Blue Horseshoe

It’s not just actors: Over 11,000 city workers will strike in LA on Tuesday .....Over 11,000 Los Angeles city workers are planning to strike on Tuesday, according to the union that represents many of the city’s public-sector staff.....“Every single one of our workers in the city is a front line public sector worker that’s out there serving the public every day,” David Green, president of SEIU Local 721, told CNN. “A lot of it goes unnoticed. But on Tuesday, we’re going to make sure everybody notices”....SEIU 721, which represents more than 95,000 workers in Southern California, said members voted to authorize the strike after “repeated labor law violations” by Los Angeles city management. Trash truck operators, LAX shuttle drivers and mechanics, and port boat captains are among the workers planning to strike.... ......“City workers are vital to the function of services for millions of Angelenos every day and to our local economy. They deserve fair contracts, and we have been bargaining in good faith with SEIU 721 since January.....” .....Los Angeles is the epicenter of Hollywood actors’ and writers’ strikes that have brought the entertainment industry to a grinding halt, and the union representing 15,000 hotel workers, including cooks, room attendants, and front desk agents, has staged a series of rolling strikes in the city since the start of July. In Northern California, more than 4,500 San Jose city workers announced they will stage a 3-day strike beginning August 15, demanding pay that keeps up with living costs...... .....A massive economic disruption was narrowly avoided last month when the Teamsters union reached a tentative agreement with UPS on a new contract, potentially avoiding a strike by more than 300,000 UPS workers that would have potentially cost the US economy billions of dollars. The Teamsters membership now has to approve the contract by vote for the chance of a strike to be fully over.... https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/07/business/los-angeles-strike-city-workers/index.html

How can L.A. stop traffic deaths? Let civilians enforce traffic violations, study says .....Most traffic enforcement in Los Angeles should be done by civilian workers...Those are the conclusions of a long-delayed report from the city transportation department that has yet to be released. The Times reviewed a draft of the document, which is being produced by an outside firm and has been in the works for nearly three years, since the City Council first raised the prospect of removing traffic duties from the Los Angeles Police Department.... ...Some transportation safety advocates say persistent traffic violence, particularly in low-income neighborhoods, shows that the city needs to crack down harder on reckless driving. Supporters of criminal justice reform argue for a less punitive approach. They say those communities have historically borne the brunt of over-aggressive policing, which they contend hasn’t made the streets any safer....And they allege that, even when such encounters don’t end in violence, the fines that often result can send people into spiraling debt.... ...While the city could build on the existing Vision Zero model, the report said, it should be less reliant on law enforcement....The city could, for example, use unarmed civilians to enforce “safety-related traffic violations” .....At the same time, the city should consider “means-based” fee models....for traffic violators, measures that “advance traffic safety objectives and do not perpetuate enforcement disparities.” ....The debate over the role of law enforcement in traffic incidents stretches back decades but intensified in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020 at the hands of police officers in Minneapolis and the ensuing nationwide reckoning in which critics challenged some long-held assumptions around policing.....LAPD Chief Michel Moore said that ....any changes must be weighed against “safety risk issues” posed in certain traffic encounters....Even if Los Angeles wanted to put traffic enforcement into the hands of civilians, the assumption is that under the state vehicle code, such duties could only be handled by licensed peace officers. But the report argues that there are “plausible legal arguments that the vehicle code does not limit the City’s discretion in this area.” .....Any next steps would probably require state legislative action, the report said. Policymakers would also need to get buy-in from communities that were “disproportionately burdened” by “high fees and privacy issues” and by past attempts at automated traffic enforcement, such as Los Angeles’ defunct and controversial red-light camera traffic enforcement program.....aims to send unarmed representatives to certain traffic incidents, instead of police, as the city works toward its goal of reducing racial disparities in traffic stops.... https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-05-09/long-delayed-plan-to-have-civilians-not-police-make-traffic-stops-set-for-release ********** This is a pretty interesting topic. The woke hard left leaning activist LA Times wants unarmed civilians to essentially replace actual law enforcement by doing traffic stops and enforcing traffic violations 1) The training disparity between the average sworn LEO and a possible civilian "advocate" is staggering. Vehicle stops are not simple tasks. 2) There is the legal liability issue. Anyone you stop could be from anywhere and in any condition, including as a potential threat to public safety 3) The vehicle you stop or hope to stop is still a potential weapon, a possible threat to the civilian advocate and any other innocent people nearby. What happens if the person you pull over is a criminal and armed? Or mentally ill and dangerous? 4) The end result will likely be that the general public won't take traffic enforcement seriously anymore, which is going to make an already bad roadway situation in many major cities even worse. 5) You cannot, in good conscience, send unarmed civilians out there to do a job that has been normalized in our society to have always been handled by armed trained law enforcement officers. I get many traffic stops are hotly contested points of scandal or controversy, however you don't mitigate these conflicts by basically sending likely naïve and untrained civilians into a situation where many will likely end up being killed. 6) There are simply some areas in our society and culture that cannot be focal points to try to beat down what is perceived as "racial disparity" and "socio-economic disparity"

