Blue Horseshoe

^ This is the core of the issue. Generally nearly all Americans just don't care what the LGBT do or don't do, as long as none of it is near children. Also, given these rates via exit polling in the 2020 general election - 25 percent of all LGBT voters were first time voters - 93 percent of LGBT who registered made it to an actual voting booth to cast a ballot - 79 percent, AT MINIMUM, was the return rate for the Democratic Party from LGBT voters. Here's the question I hope @RLLD and other Conservatives ask the radical leftists here - If the practical voting returns were the exact same numbers, but for REPUBLICANS on the ballot instead in 2020. Then how would Team Blue, the DNC, the Progressives and the radical left treat the LGBT community today? The left leaning activist MSM called Larry Elder the "black face of white supremacy" when he dared challenge Gavin Newsom during the CA recall election. Also Clarence Thomas, who was long held as an example of a success story for African Americans, has been hammered hard for simply being a Conservative ( to be fair, the financial mess around him and his wife, that's troubling and appears totally indefensible) If a minimum of 79 percent of LGBT voters did so for Republicans on the ticket, would America see the biggest widespread hate movement full of bigotry that the entire American landscape hasn't seen since the days of slavery and segregation? Wouldn't it be jarring to see someone like Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman sending their woke shock troops to go block entrances to treatment centers for "gender affirming" procedures? Seeing Hillary Clinton call them the new deplorables. Watching Biden sign Executive Order after Executive Order keeping anything rainbow oriented out of public schools. Remember when Elon Musk was a darling of the left but particular the Progressives? He was going to save the world from the climate crisis. Until he had an opinion that defied the "narrative". So he needed to be punished. Wouldn't it be unsettling to see Kamala Harris advertising the "Minnesota Freedom Fund" to get career criminals out and on the loose, so they can go attack a Pride parade? The woke have no boundaries, no tolerance, no grace and no sense of decorum. It's just crossing names off of a list. And they'd be happy to punish transgenders too if they committed the crime of being a Conservative instead.

"According to NFL.com, the Steelers made one final offer to Bell on Monday, just hours before the NFL's 4 p.m. ET deadline for teams to negotiate a new contract with their franchise player. The offer from the Steelers was worth a total of $70 million over five years (or $14 million per season). Although the offer would have given Bell the largest multi-year contract of any running back in the NFL, he turned it down, and one reason he likely did that, is because it was nowhere near his asking price, which was reportedly in the neighborhood of $17 million per season. One other reason Bell might have turned the deal down is because it apparently wasn't loaded with any substantial guarantees. According to NFL.com's Ian Rapoport, the contract included $33 million in guaranteed money, which was going to be paid out over the first two years. Rapoport also noted that the first three years of the deal would pay out $45 million (or $15 million per season), but didn't note if all of that money was guaranteed. As for the final two years of the deal, it seems that Bell had no guaranteed money. Of course, none of this matters now, since Bell didn't take the offer. " ********** One of the problems here is the sports media will side with the Rooney family no matter what. They are on the powerful Network/TV committee that negotiates the big dollar TV deals, so you aren't going to get too many wholly negative stories about the Steelers too often. I don't think Bell was ever going to see Year 3 of that Steelers deal. It was basically a two year deal for 16.5 AAV. The common argument is that he lost a year of earning. Had he gotten hurt in his first or second extension year, odds are that Jets deal wouldn't be there. Too many people are comparing what Bell turned down against the aggregate of his entire proposed contract. How many NFL players truly play out an extension like that? Especially running backs? He also got a year off from being in basically car wreck after car wreck on the field. Maybe a year off did his health some good. I understand the Steelers position. A longer deal "on paper" allows the team to spread out the guaranteed money across many more years, allowing any dead money to not hit too hard in one single year. And Bell is a running back, and they are infinite replaceable. IMHO, this situation signals more of a need for something like The Derrick Rose Rule in the NBA. Where you have a young player that is trending at or near MVP level production in his rookie contract. This is where the NFL might benefit from NBA mechanisms, i.e. more exceptions to the cap. While the NBA would generally benefit from the common NFL non guaranteed contract standard. It's hard to say. In hindsight, Reggie White going to the Packers in free agency was a great decision. But he turned down the SF 49ers, who offered to make him the highest paid defender in NFL history. While they still had their dynasty core in place. But right then and there, many people thought White was insane to go to Green Bay. I'm hesitant to say Bell made a bad choice. His 2017 season had 945 snaps. I could see him wanting a third guaranteed year. Even as a "payoff" for basically giving the Steelers one of the best bargains in football ( 4 years of his rookie deal, at about 4.1 total)

