The synthetic campaign continues; there is absolutely nothing authentic about this creature except, perhaps, her 80 IQ

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not this one — this one's absolutely genuine. I mean the one below. 

This Might Be the Most Poorly Staged ‘Presidential’ Photo of Kamala Ever

Presidential candidates often seize crises as opportunities to showcase their leadership and ability to handle adversity. Kamala Harris seems to be attempting to exploit Hurricane Helene for the same purpose.

However, she so blatantly staged her efforts that they reek of desperation. Late Sunday night, tweeted that FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell on Hurricane Helene briefed her, that they discussed the federal response, and that she spoke with North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper about the state’s ongoing rescue and recovery efforts. 

Of course, just like if you go to the gym without sharing a photo on social media to prove it, it doesn't count, the update from Harris from the official vice president's account on X included a photographic "evidence" of Kamala taking charge during this crisis.

This staged photo of Kamala at the FEMA briefing is a whole new level of poorly staged moments. You'll notice the intense look on her face, the pen in hand, a pad of paper, phone flat on the desk, and a lone earbud in her ear.

Do you notice what's wrong with it?

Our Department of Education building will be draped in black bunting by noon today

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"he took one for the team"

Israeli strike kills Hamas commander in Lebanon, 3 Palestinian militant leaders killed in separate strike

A Hamas commander who worked alongside Hezbollah and led the terrorist group’s activities in Lebanon has been taken out in an airstrike, Israeli officials say. 

Fateh Sherif, the head of the Lebanon branch of Hamas, was killed overnight, according to a joint statement Monday from the Israel Defense Forces and Israel’s domestic security agency Shin Bet. 

"Sherif was responsible for coordinating Hamas' terror activities in Lebanon with Hezbollah operatives. He was also responsible for Hamas’ efforts in Lebanon to recruit operatives and acquire weapons," officials said. "He led the Hamas terrorist organization's force build-up efforts in Lebanon and operated to advance Hamas' interests in Lebanon, both politically and militarily." 

The officials added that Sherif was "an accredited UNRWA member, and was the head of the UNRWA Teachers Union in Lebanon." Some members of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency are accused of participating in Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which began the war in Gaza.

Inching back UPDATED

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373 Taconic Road, $7.1 million, is under contract after 26 days. The current owner will make out nicely here — he paid $4.6 in a distress sale in 2020 — but his predecessor was not so fortunate, having purchased it new in 2005 for $9.350. Perhaps that poor dupe’s profligacy was the occasion for his later fiscal difficulties, but that makes no matter to this seller now.

I keep posting on the current owner’s difficulties with the law, and then forgetting I’ve done so. Here’s a link that leads to the others.

Pending on North Street

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560 North Street, a 1796 charmer in that 2+ acre Taconic-North Street triangle, was listed at $2.750 million 12 days ago and is reported as pending today. Quite a difference from an earlier attempt that began at $2.950 in June, 2019 and ended unsuccessfully December 2020 even after dropping to $2.795. I’d attribute the different result to the introduction of The Zebra, but apparently that poor creature was there all along, as the picture below, taken from the previous listing, clearly shows. Who can explain the vagaries of the market>

Owners paid $2.130 for the house in 2002 and performed some substantial renovations during their years of ownership.

And here's someone we won't miss, but it's a fascinating story of how that happy state of affairs came to be

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Israel killed Hezbollah leader Nasrallah with 80 tons of bunker-buster bombs after spies spent years penetrating his entire network

The devastating airstrike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was the result of a years-long operation by Israeli intelligence that penetrated the terror leader’s entire network — allowing him to be tracked to his underground command center in Beirut.

The Israeli military then used 80 tons of specially designed bunker-busting bombs to blast through the heavily fortified hideout on Friday and kill the slippery Nasrallah — who has survived multiple previous attempts to assassinate him.

Nasrallah’s death was exactly what Israel had been hoping for when it launched a bombing campaign that day, the Financial Times reports.

Unbeknownst to Nasrallah, Israeli intelligence was well aware of the movements of Hezbollah’s leadership following years of hacking and surveillance work on the Lebanese terror group — which is one of the largest and best armed militias in the world.