Progressive San Francisco DA recalled by voters in one of nation's most liberal cities ....Voters in San Francisco have chosen to recall embattled District Attorney Chesa Boudin following a recall effort centered on his handling of rising crime across the city. San Francisco voted to recall Boudin with 61%, compared to 39% who wanted him to stay as the district attorney, according to results at the time the Associated Press called the race.....He faced an onslaught of criticism over his progressive criminal justice policies as those supporting his recall pointed to an increased murder rate, violent crime, shoplifting, burglaries, and an open-air drug trade as reasons to vote for his removal from office..... .....Boudin's supporters praised him for keeping his promises of eliminating cash bail, not prosecuting quality-of-life crimes and putting fewer people behind bars. ....He is the first San Francisco district attorney to be recalled, and only the second to face a recall election......"This is a movement, not a moment in history," Boudin said. "The coalition that we built… it is broad, it is diverse, it is strong. And it is a coalition that is deeply committed to justice," he added.....His father, David Gilbert, a former member of the left-wing extremist Weather Underground group, spent 40 years in prison for second-degree murder and first-degree robbery charges ...His mother, Kathy Boudin, who was also a member of Weather Underground, spent more than 20 years in prison ....Boudin was raised by left-wing activist Bill Ayers, who was a co-founder of Weather Underground..... ....."Tonight showed that voters from every community and every walk of life, regardless of political ideology, are rejecting pro-criminal policies that are masked as criminal justice reform," said a representative of the Recall Gascon Campaign. "George Gascón and Chesa Boudin’s failed social experiments have destroyed communities while doing nothing to meaningfully reform the system....." https://www.foxnews.com/politics/san-francisco-district-attorney-recall-election

Rachel Maddow dragged for scolding stolen election claims with Hillary Clinton: 'Can y'all hear yourselves?' .....Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton laughed merrily at her one-time political opponent, former President Donald Trump, before his indictment on Monday.....Hillary Clinton and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow were hammered on social media Tuesday after the MSNBC host scolded "bad actors" that falsely claim "every election is stolen" during their Monday night interview. ...."That the system of democracy at its heart is the idea that the people get to decide how we are governed.... And if we no longer believe that our will is effectuated through the system, if bad actors tell us falsely that every election is stolen and that the only way an election is trustworthy is if they come out on top of it, it tells you something not just about that person or that moment, it maybe wounds us as a democracy and in a way that's hard to repair," Maddow said....What do you think about how we get better after the wounds that have been inflicted on us through this process?" the host asked Clinton.... ....."Well, I think the truth matters. I think having these cases be brought and be brought in such professional manners, we’ll see how they unfold. Obviously, the trials, if there are trials, are gonna be critically important," the former 2016 Democratic presidential nominee said.....Clinton argued that a lot of Americans don't know what Biden has done. ....."And part of that is they don't get their news from MSNBC, they get their news from social media, if they get any news at all. They don't have the kind of information that would give them confidence in knowing what their government is doing...." https://www.foxnews.com/media/hillary-clinton-rachel-maddow-dragged-scolding-stolen-election-claims-can-yall-hear-yourselves

The Terrible Price of Our Epidemic of Male Loneliness .....The biggest threat facing middle-age men isn’t smoking or obesity. It’s loneliness. Baker describes men as cut off from friendships by the rigid over scheduled demands of the American dream; the demands of work and family, car pools and commutes.....describes his own limited social life as being made up of “friends at work and at the gym,” friends, who he calls, “accidents of proximity.”.....He agreed that my story was very typical. When people with children become overscheduled, they don’t shortchange their children, they shortchange their friendships. “And the public health dangers of that are incredibly clear,” …Loneliness has been linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke and the progression of Alzheimer’s. One study found that it can be as much of a long-term risk factor as smoking.....” .....A 2010 AARP study shows that 1 in 3 Americans, age 45 plus, are chronically lonely. And those numbers are up from 1 in 5 just ten years earlier. That’s 44 million men and women, at risk, right now, today. And long term chronic loneliness indeed is equal to smoking as factor for early mortality but the story here isn’t just one of health risks.....Our American epidemic of loneliness is degrading our collective social contract which relies on healthy diverse connected communities to bridge across a vast range of social, religious, racial and political tensions. People trapped in isolation cannot access community. Community falters without human beings who can engage those around them.....a researcher from Britain’s University of Oxford presented study results that most guys understand intuitively: Men need an activity together to make and keep a bond. Women can maintain friendships over the phone…Dudes aren’t going to maintain a bromance that way, or even over a once-in-a-blue-moon beer. We need to go through something together. That’s why, studies have shown, men tend to make their deepest friends through periods of intense engagement, like school or military service or sports. That’s how many of us are comfortable.... ....a set of rigid expectations that define what a “real man” is. Rule #1 of the Man Box? Real men don’t show their emotions, other than perhaps anger and excitement. The rules go on, but for our purposes, we’ll focus on the deep seated prohibition against emotional expression by men.....Why does our culture of male emotional toughness prohibit men’s emotional expression? The short answer is because, ridiculously, we have gendered emotionally centered capacities like empathy, care giving and nurturing .....Many boys never have the opportunity to explore and grow these relational capacities at all, taught from birth instead to “man up” and “be a man” elevating toughness and assertiveness over connection and empathy. Which leaves millions of men with only emotionally guarded ways of forming friendships. They simply lack the relational capacities to connect emotionally..... ....The end result for men is higher rates of violence, drug abuse, unemployment, alcoholism, divorce, and suicide. Men are lashing out, unable to manage the challenges of unemployment or aging, unable to resource themselves via real and vibrant friendships in their lives because they are trapped in a model of manhood that does not allow them to ask for help.... https://remakingmanhood.medium.com/the-terrible-price-of-our-epidemic-of-male-loneliness ******* Something to observe is this kind of discussion did not enter the mainstream MSM until it started costing "money" People not seeking the "optimal" earning path, no matter the brutal sacrifice, and also foregoing having children, means hurting the overall tax base. Now and in the future. If you create a society, via active public policy, that punishes the everyday average person. They aren't going to want to have children. The "elites" can't have their cattle if the "cattle" stop procreating. You can put your foot on someone's neck and make it impossible for them to retire or buy a home or afford a current college education, but you can't ( as of yet) put a gun to their head and force them to have children, or more children.