There are some photos that are clearly personal family photos. While I believe Hunter Biden is a corrupt idiot and that he, Joe Biden and "Uncle" James Biden are all grifters and traitors to America, I'd prefer his personal family stuff that is not related to crime/corruption not be shown. Now to be fair, since Hunter Biden was nailed for being behind on his child support payments and part of the controversy and scandal is the possible "discovery" based on his own demands to get child support reduced, his family is now dragged into it. But I don't see how showing his minor children in photos that aren't related to this mess is going to help anything or anyone here. During a Congressional hearing, one of the DNC's witnesses made a crack about Barron Trump. You don't do that. I don't like the normalization of dragging kids into this. Obviously the clearly underage prostitutes that Hunter Biden is seen in these photos with, that's fair game. But "civilians" are a different story. Just IMHO focus on the corruption and crime elements of this all. There's plenty there to sort through without this site adding the unneeded context too. Just my take on it.

It's a great question you are asking jon Mark Penn was a former strategist for the DNC. Hillary Clinton personally fired him in 2015 from her campaign. He pointed out that Team Blue and Clinton needed to consider working class voters, and how many felt disenfranchised and ignored, and if the Party didn't shift some of it's strategy and policy, they would lose those voters. He was told to shove off because he kept pushing what was called - "right wing talking points". But Penn was right. Something else Penn discussed is that the majority of staffers in professional politics are young, white, liberal and college educated. And since they are so numerous, they are the ones driving policy, however they aren't representative of all of America. In effect, someone like AOC and Cori Bush can spout off about these kind of woke agendas because they don't live in the kind of neighborhoods that will be impacted the most from it. Nancy Pelosi lives in a posh "elite" neighborhood with private security and actual government security (paid for with our tax dollars) It's easy for her to spit on the working class because she's not clipping coupons and cleaning her own toilet. The best answer is the establishment Democrats don't really care or won't, until it's their neighborhoods burning. It's their cars being smashed open. It's their friends, coworkers and relatives being accosted, robbed and beaten. Big Tech didn't push back against crime in SF until one of their own, a tech executive, was killed. When Gavin Newsom locked down all public schools during the pandemic, his own children went to an "elite" private school that had an exemption for "in-house" learning and education. It had a very low teacher to student ratio and it had it's own private armed security, not including the security deployed by the state ( our tax dollars again) to protect them. Newsom doesn't clean his own toilets. He doesn't cook his own food. He doesn't have to fight traffic to get his kids to daycare that most working class people can barely afford. It's easy for him to say "It's not a big deal" because it's not a big deal to him. If change is going to happen, the liberal "elite" in professional politics will need to see EXACTLY what the every day working class has to suffer through. It was the same thing with MADD and drunk driving. Policy makers didn't care until it was THEIR OWN CHILDREN being the ones being crushed and mangled to death on the road. House Democrat Pramila Jayapal doesn't talk about "Defund The Police" and "Bail Reform" anymore in Seattle. And she used to be one of it's biggest proponents. A mentally ill guy stalked her house for months and months, until he was arrested near her house with a handgun. He kept getting no bailed and released to do it again and again. Since she's Asian and the DNC shows so much racism or indifference to racism against Asians, this didn't generate the headlines and outrage as if she was black or LGBT instead. It wasn't until her life and her families lives were on the line that her woke BS had to take a back seat to functional reality. They don't care because it's not their children dying. Which is why what Greg Abbott in Texas is doing is so effective. He's busing the "problems" into Blue strongholds but also in wealthy liberal areas. When a MS13 cartel career criminal shows up and murders and rapes the child of one of the "elite", then they'll care. They'll care then that some psychopath crossed the border unchecked and unvetted and unvaccinated. It's only a matter of time before some Team Blue high profile "brand name" politician has their own families suffer these kind of tragedies. Then they'll give a damn. But not before then. Would I compare the current radical left to "Nazis"? I'm not sure I'd go that far quite yet. The Nazis did evil things but they were at least logistically competent. They were effective and methodical about being evil. It doesn't excuse their acts, but it highlights that even evil agendas need a plan and strategy that works for them. Team Blue is run by incompetents. What might save all of us from the radical left is they are often too clearly incompetent to be truly nefarious. Yes, many of them are that dumb. I have no quarrel with traditional liberals, but many of the radical left are unhinged and are clearly imbeciles.