After failing to kill Nasrallah multiple times during the 2006 war, Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate (Aman) devoted itself to penetrating Hezbollah.

The Jewish state got its big break in 2012 when the militant group deployed its fighters to Syria to help ally President Bashar al-Assad quell an uprising.

Former Israeli intelligence officials and Lebanese politicians told the FT that the battle in Syria unearthed a trove of information from the otherwise secretive terror group, with Hezbollah constantly publishing information on its slain fighters that revealed their personal information.

“They went from being highly disciplined and purists to someone who [when defending Assad] let in a lot more people than they should have,” Yezid Sayigh, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center, told the outlet.

“The complacency and arrogance was accompanied by a shift in its membership — they started to become flabby.”

The new data allowed Israel to compile extensive profiles on Hezbollah’s operatives, including the top chiefs who would attend the funerals of the slain fighters.

Narrowing its targets, the Jewish state then began hacking into the terror group’s communication devices, with spies able to track down the exact movements of Hezbollah’s operatives — sometimes through their wives’ cell phones.

Israel’s spies also tracked Hezbollah leaders’ movements by hacking surveillance cameras in Lebanon, and even reading their cars’ odometers.

As a result, Israel learned that whenever the routines of the terror group deviated, an attack was imminent, Israeli officials told the FT.

That very thing occurred on Friday as Israel bombarded Beirut, with officials learning that Nasrallah was en route to his “command and control” bunker.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way; we lack the will, Israel doesn’t.

The Jewish state had been planning the attack for months as it developed bombs outfitted with timed explosions that would dig through the earth, allowing the next bomb to reach further down, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Unlike the US, which has heavy bombers and massive 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs for destroying bunkers deep underground, the Israeli military has only fighter jets — limiting the size of ordnance warplanes can carry.

The Israeli bombardment successfully reached Nasrallah’s hideout 60 feet underground.

Sad News

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One of the best. Kristofferson got sober and stayed sober decades ago, but he wrote Sunday Morning Coming Down before he did, and I consider it his masterpiece; in 3 minutes he captures the feelings of loneliness and despair of an alcoholic better than some authors take 300 pages to accomplish. Efficiency: gotta love it.

Great backstory on the song here

Kris Kristofferson Once Landed A Helicopter In Johnny Cash’s Yard To Pitch Him “Sunday Morning Coming Down”

Whatever it takes. The legendary Kris Kristofferson passed away yesterday at the age of 88, leaving behind a legacy as one of the greatest songwriters in country music history. Aside from being a legendary songwriter and country artist, along with a member of The Highwaymen, Kristofferson had quite the interesting life before country music. He was a Rhodes Scholar, an Oxford grad, a Captain and helicopter pilot in the United States Army, he completed Ranger School, seeming to excel at everything he put his mind to. While studying English lit at Oxford, Kristofferson began to hone his craft as a singer songwriter. And when he finished up in the military in 1965, he moved to Nashville to pursue a career in music. According to an interview from Cowboys & Indians, it was a move that he credited with saving his life: “I think if it hadn’t been for Nashville. I probably would have ended up going to Vietnam, because I’d been in the Army. I was definitely not doing what I thought I was supposed to do. And I think I probably would have ended up a hopeless alcoholic or something.”

Kristofferson's cousin plugged him into the music scene, but he really wasn't having much success and took a job as a janitor at Columbia records. Working at the record label, he would often times run into artists like George Jones, Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, but these music stars weren't exactly in the market to collect songs from the guy sweeping the floors. He later took a job as a helicopter flight instructor with the National Guard, but when he wasn't piloting down in the Gulf, he was still pitching songs around Nashville.

And he went to some pretty great lengths to pitch his songs - including the time he landed a helicopter in Johnny Cash's yard to try to get some of his demos in the hands of The Man in Black. According to Cash, Kris landed with a beer in one hand and the demo in the other, walked up to him half drunk, gave him the demo of "Sunday Morning Coming Down" and "Me & Bobby McGee," and left the same way he came. However, Kristofferson doesn't quite recall the story the same way that Cash described it. In fact, according to Kris, Johnny wasn't even there: “Well, I admit, that did happen, but that didn’t do me any good, landing on John’s property. He wasn’t even there in the house at the time. I think he told the story that I got out of the helicopter with a beer in one hand and a tape in the other. But he wasn’t even in the house. And I never would have been drinking while flying a helicopter.”