Locals lash out against Biden’s visit to Maui after deadly wildfires: ‘I don’t want him here’ .... Hawaiian residents are saying they don’t want Joe Biden to visit them on Monday as the president continues to face backlash this week for appearing aloof following the state’s largest natural disaster.....“I don’t want him here,” Jay Awan, of Lahaina, told The Post Wednesday. “He’s just coming to Maui to look good in front of the cameras.”.....Awan, 45, a cook and tiki carver, said nothing would be gained from the 80-year-old president’s visit, as his town, a once-popular resort area, has been “burned to the ground.”....He noted that even after reconstruction, which officials estimated would cost around $6 billion, the beloved island would never return to its former glory.....“It’s like a f–king warzone here,” he said of the devastation. “Maui’s never going to be the same. Lahaina’s never going to be the same.....” .....Peter Friedgen, another Lahaina resident, agreed with the sentiment, adding that he “don’t care if the president comes.”....The 66-year-old guitarist said he lost everything in the fire except for his instrument, which he strum while waiting on the outskirts of the charred city for officials to come....“It’s a waiting game now for someone to show up — the government, insurers,” he said. “I’ve just been down the beach, waiting for people to get into town.”....“We haven’t had federal support,” Bowman said. “We’ve had local support, not federal.”....Bowman slammed FEMA for its strict bureaucracy that was causing tension on the island, with the accountant seeing a recent claim filed on behalf of clients who lost their home get immediately rejected.....“I filed an application for somebody for disaster funding and it already got denied, saying they didn’t have proof from the insurance company over how much their losses were — but there’s no possible way to get that information right now.” ....She also scoffed at reports that Biden promised to deliver $700 one-time relief grants per household to those impacted by the fires.... https://nypost.com/2023/08/16/hawaii-locals-lash-out-against-bidens-visit-to-maui-after-wildfires/

Residents, business owners fleeing Dem-run cities in droves as homeless camps wreak havoc: 'Absolute madness' .....Residents of major Democrat-run cities across the country are sounding the alarm about the growing number of homeless encampments as government policies do little to help – and in some cases, make things worse. The increasingly visible crisis has resulted in business owners fleeing some areas as some residents describe feeling less safe. "I felt safer when I was walking around in downtown Saigon when I was in Vietnam than I do here in Portland," 83-year-old Vietnam veteran Armand Martens told Fox 12 Oregon about a homeless encampment rife with reports of drugs, thefts and multiple fires. In one incident, exploding propane tanks sent his neighbors running and screaming in fear. Real estate developer Dustin Michael Miller told "Fox & Friends First" that he’s moving his business out of the city after his office was riddled with bullets in an incident he called "absolute madness....." .....Portland census data showed the city has lost 0.04% of its population after growing for 30 years straight. While the general population has declined for three years in a row, Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office reported a 50% increase in homelessness from 2019 to 2022. A common theme in the reports of businesses and residents being terrorized by homeless encampments is that they often have no recourse, and in many instances, cities have been accused of pushing to make life easier for the homeless at the expense of the business owners. Critics say that’s the case in Portland where the Democrat-controlled City Council responded to the growing homeless crisis last month by proposing legislation that would decriminalize public camping with a bill known as the "Right to Rest Act."....Additionally, the bill would have allowed homeless individuals to sue for $1,000 if they are harassed and told to relocate..... .....In nearby Eugene, Oregon, homeless encampments are proving equally taxing on residents, including an "RV squatter" encampment where a resident recently said he asked a homeless individual performing a sex act in public to leave, prompting the individual to attack him with a metal bat and spit blood on him. ...Roughly 300 miles north, in Seattle, residents say homeless encampments are preventing them from safely going to church, and critics say the homeless are emboldened by the lack of penalties they face for crimes...."It's largely because there is no consequence for anything of this nature in Seattle," former Seattle firefighter Andy Pittman told "Fox & Friends First" last year.....In Los Angeles, 69,144 people were living on the streets in 2022, which is up 4.1% since 2020. L.A. business owners said they are having similar problems getting any help from the city to address the homeless crisis....Graphic scenes of lawlessness continue to emerge from L.A. homeless camps, including recently in the Beverly Grove neighborhood where a naked homeless woman was spotted lounging in public on a couch.... ....To the north, in San Francisco, retailers are fleeing in droves as the homeless crisis and the crime that comes along with it has led to shoplifting and violence against employees. Despite the anguish expressed by residents and businesses, a San Francisco Democrat recently proposed legislation to "specifically prohibit security guards from drawing their weapons to protect property."..."Homelessness and the increase in homelessness would not happen to the extent it is happening had there not been, and continues to be, a push to legalize every drug," Stimson said....."The more people who are somnolent, the more people who are stoned, the more people who are given a free pass to use whatever drugs you want, the more you're going to have people who are incapable of holding down a productive job...They're trying to create a socialist nightmare scenario for everybody," Stimson said. "In their world, I guess they think it's hunky-dory. Everyone else knows it diminishes the quality of life and public safety to the point where they leave, and so the only recourse these people have and these businesses have now is to leave, and they've done it in droves...." https://www.foxnews.com/us/residents-business-owners-fleeing-dem-run-cities-droves-homeless-camps-wreak-havoc-absolute-madness ****** I'm going to ping @jonmx because I bet he and I are thinking the exact same thing. Who is going to swoop in to buy property in these "distressed" Big Blue Cities riddled by crime and homelessness? And for cents on the dollar. So this is more than what jon has pointed out before about Team Blue wanting to set a pathway for a federalized police force ( easy for jackboots to shove you to the ground that way) , but it's also a blatant corrupt hijacking of public policy to convert it to critical "wealth distribution". And which pockets are going to get lined first? I don't think it's hard to figure out. David Cohen was a high level Comcast executive who supported Joe Biden for close to four decades with influence, political donations and leverage with the media industry. Guess who got an Ambassadorship out of it? Who else will Neera Tanden anoint in Big Finance to come and buy up tons of property next?

