India’s Lunar orbiter captured photos of the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 landing sites. A definite setback for the “moon landings were fake” crowd.
Fake News
Oregon School Shooting
Now that the dust is settling and actual facts are coming out, I can post what the cops have released:
At 12:58 p.m. PT yesterday, two vehicles were traveling near Silver Rail Elementary, he said. At that time the suspect approached a fence area of the school from an undeveloped area, crossed the street, threw his weapon over the fence, then climbed the fence onto the school property, Krantz said.
A driver of a red Toyota pickup saw the suspect and“verbally confronted him,” the chief said. The suspect then fired at the pickup, hitting it at least three times.
The driver eventually kept driving and made the initial 911 call.
The driver of a second vehicle — a 36-year-old man whose children attend the school — witnessed the shooting involving the pickup. That man then drove into the school’s parking lot as the suspect was walking along the south side of the school and broke in.
The suspect was identified by police as Griffin J. John II, a 16-year-old Bend resident. He was armed with a long gun and gained entry into the school by shooting through locked doors. He was a special needs student in that school in the past.
The 36-year-old man parked his car, took out a 40-caliber pistol that he had “legally secured in his vehicle,” and went toward the school, Krantz said.
He heard the shooting and saw a teacher involved in a physical altercation with the suspect. He then entered the classroom and fired his weapon, “striking the suspect multiple times.”
climate change
Overstatement
For more than two decades, I have suspected the weather reporters have sensationalized weather just as much as the MSM exaggerates and creates new stories. I was kicked off of a hurricane and weather reporting site in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina for telling people that the damage in Katrina wasn’t as bad as was being reported.
I was there, on the ground as a rescuer in the area of Pascagoula, Ocean Springs, and Biloxi. Damage was pretty severe within about a mile or so of the beach, but outside of that, it really wasn’t that bad. We watched as reporters told their viewers no one was there helping, while we were standing right next to them distributing food, medical aid, and searching neighborhoods for the injured and dead.
I had pictures. That didn’t matter. I disagreed with the consensus there and was expelled from the website.
About ten years ago, we had a hurricane pass almost directly over our heads, and the damage was nowhere near what the winds being reported would have done. So I bought a personal weather station. Nothing I’ve seen from that PWS has supported what the weather folks report.
The same is true about Hurricane Isaias. It was reportedly a CAT3, then weakened at the last minute to a CAT2, and even that lower bar wasn’t seen on shore. The highest wind I could find in the storm’s path was a wind gust to 116 mph with a sustained wind of 91 mph reported at a station near Santa Rosa Sound, Florida. That’s category 1 strength.
We are seeing this time and time again- a hurricane makes landfall and the wind speeds are nowhere near what was predicted.
Fake News
Smug
Some Americans pretentiously think they are better than you because they can pronounce names from foreign languages like native speakers of that language:
Just like the people who insist on pronouncing the name of our current hurricane as if they speak Spanish:
Then there are Americans who don’t give a shit:
Fake News
Conspiracies
This is why I fight to keep this blog from going too far down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole. When Charlie Kirk was murdered, there is footage of one of his bodyguards pushing a button on a device attached to another body guard.
It’s not a mystery- that button is a programmable button that public safety agencies use as an emergency button. It’s used for that because it’s very easy to find quickly by feel, since it’s at the base of the antenna. I carried a radio with one of those buttons for DECADES, but some Internet rando has cracked an entire conspiracy by watching a Youtube video.
In my department, when pushed it switched your radio back to channel one, set off an alarm at every 911 dispatcher’s console, and opened your microphone for 30 seconds. It doesn’t have to do that, however. If I were a bodyguard, I would have it alert my backup team, or summon a driver, or any number of things.
I posited that, and was immediately shot down as not knowing what I am talking about.
This is peak conspiracy. It isn’t enough of a story for a crazed tranny to murder the head of a conservative organization by using a rifle to snipe him at distance. No, people have to spin a story involving his wife betraying him to be in league with the Jews.
One of the ways governments engage in disinformation is through the discrediting of movements by mimicking the movement, but doing it so far in the extreme as to make its adherents look like idiots who are one theory away from a new suit whose sleeves tie in the back.
That’s why I require evidence before screaming about Israel. I’m tired of the stupidity and I just don’t want this blog to become a version of Stormfront. With that being said, I do support the free exchange of ideas, but it’s a fine line that needs to be walked. If you have evidence of Israeli involvement or even Jewish involvement, post a link to it, and I don’t have a problem publishing it. However, come on here with vague innuendo or a game of six degrees from Jews, and I will toss it in the trash.