And apparently June wasn't home either... Kris used to give demos to June for Johnny to listen to, but unfortunately for Kris, when June would play demos for Johnny, he ended up throwing most of them in the lake. “She wasn’t there either... but you know what? I never was going to contradict either one of them.”

Either way, the helicopter stunt was enough for Johnny to take notice. Cash was a fan of "Sunday Morning Coming Down" and played the song live shortly thereafter. …. He eventually recorded it, it became an absolute smash, and the rest is history. On an episode of The Johnny Cash Show, Cash eloquently explained what the song meant to him: “I suppose we’ve all … all of us been at one time or another ‘a drifter at heart,’ and today, like yesterday, there’s many that are on that road heading out. Not searching maybe for work, as much as for self-fulfillment, or understanding of their life … trying to find a meaning for their life. … Many who have drifted — including myself — have found themselves no closer to peace of mind than a dingy backroom, on some lonely Sunday morning, with it coming down all around you.”

Here they are performing together.

Well, someone had to do it, and we wouldn't

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Chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Gen. CQ Brown, Jr. shows the houthis who's boss

Just this past Friday, FWIW's military expert suggested that our hapless government beg Israel for help with the Houthis who've shut down the Red Sea and are attacking our ships. Apparently, the Israelis decided they couldn’t wait for the Friends of Iran group to leave Washington in January, so they’ve gone ahead and done it on their own.


Israeli Air Force strikes Houthi targets in Yemen with 'extensive' operation

Israel strikes Houthi terror targets, including power plants and a port, in Yemen

The Israeli Air Force is conducting strikes against Iran-backed Houthi targets in Yemen on Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed.

The IDF said in a statement that its air force struck Houthi targets in Yemen approximately 1,800 kilometers from Israel.

The Israeli military described "an extensive, intelligence-based aerial operation" involving dozens of IAF aircraft, including fighter jets, midair refueling aircraft, and intelligence aircraft, striking "military targets belonging to the Houthi terrorist regime in the Ras Isa and Hudaydah areas of Yemen." 

The IDF said targets included power plants and a seaport used to import oil, "which were used by the Houthi terrorist regime to transfer Iranian weapons to the region, in addition to military supplies and oil." 

It would have been wiser of the Iran/Houthi missile boys to restrict their attacks to U.S. warships and commercial vessels, and leave Israel alone; bad things happen to those who don’t:

The operation was conducted in response to recent attacks by the Houthis against Israel, the IDF said. 

We will control everything, and you will be happy

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don’t make me pull over !

WATCH: John Kerry at WEF Literally Calls For End of First Amendment Speech Rights

(Related: Hillary Clinton Demands ‘Criminal Penalties’ for Americans to Deter ‘Misinformation’)

Here’s America’s favorite windsurfer at the World Economic Forum:

The dislike of and anguish over social media is just growing and growing and growing. And it’s part of our problem, particularly in democracies, in terms of building consensus around any issue. It’s really hard to govern today… The referees we used to have to determine what’s a fact and what isn’t a fact have kind of been eviscerated to a certain degree. And people go and people self-select where they go for their news and for their information, and then you just get into a vicious cycle. So it’s really, really hard, much harder to build consensus today than at any time in the 45 or 50 years I’ve been involved in this. And there’s a lot of discussion now about how you curb those entities in order to guarantee that you’re going to have some accountability on facts, etcetera. But look, if people go to only one source, and the source they go to is sick and has an agenda, and they’re putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to just hammer it out of existence. So what you need, what we need, is to win the ground, win the right to govern by, hopefully, winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to implement change.

It's too bad no one under 30 watches Bill Mahr, because this is good

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moron patrol

“In 1776, James Monroe was 18; Alexander Hamilton was 21, and James Madison was 25. America’s founders? They were the Gen Z of their day, and when they were your age, they founded a country; what the fuck have you done?”