What You Can’t Say on YouTube ....Opaque demonetization rules make the platform a forest of invisible trip wires.....“It does start to drive you mad,” says Andrew Gold, whose channel, On the Edge, was the place where I committed my unknowable offense. Like many full-time YouTubers, he relies on the Google-owned site’s AdSense program, which gives him a cut of revenues from the advertisements inserted before and during his interviews. When launching a new episode, Gold explained to me, “you get a green dollar sign when it’s monetizable, and it goes yellow if it’s not.” Creators can contest these rulings, but that takes time—and most videos receive the majority of their views in the first hours after launch. So it’s better to avoid the yellow dollar sign in the first place. If you want to make money off of YouTube, you need to watch what you say..... ....But how? YouTube’s list of content guidelines manages to be both exhaustive and nebulous.....For the most popular creators, the site can bring in audiences of millions, and financial rewards to match. But for almost everyone else, content production is a grind, as creators are encouraged to post regularly and repackage content into its TikTok rival, Shorts. ....Absent enough human moderators to deal with the estimated 500 hours of videos uploaded every minute, YouTube uses artificial intelligence to enforce its guidelines.... ....One of the most troublesome areas of content is COVID—about which there is both legitimate debate over treatments, vaccines, and lockdown policies.... “The first video I ever posted to YouTube was a video about ivermectin, which explained why there was no evidence supporting its use in COVID,” the creator Susan Oliver, who has a doctorate in nanomedicine, told me. “YouTube removed the video six hours later. I appealed the removal, but they rejected my appeal. I almost didn’t bother making another video after this.”.....“It appears that YouTube allows large, profitable channels to use any loophole to spread misinformation whilst coming down hard on smaller channels without even properly checking their content....” .....As a high-profile creator, Williamson has one great advantage: YouTube assigned him to a partner-manager who can help him understand the site’s guidelines. Smaller channels have to rely on impersonal, largely automated systems. Using them can feel like shouting into a void. Williamson also supplements his AdSense income from YouTube’s adverts with sponsorship and affiliate links, making demonetization less of a concern. “Any creator who is exclusively reliant on AdSense for their income is playing a suboptimal game,” he said.... https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/youtube-content-moderation-rules/673322/

A lot of people hate Trump because he challenges their power and their grift and their cognitive dissonance. They want him put down because he's derailing their gravy train. And a lot of people hate Trump because he's a jerk and he's also just as much of a grifter and his narcissism is relentless and exhausting. Two different things can be true at the same time. The ONE THING that both sides have in common appears to be that it needs to be "All Trump All The Time" Team Blue wants it to be all about Trump, all the time, because it deflects from their total failure in running this country. They are pathetic beyond measure. But when Trump makes it all about Trump, he makes it easy for the DNC to spin narrative to drag the conversation away from things like affordable housing, better K-12 schools, safer streets, creation of good jobs for Americans and putting our nation first and foremost, before other agendas and other countries. I don't hate Trump. But his best quality ( just non stop attacking the radical left) is also his worst quality ( he has to attack EVERYTHING and ALL THE TIME, even beyond all practical measure) This is like meeting a single mom, with two kids from two different "Baby Daddies", sort of a "Muffin Top", constant "drama" in her life, bad credit, no career to speak of, lacks elegance but gives a great blowjob. Sure, excellent head is a winning proposition. But then there's the baggage train getting dragged everywhere too. This is someone where you won't commit, you won't marry them, you won't adopt their kids, you won't move in with them, you don't want any pathway to a relationship, but you want to show up maybe once a week, be a human frosting machine for about an hour, then leave before she desperate fails at trying to cook you dinner. Trump is not the person you marry. Trump, in this example, was just a useful "at the moment" slump buster. In 2015/2016, Trump was exactly what this country needed. But once Kellyanne Conway was ousted and stopped running the country for him, the big flaws were too outsized to hide anymore. I appreciate the core message against the "establishment", but The Big Cheeto is a bigger liability to the Conservative base now than compared to the rare upside he might offer. Obviously if it's Trump Vs Biden 2.0, then we are all stuck. That's just a pathetic offering to the American people at large for POTUS 2024. But honestly it's time to move on. He is wrongfully persecuted at times. And other moments, he's literally begging for trouble to rain down on him. One doesn't wash away the other. The activist radical leftists do that. They try to excuse one for the other like gutless cowards. But Conservatives don't have to join them. More to point, if push the radical leftists aside, Trump's methodology doesn't help every day working class people anymore. He's too polarizing and he eats up too much space. Unfortunately I don't think I've seen one leftists on this site show one ounce of real nuance on this topic ( i.e. just because Trump is an imbecile doesn't justify the lengths and corruption used to outright persecute him, on the basis of being an actual American citizen) My friend, I have a lot of respect for you and your posts. But it's time to hit "Reset" and find a new Conservative to support for the future.