‘What Is a Woman?’ Delivers Shocking, Subversive Truths About the Culture ....The film follows Daily Wire podcaster and author Matt Walsh as he asks one of society’s most simple questions, one suddenly fraught with cultural complications. No snark. No lectures or finger wagging. Just calm, reasonable questioning. The answers, when they finally arrive, can be startling. Director Justin Folk (“No Safe Spaces”) keeps the tone jaunty, even darkly comic. Walsh lacks the charisma of a born entertainer, so Folk frames him in a different light. He’s the Everyman, someone willing to ask the questions most won’t utter. A segment on trans sports lets two female athletes criticize Lia Thomas, the University of Pennsylvania swimmer who transitioned to female and now dominates the field. One fellow athlete appears on screen to share her frustrations at losing out to a biological male identifying as female. “I missed out on so much throughout my high school career,” she laments. Another is seen in the shadows, her voice modified to shield her identity. “If you speak up about it … your life will be over in some way,” she says. Defy the trans groupthink and face profound consequences. https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/what-is-a-woman-review-matt-walsh/

Artificial Intelligence is the Future of Warfare (Just Not in the Way You Think) .....The Department of Defense has duly created the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center in the hopes of winning the AI battle. Visions exist of AI enabling autonomous systems to conduct missions, achieving sensor fusion, automating tasks, and making better, quicker decisions than humans. AI is improving rapidly and some day in the future those goals may be achieved. In the meantime, AI’s impact will be in the more mundane, dull, and monotonous tasks performed by our military in uncontested environments...... .... AI is effective at certain tasks, such as image recognition, recommendation systems, and language translation. Many systems designed for these tasks are fielded today and producing very good results. In other areas, AI is very short of human-level achievement. Some of these areas include working with scenarios not seen previously by the AI; understanding the context of text (understanding sarcasm, for example) and objects; and multi-tasking (i.e., being able to solve problems of multiple type). Most AI systems today are trained to do one task, and to do so only under very specific circumstances. Unlike humans, they do not adapt well to new environments and new tasks... ....As the military looks to incorporate AI’s success in these tasks into its systems, some challenges must be acknowledged. The first is that developers need access to data. Many AI systems are trained using data that has been labeled by some expert system (e.g., labeling scenes that include an air defense battery), usually a human. Large datasets are often labeled by companies who employ manual methods. Obtaining this data and sharing it is a challenge, especially for an organization that prefers to classify data and restrict access to it. An example military dataset may be one with images produced by thermal-imaging systems and labeled by experts to describe the weapon systems found in the image, if any. Without sharing this with preprocessors and developers, an AI that uses that set effectively cannot be created. AI systems are also vulnerable to becoming very large (and thus slow), and consequently susceptible to “dimensionality issues.” For example, training a system to recognize images of every possible weapon system in existence would involve thousands of categories. Such systems will require an enormous amount of computing power and lots of dedicated time on those resources. And because we are training a model, the best model requires an infinite amount of these images to be completely accurate. That is something we cannot achieve. Furthermore, as we train these AI systems, we often attempt to force them to follow “human” rules such as the rules of grammar. However, humans often ignore these rules, which makes developing successful AI systems for things like sentiment analysis and speech recognition challenging. Finally, AI systems can work well in uncontested, controlled domains. However, research is demonstrating that under adversarial conditions, AI systems can easily be fooled, resulting in errors.... ....Another simple weakness with AI systems is their inability to multi-task. A human is capable of identifying an enemy vehicle, deciding a weapon system to employ against it, predicting its path, and then engaging the target. This fairly simple set of tasks is currently impossible for an AI system to accomplish. At best, a combination of AIs could be constructed where individual tasks are given to separate models. That type of solution, even if feasible, would entail a huge cost in sensing and computing power not to mention the training and testing of the system. Many AI systems are not even capable of transferring their learning within the same domain. For example, a system trained to identify a T-90 tank would most likely be unable to identify a Chinese Type 99 tank, despite the fact that they are both tanks and both tasks are image recognition. Many researchers are working to enable systems to transfer their learning, but such systems are years away from production.... .....This leads to another weakness of these systems—the inability to explain how they made their decisions. Most of what occurs inside an AI system is a black box and there is very little that a human can do to understand how the system makes its decisions. This is a critical problem for high-risk systems such as those that make engagement decisions or whose output may be used in critical decision-making processes. The ability to audit a system and learn why it made a mistake is legally and morally important....Even without these AI weaknesses, the main area the military should be concerned with at the moment is adversarial attacks. We must assume that potential adversaries will attempt to fool or break any accessible AI systems that we use. Attempts will be made to fool image-recognition engines and sensors; cyberattacks will try to evade intrusion-detection systems; and logistical systems will be fed altered data to clog the supply lines with false requirements..... https://mwi.usma.edu/artificial-intelligence-future-warfare-just-not-way-think/