On Immigration

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City Journal:

In raising the issue of immigration during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Donald Trump repeated online allegations that migrants were eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio. Those claims and the media response to them have overshadowed the bigger policy picture. While some anti-border control activists portray immigration as being like the tides and thus immune to human interventions, the past few years have demonstrated how much policymakers’ choices can influence immigration rates. This is especially the case with the executive branch, charged with enforcing and administering immigration law.

We don’t need to go to a small midwestern town to see the reality that U.S. immigration policy has created. From January 2021 onward, the Biden White House systemically set about dismantling border controls. President Biden rolled back interior enforcement, pushed the already-strained asylum system past its limits, and used executive power to grant legal status to migrants.

In September 2021, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas issued a memo that essentially exempted most illegal immigrants from deportation proceedings unless they presented credible threats to national security or public safety, or unless they tried to enter the United States illegally after November 1, 2020. That latter criterion would also seem to exempt from deportation migrants who entered the United States legally after November 1, 2020, and then overstayed their visa. This strategy of widespread non-enforcement took years to wend its way through the courts, but the message was clear: the Biden administration had little interest in enforcing immigration laws within the nation’s interior. A report from the Migration Policy Institute celebrated this measure as “perhaps [having] the most impact on the daily lives of immigrants and their families in the United States” of all the Biden administration’s actions on migration.

Biden also erased many of the immigration policies of his predecessor and thus set the stage for the current asylum crisis. Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy required migrants who petitioned for asylum when intercepted along the southern border to return to Mexico to wait for their asylum hearing. During the pandemic, the Trump administration also invoked Title 42 to turn immediately back unauthorized migrants intercepted along the border. Biden announced the end of the “Remain in Mexico” policy within weeks of his inauguration, and he also began unwinding Title 42 (it was fully terminated in May 2023).

Compounding this dialing back of enforcement, the Biden administration also used executive authority in unprecedented ways to increase migration. According to a January CBS report, the administration granted “humanitarian parole” to more than a million migrants, temporarily making many of them eligible for employment in the United States. As a Migration Policy Institute report demonstrates, the administration also used parole in an unprecedented way by granting parole status to hundreds of thousands of migrants each year who were intercepted at the border. (Both Trump and Barack Obama issued parole at the border in only a few dozen cases each year.) Biden’s team also dramatically expanded the use of “temporary protected status” (TPS) by giving temporary authorization to work in the United States to hundreds of thousands of migrants, particularly from Latin America. A Congressional Research Service report in May estimated that almost 900,000 people currently hold TPS status, which often gets renewed.

Taken together, these executive actions created a powerful magnet for unauthorized migration. If intercepted, an authorized migrant could try to claim asylum and then be released into the interior of the country. The Biden administration’s humanitarian parole and TPS policies provide further incentives for such migration, and the CBP One border app provided a mechanism for funneling hundreds of thousands of migrants into the United States to begin the long process of applying for asylum.

This magnet drew people from across the world to the U.S. southern border. In the 2020 fiscal year, the Border Patrol had about 400,000 encounters with unauthorized migrants; that number exploded to over 2 million encounters in both the 2022 and 2023 fiscal years. So far, the 2024 fiscal year has registered about 1.5 million Border Patrol encounters. The exact size of this unauthorized surge remains unknown, but there are a few hints. Drawing from federal data, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) calculates that, under Biden, the foreign-born population has grown at a rate unprecedented in recent American history—by about 6.6 million since his inauguration. CIS estimates that a majority of this growth has come from unauthorized migration. Federal data may well undercount the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States, so the magnitude of this influx could be even greater.

The Infamous Gumball Lecture

The video below is of an immigration foe, arguing that we should ban all immigration. I completely disagree with that position, but his point that we cannot meaningfully address, let alone solve, world poverty by bringing in a handful of the world’s destitute is spot-on. In addition to that point, notice that when this lecture was taped in 1996 we were admitting 1,000,000 people into the country each year, selected on merit. One million.