Keep it up my friend. Never back down. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. You'll notice when presented with videos, photos, stats, polling, data, interviews, hearings, formal analysis, articles, etc, etc, the worst critics just wither away. The activist radical left relies on low information voters. The more information you present, you enable others to become "high information" capable. This is the best way to counter the woke activists and zealots. Facts and evidence are their Kryptonite. Don't argue with them, that's what they want. They want to drag you into some loop so they can spit in your face. But just keep doing what you are doing. No wonder they want you to stop, because it's no longer playing "their game" anymore. Remember their No#1 goal is to bait you so they can find some way to use their aliases to hammer the Report Button to see you banned. They want the information spigot to stop. So just walk past the bait. Their Kung Fu is weak. Our Kung Fu is strong. You are still my favorite poster here, so keep that sunlight aimed right at them all.

It's not a huge effort to find a backpack sitting the average garage somewhere and assembling a "Bug Out Bug" for emergencies. It's not a huge effort to buy a few more cans and dry goods at the grocery store every week or every two weeks, and make a plan to rotate these items, so there's always a practical reserve in an emergency. It's not a huge effort to make sure you have solid flashlights, extra batteries, a good tarp, some good cordage, some way to purify water, some good duct tape, several ways to start a fire if needed, and have that for an emergency. It's not a huge effort to think about what if something happens and you have people around you, where you are obligated, who need things like medication or baby formula or some necessity for survival. It's not a huge effort to talk to your family and come up with a few emergency plans, like a neutral meeting place if there's a natural disaster, or a fallback phone contact list, etc, etc, especially if one has young children. Many of these things are what @JustinCharge is alluding to or implying. I don't see anything wrong with it. In fact, it's very practical and proactive. And if you, like many here, are fathers, then it's part of your actual duty for your family. Hawkeye, you are basically a complete waste of a poster. I can't see any value you bring anywhere. Even at "the other place" But I guess it's your free speech.

Kim Jong Un has three children. Two are living and being educated in the Western world. Part of this is so his natural enemies cannot use one of them as a means to threaten his power or his plans for succession down the road. His baby sister, Kim Yo Jong, runs propaganda for North Korea. I'm very familiar with her and her work from my career path before I retired. She also has one child living in a Western country. Kim Jong Un also has several "half siblings" based on his father's many affairs, and well... just outright rape if we are going to be plain about it. Many were sent to other countries, as the old man didn't have the heart to have all of them killed, but they couldn't stay in North Korea. One of the worst kept secrets in the intelligence community, via the Military Industrial Complex, is that MI5 and the Mossad cut a deal to jointly track the children of all worldwide leaders. If there's a legitimate risk of possible nuclear attack with some ramp in time, both of Kim Jong Un's children abroad would be taken via snatch and grabs through Tier 1 units. In force. They'd be placed in major target countries. Same for Russia. Same for the CCP. The Military Industrial Complex is built around getting paid. No one is cashing checks in a nuclear holocaust. I'm not saying nuclear war is not possible. I am saying your scenarios are very thin at the moment. Show me Putin or Xi doing a full broad scale purge of their respective intelligence agencies and I'll be curious. Show me the children of these leaders all being evacuated en masse, and I'll be curious. Show me someone taking out a full US carrier group, and I'll stand up and pay attention. Show me the Russia/China alliance developing widespread kinetic energy weapon platforms and I'll do double take. Once Iran has nukes, then everyone should change their shorts a few times over. Things right now are pretty bad. The world is a total mess. But nuclear war is not imminent. Your source here, BNN, is a media funnel for Iran. I rarely heat check people's sources. ( I have no desire to pull the crap that timschochet, squistion and Sho Nuff pull all the time like gutless bottom feeders) But here it's relevant. I've defended you multiple times from a growing number of people, mostly radical leftists, who just want to mock you and spit in your face. And I appreciate that you are clearly Conservative minded. But you've got to up your game here. That's a friendly commentary, not a criticism.