Posting a link to your own blog, or to some other antisemitic blog that posts innuendo without evidence isn’t evidence. Anyone can have a website, as this blog has proven time and time again.
Fake News
Pearl Clutching
Trump excluded certain left leaning members of the MSM from the White House grounds. The left is losing their collective minds, claiming this to be an unprecedented assault on the First Amendment, and of course making comparisons to Hitler, their standard accusation. They have almost completely memory holed the fact that both Obama and Biden did the same thing.
In October 2009, amid a feud in which White House officials (including Communications Director Anita Dunn) publicly described Fox News as not a legitimate news organization but more like “the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party” and said they would treat it “the way we would treat an opponent,” even while saying the network’s point of view was “ultimately destructive” to the nation, then ordered the Treasury Department to exclude a Fox journalist from a multi-network interview pool.
Obama’s administration was widely criticized by journalists (including from outlets not aligned with Fox) for tight control of information, fewer formal press conferences than many predecessors, restricted photographer access (favoring official White House images), delays or stonewalling on FOIA, and “blackballing” or limiting access for some critical reporters at agencies.
Obama’s efforts to plug leaks and persecute leakers even exceeded those of George W. Bush’s administration. The administration prosecuted Stephen Kim, a former State Department official, merely for discussing a classified report about North Korea with Fox News reporter James Rosen, even going so far as to seize Associated Press phone records for two months and used the FBI to conduct surveillance on James Rosen (naming him as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in one case) and New York Times reporter James Risen while trying to identify sources.
Even in earlier times, the actions were hardly unprecedented:
- Woodrow Wilson investigated journalists critical of his administration by invoking the espionage act of 1917.
- During the late 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt harassed activists, including members of the press, who sought to keep the United States out of the war raging in Europe.
- Richard Nixon went to great lengths attempting to prevent the New York Times and Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers because those documents exposed how US policymakers repeatedly lied to Congress and the American people about the Vietnam War.
Cato institute has a lengthy article about the abuses of opposing press outlets by Presidents. As for my blog, I detailed how the Bush administration and Republicans used laws against pornography. One of the Florida enforcers of this is none other than Sheriff Grady Judd.
Christopher Michael Wilson was investigated by Judd because he ran a website that allowed people to post nude pictures of women on the site, and it required a credit card to access so that the Wilson would know that people accessing the site were adults. Military men deployed in the Iraq war complained that they could not do so while in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, because the web servers in those countries blocked credit cards from being processed by companies who promoted pornography. Because of this, Wilson allowed members proving they were deployed by posting pictures from the war zone to have access to the site. Because of those pictures, the site became a photo journal that chronicled the Iraq war. It was one of the first sites to publish the Abu Grhaib pictures that so embarrassed former President Bush. The pictures being posted to that site caused major problems for the Bush administration.
Judd arrested Wilson on 301 counts of distributing pornography, even though Wilson did not post the pictures, he merely ran a site where people posted content, and the servers were not in Polk County (they were in the Netherlands). A plea deal was reached where Wilson had to turn the website over to Judd.
Even though the charges themselves were over pornography, according to Judd, the investigation was because of the Iraq pictures, also according to Judd.
Don’t forget that Grady Judd is also one of the Sheriffs who broke the law in 2011 when they lobbied the state legislators to defeat the open carry law. I am one of the few people not on the left who think Judd is a grandstanding, authoritarian asshole. He also has previously engaged in arresting people who are critical of his policies, including arresting one woman for “lewd activity in the presence of a minor” because her neighbor and his child heard a “sexual sounding noise” coming from the woman’s home 48 days earlier. Of course, it was only a coincidence that the woman had been critical of the sheriff and his policies. The charges were dropped, but the woman had to sign an agreement to stop criticizing the sheriff.
Yeah, so using political power to silence dissent is nothing new. It’s been going on as long as we have had a nation. Both parties do it, but each claims the other is the evil one. I have news for you: they both are evil, power grabbing assholes who will stop at nothing to gain power.
Fake News
Winning the Internet
The MSM isn’t an unbiased agency that’s just here to report the facts. They are the PSYOPS division of those who would seize the reins of power in this nation. Let me show you:
A CNN anchor called the person who threatened to kill the President an “undocumented immigrant” and insisted she was doing so to “humanize the debate.” Miller responded with this:
Miller: “Humanize? Then let’s humanize the Penal Code too. The bank robber becomes a ‘specialist in unscheduled withdrawals’. The con artist turns into an ‘entrepreneur of alternative financial narratives’. The guy who breaks into your house uninvited is just a ‘visitor with pending documentation’. How about that?”