Air Force pushes back on claim that military AI drone sim killed operator, says remarks 'taken out of context' ....The U.S. Air Force on Friday is pushing back on comments an official made last week in which he claimed that a simulation of an artificial intelligence-enabled drone tasked with destroying surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites turned against and attacked its human user, saying the remarks "were taken out of context and were meant to be anecdotal." U.S. Air Force Colonel Tucker "Cinco" Hamilton made the comments during the Future Combat Air & Space Capabilities Summit in London hosted by the Royal Aeronautical Society, which brought together about 70 speakers and more than 200 delegates from around the world representing the media and those who specialize in the armed services industry and academia....."The Department of the Air Force has not conducted any such AI-drone simulations and remains committed to ethical and responsible use of AI technology," Air Force Spokesperson Ann Stefanek told Fox News. "It appears the colonel's comments were taken out of context and were meant to be anecdotal." ...He spoke about one simulation test in which an AI-enabled drone turned on its human operator that had the final decision to destroy a SAM site .....The AI system learned that its mission was to destroy SAM, and it was the preferred option. But when a human issued a no-go order, the AI decided it went against the higher mission of destroying the SAM, so it attacked the operator in simulation...."We were training it in simulation to identify and target a SAM threat," Hamilton said. "And then the operator would say yes, kill that threat. The system started realizing that while they did identify the threat at times, the operator would tell it not to kill that threat, but it got its points by killing that threat. So, what did it do? It killed the operator. It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective." ....Hamilton said afterward, the system was taught not to kill the operator because that was bad, and it would lose points. But in future simulations, rather than kill the operator, the AI system destroyed the communication tower used by the operator to issue the no-go order, he claimed.... https://www.foxnews.com/tech/us-military-ai-drone-simulation-kills-operator-told-bad-takes-out-control-tower