Would you date a man who was 4'10? Marry a man who was 4'10? Have children with a man who is 4'10? When you judge other people, particularly strangers, for their value system, that doesn't harm others ( we aren't talking about taking someone's right to vote nor buy property nor have access to basic services in modern society) , then you've immediately invalidated all your personal preferences too. Women trade on their looks. At multiple levels. A girl who is considered cute, but maybe not beautiful enough to be a "trophy wife", can still get things like attention, free lunch, gifts, etc, etc. So I'll amend your statement - "Unattractive women get nowhere in society considering the same small 5 percent subset of men that they nearly all want universally, if we are talking about the dating/marriage/having kids marketplace" You are right in that women in general are too harshly judged on their looks as a social currency. But it is a "currency". At some point in your life, it's likely someone, or multiple people, found you attractive and cut you a break, gave you something or you got some consideration for it, that would not have happened otherwise if you were someone else they didn't find attractive. So, to salve the wounds a bit here, this is a relative scale. For a woman who grew up in poverty, a guy with a simple job with the state with good medical and a pension looks like a massive lifestyle upgrade. And for that guy, she might be the prettiest girl he's been around and could get, even though she might not seen as attractive by most other men. The basis of the OP's post, which is an article, which is based on a Reddit post, so take that with a grain of salt. An anonymous person on Reddit says he laughed in someone's face. If it was all true, is that acceptable? No, it's rude. Manners cost you nothing. If you are on a date, then be a "gentleman" about it. If you aren't into her or her situation or her value system, be polite, show her a good time that evening, don't sleep with her, don't lead her on, take her home safely at the end of the night and create distance until you can stop talking period. Here is where this gets complex. The advent of common access to Internet and speed of information has allowed both men and women to talk about strategy and experiences, to the point where most men have realized saying "Everyone has it hard" is pointless. Women aren't listening. When a woman isn't getting exactly what she wants, odds are she's not listening. You can ask most of the guys here about that, and even the ones that don't like me would find it hard to argue there. So many men have just opted out. There is nothing more devastating for women as a whole that to just get no attention at all. And when that happens on a broad scale, it's devastating. No one is entitled to "negotiate" on the sexual marketplace at the same level. Most of the guys here could spend their lives trying hard forever and not get 1 percent of what Henry Cavill ignores on a daily basis. I disagree with you, there are plenty of men who would take care of an unattractive woman. In terms of "basics" Or very thin to basics. A roof and food. Basic plumbing. It's just that the nearly all of those unattractive women would find those guys as losers or undesirable. Running a household, if it's done right, is NOT an easy job. Raising kids and running a household, if it's done right, is NOT an easy job. I suspect many of the cautionary tales about about SAHM or SAHW who are sh!t at doing their part, if at all. A lot of women can trade on their looks. The scale however shifts dramatically sometimes when it becomes an open negotiation. The "trade offs" become very personal for many of them. I.E. "If this is the best I could get in a man, what does that say about me?" But it's not all about the woman at all. "What's in it for me?" That's a question that several generations of men in the Western world have asked themselves. When the juice wasn't worth the squeeze, many just walked out. Some hung around, but only for sex. So it's not just unattractive women anymore, but of course, they will take the brunt of it. You aren't entitled to the "negotiation" that you want. However, as a point of empathy, I recognize this is a very painful and complex issue for most women, and tragically, especially for young girls who face immense pressure about looks, fitting in and body image concerns. I believe many men, in a detached sense, can have empathy for someone who is struggling with these kind of issues, but they just don't want to hear it, there's nothing in it for them, so they silently walk away. What is often being left unsaid that women only truly care about the attention from men they desire, the large cross section of men who can do nothing for them don't even exist. Once the wool was pulled away from the eyes of the masses, the end result was always predictable. Third Wave Feminism screwed you hard. Screwed all women hard. Particularly screwed women with little negotiating leverage very hard. The only people who seem to be winning in all this is cat food companies. Because no one wants to marry an American woman anymore. They'll have to clip their cat food coupons in silence. Men were told en masses to get out of the way. So they did. Funny how that works.

Italian restaurant charges a whopping $22 — just to slice a birthday cake ....A family was shocked to discover they were charged 20 euros — about $22 — to have their cake cut into 20 pieces. The group was celebrating a birthday at an unidentified restaurant in Palermo, Sicily. They ordered about $130 worth of pizza and drinks, not including the “20 X Servizio Torta” fee, which translates to “20 x cake service,” according to a receipt obtained by Newsflash. This isn’t the first time an Italian restaurant has come under fire for questionable charges... .....A traveler recently took to TripAdvisor to vent after noticing a surprise 2 euro bill surcharge at a restaurant in the upscale Lake Como region — for having her sandwich cut in half. The unidentified woman, visiting from nearby Milan, had ordered a vegetarian sandwich — with french fries stuffed inside — at Bar Pace in Gera Lario, at the lake’s northern end. After munching on the meatless snack with a friend, the disgruntled diner was shocked by the bill. She coughed up without complaining, but later posted the negative review, arguing she had never asked for the sandwich to be cut in half. “Unbelievable but true,” the person captioned a photo of the receipt on TripAdvisor. The restaurant’s co-owner has defended the fee. “We had to use two plates instead of one and the time to wash them doubled, and then two placemats,” owner Cristina Biacchi told La Repubblica, an Italian newspaper. “To cut it in half took us some time, and work must be paid for.....” https://nypost.com/2023/08/14/italian-restaurant-charges-a-whopping-22-just-to-slice-cake/

Redditors fed up with ‘BS’ surcharges call out more than 200 LA restaurants for extra fees .....Users on Reddit are fed up with surreptitious surcharges at restaurants — and have begun crowdsourcing a list of Los Angeles eateries that tack on additional fees. So many responses poured in that the list was compiled into a public Google spreadsheet that has nearly 250 entries in a subreddit called r/LosAngeles. In Pasadena, Agnes Restaurant & Eatery adds a “4% Healthy LA” fee to all dine-in checks to help pay for workers’ health and wellness benefits. The Redditors’ spreadsheet even includes a photo of a receipt from the restaurant, which notes that the 4% surcharge “is not gratuity” and can be removed upon request. The spreadsheet notes other restaurants’ reasons for their respective surcharges, which range from add-ons to subsidize employees’ healthcare benefits to a “kitchen appreciation fee.....” ......Another photo of a receipt from The Albright, a seafood spot on the Santa Monica pier, shows that an obscure 10% fee was added to the Redditer’s check, though there’s no reasoning behind it......Sunset Boulevard’s All Day Baby added a 3% “kitchen love” tax to its bill, the spreadsheet showed, linking to a review on Yelp that described it as a “shameful money grab by management.” Among the most shocking of surcharges was Speranza’s unexplained 18% to 20% to its checks. “Staff was very vague in what it was for just that it was not tip,” the Redditer said of Speranza. Xuntos, a tapas bar in Santa Monica that opened last month, also reportedly adds a “non-negotiable, non-discretionary, non-removable” 20% service charge....Vino Wine & Tapas Room in Encino, for example, adds on a 3.8% fee for card transactions — and automatically applies a 20% tip for bills over $200 — while the menu at Oceanview Cafe in Manhattan Beach says that its prices reflect a “4% cash discount.....” .....And two other restaurants included in the spreadsheet — the Ruby Fruit and Perch — charge security fees of 4% and 4.5%, respectively, to ensure the safety of guests and staff. Hodori Koren Cuisine, meanwhile, reportedly adds a $1 surcharge for each item ordered to-go. For in-house diners, French restaurant République, meanwhile, charges a hefty corkage fee of $75, the sheet showed, while Rustic Canyon in Santa Monica will pop bottles for $40. At Yang’s Kitchen in Alhambra, customers should expect a 1% “Zero Footprint Restore the Planet fee,” which the eatery says it uses to build healthy soil and carbon farming......Diners — who are also facing headwinds from inflation — are fed up with the surcharges, especially when it isn’t going directly into waitstaff’s pockets, the r/LosAngeles subreddit showed.....“I’m sick of going to restaurants where there is a service charge that isn’t a gratuity and just goes to the owners. It’s misleading when your bill ends up 3% to 18% more from this bulls–t charge that should be baked into the prices or go to the servers.....” https://nypost.com/2023/08/14/redditors-compile-list-of-200-la-restaurants-tacking-extra-fees-onto-checks/

