smash into England one after the other, our betters in the government and their media stooges will keep the variant scam going forever, because it’s about social control, not science.