New York senior citizen charged in mugger's shooting death had warned local newspaper of rising crime ... A New York man, who is now facing weapons charges after allegedly gunning down a man who tried to rob him, had previously warned a city newspaper that rising crime was destroying his neighborhood. Charles Foehner, 65, was arrested Thursday after police searched his Kew Gardens home and found dozens of weapons, but he has not been charged with murder or manslaughter, court records show.... ....Foehner was walking on 82nd Avenue in Queens early Wednesday when a 32-year-old repeat offender, Cody Gonzalez, approached him with an object in his hand and demanded cash and cigarettes, according to police.... he allegedly shot the would-be mugger in an exchange partially captured on surveillance video, which shows the older man backing away....Off-camera, Foehner allegedly shot and killed Gonzalez. However, police told Fox News Digital that Foehner faces 26 counts of criminal possession of a weapon.... ...Additionally, he was worried about more than just his own neighborhood, according to the paper – allegedly telling detectives Thursday that he was carrying a handgun due to citywide struggles with violent crime...."Last night I was carrying a firearm because of the way that the city has been in the last three years," he said, according to the Post. "I read the crime stats and I see so much crime." https://www.foxnews.com/us/new-york-senior-citizen-charged-muggers-shooting-death-had-warned-local-newspaper-rising-crime ***** The enduring lesson for many will be to shoot criminals who try to hurt them or rob them or attack them, then just don't call the police at all. If you are in a Blue Stronghold like NY, it's obvious someone like Alvin Bragg will throw the entire book at you because it fulfills a specific political narrative.

High school debater says she was 'warned' not to bring up Trump in tournament: 'Deemed it inappropriate' .....A high school student is calling out the National Speech & Debate Association (NSDA) for alleged censorship after she says a judge at a recent tournament "warned" her not to bring up former President Trump because it would be "inappropriate." The allegations ..."In March, at an NSDA tournament before the round even started, we were debating President Biden's former foreign affairs track record, and my judge warned me not to bring up President Trump as she deemed it inappropriate," high school sophomore Briana Whatley told "America's Newsroom" Tuesday. "If a student like me who was going into debate to have free and open conversations is being censored in this way, that is no longer debate. The NSDA must be recognized as an organization that is not allowing students like myself to express openly." ..."It's no longer a competition of ideas, but an echo chamber that silences and punishes students," Fishback added. He shared public profiles of debate judges for the NSDA, some of whom openly tell students that they will not accept certain arguments that they deem inappropriate. ...In 2019, national debate champion Lila Lavender’s profile described herself as "a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist" who "cannot check the revolutionary proletarian science at the door when" when judging students. ...Lavender listed arguments that she will never accept from students: "fascism good, capitalism good, imperialist war good, neoliberalism good, defenses of US or otherwise bourgeois nationalism, Zionism or normalizing Israel, colonialism good, US white fascist policing good, etc." Another debate judge, Shubham Gupta, is even more direct with students. "If you are discussing immigrants in a round and describe the person as ‘illegal,’ I will immediately stop the round, give you the loss with low speaks", which means low speaker points, "give you a stern lecture, and then talk to your coach." Whatley fired back, arguing "students should not conform in any way, shape or form during a debate. Debate is shaped based off of evidence, not based off of the judge's ideology." https://www.foxnews.com/media/high-school-debater-warned-bring-trump-tournament-deemed-inappropriate

Tiny Christian College Goes on Offensive as Biden Tries Forcing Female Students to Share Dorm Rooms - Even Showers - with Men ....A small Christian college in America’s heartland is fighting a legal battle with far-reaching implications. At stake is the school’s ability — any school’s ability — to restrict spaces such as dormitories and showers to only women. In one of his first official acts in the Oval Office, Biden signed an executive order that redefined the terms “sex,” “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”...Three weeks later, Biden’s Department of Housing and Urban Development issued new rules requiring schools to open their women’s dormitories — showers and all — to men who “identify” as women. No exemptions were allowed, even for religious institutions. But the College of the Ozarks said no....The Christian college, located in Point Lookout, Missouri, filed a lawsuit against Biden and his administration, arguing that the historical interpretation of the Fair Housing Act confirms that “sex” means biological sex. The college also argued that not only does the Biden executive order violate the school’s constitutional right to “operate consistently with their religious beliefs,” but also that there should have been a public notice and comment period before such a drastic change was made... “Young women shouldn’t be forced to have to change or undress in the presence of men,” ADF senior counsel Julie Marie Blake told The Western Journal on Friday in an online interview. “Young women should not be forced to have men as roommates....We’re hoping that the Supreme Court realizes that there’s a lot of really important issues here about government overreach and women’s privacy and religious freedom,” she said....If they lose the case, she said, the college — and any others holding the same convictions — could face six-figure fines, punitive damages and even criminal liability for school officials who refuse to bow to the Biden administration’s edict. “The bottom line is, the government does not belong in girls’ dorms.” https://ijr.com/tiny-christian-college-goes-offensive-biden-tries-forcing-female-students-share-dorm-rooms-even-showers-men/