Small-town Kansas paper was probing ‘Gestapo’ police chief over sex claims before he raided it ......The police chief whose “Gestapo”-style raid on a small town newspaper has become the focus of national outrage was being investigated by its reporters over claims of alleged sexual misconduct. Gideon Cody and every officer in the Marion Police Department stormed into the Marion County Record’s offices Friday with a search warrant where they seized computers and servers. They also raided the home of the editor and publisher, Eric Meyer, and his 98-year-old mother Joan Meyer, the paper’s co-owner. She died the following day of “shock and grief,” Meyer said, stressed and unable to sleep when police seized her computer and smart speaker, as well as her son’s cellphone and even his router. He had answered the door thinking it was her Meals on Wheels delivery.... .....The Marion County Record, published weekly, has served the rural communities of Marion County (pop. 11,712) since 1869, and until now had never been at the center of a national battle over freedom of the press. But as First Amendment advocates spoke out against the raid, it emerged the newspaper had been investigating Cody, 54, after receiving an “outpouring of calls” claiming he had retired from his last police post to avoid demotion over sexual misconduct allegations. Cody joined the Marion County Police Department in late April after retiring as a captain in Kansas City, Mo., where he worked for 24 years. Eric Meyer told The Handbasket substack his outlet had been contacted by Cody’s former colleagues about the claims of sexual misconduct, but that the six-plus anonymous sources ultimately never went on the record and reporters couldn’t obtain Cody’s personnel file..... .....A search warrant for the raid says it was issued over an allegation of “identity theft” by its reporters. The claim was made by local restaurateur Kari Newell, after someone sent the paper and a member of the local council documents which showed she had a DUI, which would make it illegal for her to have a liquor license. Newell also threw The Marion County Record’s reporters out of a public meeting held by a local congressman — which was attended by the police chief — and used a city council meeting to accuse the paper of illegally obtaining her DUI records, while admitting that she had a drunken driving record. The paper never published her DUI details and Meyer denied acting illegally, claiming he believed they had been sent to the paper’s reporter, Deb Gruver, because of legal sparring between Newell, 46, and her ex-husband. "We didn’t publish it because we couldn’t nail it down to the point that we thought it was ready for publication,” Meyer told The Kansas City Star. “[Cody] didn’t know who our sources were. He does now.....” https://nypost.com/2023/08/14/kansas-paper-was-probing-gestapo-police-chief-over-sex-claims/

Vivek Ramaswamy says 'LGBTQIA+ movement' has become a 'cult': 'It's not about logic' ....Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said the LGBTQIA+ movement is not “about logic” but has become “a cult.”.....“Here’s my deal with this LGBTQIA+, especially the trans cult,” Ramaswamy told Hannity. “Dress how you want, behave how you want as an adult, live your life freely, but leave our kids alone and do not demand that we change our language or the way we live our lives. We can all live peaceably that way.”......“In the name of rights, what they’ve actually done is created a new culture of oppression in the opposite direction, imposing that on kids,” Ramaswamy continued.... ......While appearing on Meet the Press on Sunday, Ramaswamy defended his belief that gender is not fluid and that there are only two genders, male and female, telling host Chuck Todd that “gender dysphoria for most of our history, all the way through the DSM V, has been characterized as a mental health disorder.”......“I don’t think it is compassionate to affirm that. I think it’s cruelty. When a kid is crying out for help,” Ramaswamy told Todd. “You’ve got to ask the question of what else is going wrong at home? What else is going wrong at school? Let’s be compassionate and get to the heart of that rather than playing this game as though we are actually changing our medical understanding for the last hundred years.....” https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/vivek-ramaswamy-lgbtqia-movement-cult-not-about-logic

Target employee called ‘racist’ for calling cops on ‘flash mob’ that tried to film dance video in store ....A wannabe pop star is receiving backlash online after she labeled a Target employee as a “racist” for calling the police on her “flash mob” that showed up uninvited to a store and began filming a dance video. Baby Storme, an internet personality who released a song titled “This City Is A Graveyard,” posted videos on YouTube and X titled “Racist Target Employee Calls The Police On Us For Dancing.” In the video, Baby Storme, who lists Los Angeles as her hometown on social media, and about a dozen other people dressed in goth-inspired costumes begin a slow dance as they walk through an aisle at a Target.... .....As the large group of mostly women dance to the song, a store employee is seen blocking the camera’s view in an apparent attempt to stop the spectacle. “We’re gonna have to call the cops on you guys,” the employee is heard saying. The video then cuts to a store employee telling the group that they were posing a “safety hazard” — prompting cries of protest from the dancers. “Hey, if we all just start and multiple people record, they can’t block everyone,” one of the dancers commented....The participants then resume their song and dance through the aisle while a security agent in a yellow jacket follows along with his back turned toward the camera..... .....At one point, they form a large circle and hold hands while Baby Storme struts through the middle. Towards the end of the clip, the large group is seen leaving the store. “I was so excited for us to film a quick flash mob at Target,” Baby Storme wrote in the description of the YouTube video of the incident that she posted on Sunday. “But before we even walked through the door, this employee called the police on us for being on the property.”...... “At first he said we couldn’t film,” she wrote.....“But when we stopped filming, he still continued to kick us out, saying that we were a ‘safety violation,’ and that the police were on their way.”....“So, we made the most of what we could.” Baby Storme added: “I couldn’t even remember the dance I came up with.”.....“This moment for me was one that I really can not describe,” she wrote.....“I tried to keep it together, but all I could focus on was all the beautiful brown faces I was able to bring together......”....“That were able to stand in solidarity today. This is everything I stand for,” she wrote...... https://nypost.com/2023/08/14/target-employee-called-racist-for-breaking-up-flash-mob-that-tried-to-film-dance-video-in-store/