CNN: “That’s a crude analogy.”
Miller: “Crude is pretending federal law vanishes because CNN’s copy desk cooked up a cuddlier euphemism. ‘Undocumented’ sounds like someone who forgot their wallet in an Uber. No. It’s someone who crossed the border without authorization, stayed, and now the press treats the legal statute like it’s a matter of writing style.”
CNN: “But many contribute to the economy…”
Miller: “Ah, the classic argument: crime stops being crime if the person washes dishes or builds roofs. By the same token, the cigarette smuggler ‘contributes’ too, creates jobs in transport. Want us to call him an ‘informal logistics entrepreneur’? Would CNN go for that?”
CNN: “You’re polarizing.”
Miller: “No. I’m rejecting the marketing dictionary. You change the word, then accuse anyone who uses the legal term of being ‘inhumane’. It’s the oldest trick in the book: first soften the vocabulary, then declare moral victory. The United States is tired of this theater. Call it what it is. Or admit the goal was never clarity—it was narrative control.”
I stopped trusting the MSM during Hurricane Katrina. I was deployed there as part of the FEMA response to that particular disaster. I saw MSM reports about how no one was helping the people there, how there were no supplies anywhere. Meanwhile, we were standing just a few yards away handing out food, diapers, and giving Tetanus and DPT shots. One reporter had to start over when the segment he was filming about George Bush ignoring Katrina victims and not sending food was ruined when a guy walked by casually in the background with a sandwich and a soft drink.
I was there when a plane crash happened at an airshow. The press was interviewing this moron on the news who claimed he wanted to go help the pilots, but the fire department wouldn’t let him, held him back. He says we held him from helping the injured pilot, and blamed us for the pilot’s death. What they failed to mention is the two aircraft hit head on at a combined 800 miles per hour, both pilots were killed on impact, and he was being held back because debris and aircraft fuel was still raining down over the area and we didn’t need the crowd rushing in to get in our way.
That was when I discovered that the media isn’t in the business of selling truth. They are in the business of selling advertising space. The best way to do that is to pander to the masses. The MSM is nothing more than bullshit clickbait, and has been since, well, forever.
There is no Pravda in Izvestia, and there is no Izvestia in Pravda.
Fake News
Navy Food
There is a lot of press on the Navy and the conditions on its ships. Let’s talk about a few of them:
Water
- An aircraft carrier makes about 400,000 gallons of water per day through distillation. The total amount of water used is not just for personnel use. Water use is prolific.
- Galleys: Preparing roughly 18,000 meals daily, beverages, washing produce, cleaning equipment, and operating dishwashers.
- Laundry: Several thousand people generate an enormous daily laundry load. This includes the main ship’s laundry, uniform washing, linens, towels, and medical laundry.
- Aircraft maintenance: Fresh-water washing removes salt from aircraft and engines to prevent corrosion. The Navy considers this mission-essential even during water restrictions.
- Steam catapults: Roughly 200 gallons’ water-equivalent per launch. One hundred launches would represent about 20,000 gallons.
- Reactor and steam plants: High-purity makeup water replaces losses in the propulsion, electrical-generation, and auxiliary steam systems. Most water circulates repeatedly, but leakage, sampling, maintenance, and steam losses require replacement.
- Medical and dental spaces: Sterilizers, scrub sinks, laboratory work, patient care, and sanitation.
- Ship cleaning and sanitation: Galley decks, berthing, heads, workshops, food-service spaces, and garbage-processing areas.
- Closed-loop machinery systems: Air-conditioning chilled water and other cooling or heating circuits normally recirculate their water, but require makeup water.
- Potable-water-system maintenance: Tank cleaning, flushing repaired piping, testing, leakage, and maintaining tank reserves.
During my six years living on a carrier, we were constantly placed on water restrictions. There were days when we couldn’t shower. We heard a constant round of complaining from the CO that he wanted us to use less than 22 gallons per person, per day.
For that reason, the Navy has special shower heads for enlisted showers that require you to hold down a stiff button to get water. Showers that simply run like the ones in your home are referred to as “Hollywood showers” and are not permitted.
Food
The food on submarines is top notch. While the food on aircraft carriers isn’t as high quality, it’s still plentiful. There were multiple dining facilities. Let me demonstrate:
- There are three dining facilities for officers (called wardrooms) onboard. I never worked or ate in any of them, so I can’t give more details than that.
- The Captain’s mess is for the commanding officer to have private meals with anyone he invites to dine with him.