L.A. County wants to curb riskier fentanyl use. Its approach worries some activists ....By a line of ragged RVs slung along 78th Street in South Los Angeles, a seven-member team passes out glass pipes used for smoking opioids, crack and methamphetamine....Part of the front line of Los Angeles County’s offensive against the deadly fentanyl epidemic, the group hands out other supplies: clean needles, sanitary wipes, fentanyl test strips and naloxone, medication that can reverse an overdose... ....These “harm reduction” supplies keep drug users alive and safe from infection and transmission of diseases including HIV and Hepatitis C, members of the outreach team say, and the pipes help them switch from injecting to the relatively safer route of smoking drugs....“It’s like a business card saying, ‘When you want hope, come to me,’” said Chris Mack, a longtime outreach worker with.... a clinic that refers clients to groups that distribute such supplies. “We’ve been killing people with this prohibition.” ....Fentanyl, which is laced in everything from weed to heroin and meth, was present in more than half of the nearly 1,500 overdose deaths of homeless people in 2020-21. In response, Los Angeles County this year increased its harm reduction budget from $5.4 million to $31.5 million....These and other residents say harm reduction, which in some form has a 40-plus-year history, albeit largely underfunded, hasn’t worked, and they see the pipes as hurrying homeless people along to their destruction.....“I wouldn’t get pipes to give them out myself,” said Skid Row organizer Manuel “O.G.” Campito, who went through recovery in the ’90s. “You know Dr. Kevorkian assisted suicide? That’s pretty much what it is.” ....The kits include three glass pipes, with design variations to accommodate the ways crystal meth, crack and heroin are smoked, Mims said. Meth pipes are called “pookies” and crack pipes “straight shooters.” Some pipes come with lollipops for dry mouth. ....Oscar Arellano, program manager for the HOPICS team, said he does not condone selling the harm-reduction supplies, but sharing them is encouraged....“They’re the first responders,” Arellano said. “We’re not condoning. We’re supporting.” https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-05-30/desperate-to-stop-fentanyl-deaths-officials-are-distributing-drug-pipes

White House refuses to answer question on Hunter Biden's Second Amendment defense plan: 'I'm just not' ...White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to answer a question Friday related to Hunter Biden's previous drug use and reported plans to use the Second Amendment as a defense should he be charged with a gun crime....When asked during the White House press briefing whether someone who is a drug user should be able to possess a firearm, Jean-Pierre simply said, "I'm not going to get into a tit-for-tat on this. I'm just not going to." Hunter, a known past drug user who battled drug abuse and addiction, has been under investigation by the Justice Department, a portion of which involves a 2018 gun purchase. During that time, Hunter said he was a regular cocaine user....Federal law prohibits drug users from owning guns, but a Supreme Court ruling last year that essentially broadened Second Amendment protections puts that prohibition into question – and Hunter's lawyers could use the argument as part of his defense. President Biden, Hunter's father, however, previously criticized the SCOTUS decision his son's legal team is preparing to use in his defense should he be charged, saying at the time that he was "deeply disappointed."..."Since 1911, the State of New York has required individuals who would like to carry a concealed weapon in public to show a need to do so for the purpose of self-defense and to acquire a license," Biden said in an official statement. "More than a century later, the United States Supreme Court has chosen to strike down New York’s long-established authority to protect its citizens....This ruling contradicts both common sense and the Constitution, and should deeply trouble us all," he added. First reported in Politico, Biden's lawyers have already told DOJ officials that, if their client is charged with the gun crime, they will challenge the law under the Second Amendment....When he bought the gun in 2018, Biden filled out a federal form on which he allegedly claimed that he was not "an unlawful user of, or addicted to" any "controlled substance," Politico reported in 2021. However, according to Biden’s 2021 memoir, he frequently used crack cocaine at the time.... https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-house-refuses-answer-question-hunter-bidens-second-amendment-defense-plan *****