@jonmx is correct here. There is no way that the DNC, Team Blue HQ and the corporate establishment allows Trump to actually hold office if he manages to survive them trying to cheat the 2024 general election. It's a foregone conclusion that Team Blue will try to steal 2024 POTUS by any means possible if it appears Biden or Newsom can't win the election on their own. So there's a not far distance between "2020 Was Not A Free And Fair Election" to "Something Is Very Wrong" I cannot convince people that 2020 was stolen, and I won't try to do that. I've always held BOTH SIDES cheated as much at they could, it's just that Team Blue had way more horses available to them to do so. However it wouldn't take much for me, or most anyone else, to convince the masses that "Something Is Very Wrong" in our current American political system. It's very evident it's broken beyond repair and that working class Americans have been effectively abandoned. If Trump somehow survives the cheating to technically win the 2020 general election, I agree with jonmx that The Big Cheeto will be assassinated. If he manages to survive the attempt, there will be mass rioting, looting and burning egged on by the fringe radical left no matter what. It's unfortunate that jonmx is almost constantly under attack here and at the "other place", because he often brings up very good points, for example, the clear desire by the establishment to push in a "federalized police force" to replace local law enforcement agencies. Putting on my lawyer hat for a second, there is no way Trump can "pardon" himself legally and have that eventually be upheld by SCOTUS. Too complicated. Too on the nose. Too controversial. Too much of a pure negative precedent. It's as simple as his VPOTUS pick making a private agreement with Trump to pardon him and his entire family no matter what. Trump can resign three months before his 2nd term ends and his ascending VPOTUS can pardon him and his family. Or he cuts a future deal with a GOP nominee that he'll offer his endorsement, which includes the core MAGA base, for said pardon. The "documents" case has real legal teeth. That's Trump's biggest problem. The rest of the indictments are nothing burgers. The Bragg case is completely laughable. The Georgia case is devastating from an optics standpoint ( Trump, again, is a total imbecile), however he didn't technically break the law. Unethical, yes. Should anyone make those phone calls? No. But in the most stringent sense, Trump skirted actual legal trouble there. Just barely. However the Court Of Opinion has down the ticket impact. Which is also part of the problem. It's not just winning POTUS, you also need to win Congress and also State Legislature seats and Governorships and Trump HURTS all of that everywhere. I don't believe Trump will be convicted in the "documents" case though based on the what's shown so far, he should be. However, in the grand scheme of things, to push it this far, by Team Blue, has exhausted the American people. The same reason Team Blue and the DNC didn't codify Roe into federal law at the several chances they had to do it, was because it left open a "wedge issue" to fundraise on and demonized the Conservative base on in future elections. It's called "Fresh Meat For The Base" and is pretty critical in the average Mid Term election cycle. If it drags to SCOTUS, they won't want a precedent to start putting former POTUS into prison, but Team Blue will want that as well, since it's a chance to try to incite the fringe radical left to try to assassinate a Conservative Catholic on SCOTUS, just like drumming up Roe ended with an assassin with a gun near Kavanaugh's personal residence. Something @RLLD has said a few times before is that Team Blue is good at spinning media. No, I disagree. Team Blue and DNC HQ are idiots. But Donald Trump is also a complete and total imbecile. He makes it EASY to create endless "But Trump" narratives. They WANT Trump to run in 2024. Because they think they can beat him, that he's their best shot to hold power. Any other Republican would be a slam dunk win in a general election besides Trump. Pick ANYONE versus Biden and how will the masses vote ( again, assuming this happens before the election is eventually rigged) Trump, like most unhinged grifter narcissists, has a victim complex. There's a part of him that likely believes that the corporate establishment eventually coming to assassinate him will cement his legacy for all time as a self perceived defiant hero. And the answer is we don't know. History is written by the victors. And it's unclear who might be left standing when this is all over. The only real clear thing is this - You are all on your own now. These elected officials have abandoned you. Left you and your children out to be prey. Spent your grandchildren's money already. Taken safety from the streets and cities. Made it impossible to retire. Made it close to impossible to buy a home. They want a new age feudal system where all of you are nothing better than cattle. The activist radical leftists won't see that, not until it's too late. Not until their children are lined up against a wall. For the moderates out there, what happens if Team Blue and DNC HQ and the corporate establishment get their wish and purge all Conservatives? Who do you think becomes the "new right wing" after that happens? Donald Trump is absolutely one of the worst things that could happen to this entire country. He is used as a distraction, because he needs it to be all about him, all the time, from real day to day issues that matter the most to actual rank and file working class Americans. If Trump didn't exist, Team Blue would have no way to try to paint over their failures, and this entire country would be talking about things that matter like affordable housing, creation of good paying jobs, safe streets, good schools, a hope for the future.