- There is a similar dining facility called the Admiral’s mess for the embarked Admiral and his invitees.
- There is a chief’s mess for Chief Petty Officers (E-7 through E-9)
- There are three different dining halls for enlisted crew members (E-1 through E-6) called the mess decks: Forward, Aft, and the Bar (which was connected to and adjacent to the Aft mess decks)
The forward mess decks specialized in fast, grab and go items like hamburgers (sliders), hot dogs (rollers), cereal, boiled eggs, sandwiches made of ham, egg, and cheese, and other quick options.
The aft mess decks were for hot meals. There were usually multiple options there- two or more main dishes to choose from, sides, vegetables, bread, and dessert.
The bar was what it sounds like- a buffet option where salads, a taco bar, a baked potato bar were available. Sailors could assemble those items with common toppings.
Here is the schedule for the enlisted dining:
- 0100-0330: The forward mess decks open for “Jet setters,” a meal of boiled eggs, cereal, and egg sandwiches.
- 0400-0800: Breakfast on both the forward and aft mess decks
- 1000-1200 The bar is open
- 1100-1400 Lunch is served on both the forward and aft mess decks. Full lunch aft, sandwiches, burgers, and dogs as well as fries and sometimes pizza forward.
- 1400-1600: The bar is open
- 1600-1900: Forward and Aft mess decks open for dinner
- 2100-0100: Aft mess decks open for “midrats” which is usually composed of leftovers from dinner, as well as cold cuts to make sandwiches.
There were choices, and as you can see, there was somewhere and something to eat 19.5 hours per day. In addition, there were multiple stores for sailors to purchase snacks, chips, candy bars, etc.. The Navy calls that stuff “geedunk” and it is sold onboard. The third deck has the ship’s “mall” where things like soap, uniform items, stationery, geedunk, and other things can be bought. It’s on the 3rd deck, next to the post office. Six floors higher, on the 03 level, there was the “Seven-11” where geedunk was for sale. It was located next to the ship’s barber shop, which offered free haircuts. On the second deck, next to the video arcade between the personnel offices and the aft mess decks, there were half a dozen soda and snack machines.
You could always eat. Now I will say that I didn’t always like the food, but there was always plenty of it. Our mess cooks had a high number of Philipinos, and that caused us to eat a lot of adobo and other foods from that nation. I didn’t like that. I tried not to eat on the forward mess decks because I didn’t want to eat a lot of junk, but sometimes I did because the lines to eat aft were long, especially when the food being served aft was good.
On the nights when there was steak, pizza, spaghetti, lobster, or other popular meals, a person could wait in line for an hour or more to eat. My duties didn’t permit me that kind of time, so I would eat a slider from forward. We would get steak and/or lobster about once per month when deployed.
The food was repetitive sometimes, because the mess cooks would screw up and order too much of something. They would get creative in naming it, in an attempt to make us forget we were eating the same meal every day for a week. First it was steamship round, then Yankee pot roast, Savory Roast beef, Prime rib, beef stew, pepper steak, etc,. We once ate chicken at every meal for 14 days straight. Even for breakfast.
Once we were at sea for 45 days or longer, each Friday we would have pizza and pasta night. During that meal, each sailor who wanted it could have two non-alcoholic beers. The enlisted got O’Douls, the chiefs and officers got Sharp’s.
I was once assigned to a working party that was onloading food at the pier in Norfolk. It sucked, because we were carrying food onboard while it was snowing. Four of us ducked into an electrical load center with a box of donuts and hid in there, snacking. The issue is that we had to get rid of the evidence or we would have been caught. So we ate the entire box. There are 144 donuts in a box. The donuts were lemon filled. Eating 3 dozen donuts made me sick. I couldn’t stand the taste of lemon filling for years after that.
Did we bitch about it? Of course we did. Our command Master Chief (the senior enlisted man onboard) used to say “A bitching sailor is a happy sailor. When they stop complaining and the crew goes silent, that’s when trouble is brewing.” The difference is that today, the sailors have social media and combined with the press looking for any reason to slam the military (and by extension, Trump) the complaints are getting traction in the press.
What should the CO do? Cut off all access to social media for the entire crew. Then have the crew scrub and paint the entire ship until it sparkles, now that they have so much free time. That way, they can’t post videos of mold in the showers or dirty berthing areas because they will be clean.
When I was an E-3, I spent a lot of time needle gunning, painting, buffing and polishing floors, and scrubbing the gadoogin deck edges. In fact, about a third of your workday is spent cleaning things when you are E-3 and below. That’s the real motivation to be promoted- you aren’t a janitor any longer.