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You called to say that you were sorry that you couldn’t have been more helpful
All the time you were talking I was thinking who, what, where, would I even be without you.
I spent all day imaging who the two of you are, male/female; female/male; male/male; or female/female. Then I realized that what does it matter, it’s a relationship I haven’t experienced.
I haven’t had a chance to listen to the hearing today but this…
—-
“There was a lot of yelling. A lot of very personal calls over the radio, so it was disturbing. I don’t like talking about it, but there were calls to say goodbye to family members, so on, so forth,” the anonymous official said in audio played Thursday.
I think there were discussions of reinforcements coming, but again, it was just chaos, they were just yelling,” the official continued. “If they’re running out of options and they’re getting nervous — it sounds like we came very close to either Service having to use lethal options or worse.
—
And the disappearing secret service communications? Seriously???
Does this SS behavior remind you of another cop incidence? Uvalde police were more concerned about themselves than they were about protecting the lives of the children they were supposed to protect.
It seems that the SS were more concerned about themselves than they were about protecting the VP who they were supposed to protect. I say this because rather than concentrating on finding a way to save the VP, they were busy calling wives and relatives and complaining about their possibly demise.
That could be another reason why the SS wouldn’t want their texts to be discovered.
For those of you who have been knocking American white women, I hope you acknowledge the bravery of Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, and committee vice-chair Liz Cheney. These are women who have put their careers and their safety on the line to stand up for what they believe in and our American democracy. There are plenty of American white women who are willing to take a stand.
So if you can scream about “bat s**t crazy white women” who follow “lock step “ behind their white men, then you should also laud those who march to their own state of mind.
From NYT:
“Trump ignored pleas to call off his supporters: Members of Congress, aides and his own daughter, Ivanka, made pleas to Mr. Trump to call off the violence as it unfolded in front of him on television. But witnesses told the committee that Mr. Trump not only ignored them but repeatedly signaled that he did not want anything done. Text messages and audio obtained by the committee showed that protesters massing at the Capitol were paying close attention to Mr. Trump’s words. Representative Adam Kinzinger, the Illinois Republican who helped lead the hearing, said that the president, after learning of the Capitol breach, resisted putting out a tweet saying “Stay peaceful.” “He told Mark Meadows that the rioters were doing what they should be doing and the rioters understood they were doing what President Trump wanted them to do,” Mr. Kinzinger said, referring to what Mr. Trump told his chief of staff, Mr. Meadows.
Trump never spoke to the Pentagon or law enforcement: Through a range of witness testimonies, the committee demonstrated that Mr. Trump never reached out to the heads of any law enforcement or national security department or agency in the government to seek help in responding to quell the violence. Fox News footage, which Mr. Trump was watching from his dining room, showed how the Capitol Police were under siege, massively outmanned and struggling to repel the crowd. But the president remained unmoved.
VP Pence’s Secret Service detail feared for their lives: Testimony from a White House security official, who had access to what Secret Service agents in the Capitol protecting Vice President Mike Pence were saying to each other over their radios, showed how agents feared for their lives as protesters drew near. The committee declined to identify the official and masked the official’s voice. “There was a lot of yelling,” the official told the committee. “A lot of very personal calls over the radio, so it was disturbing. I don’t like talking about it, but there were calls to say goodbye to family members, so on and so forth. It was getting — for whatever the reason was on the ground the V.P. detail thought that this was about to get very ugly.”
Cassidy Hutchinson was a credible witness: The committee helped bolster the credibility of Cassidy Hutchinson, the West Wing aide who provided dramatic and damning testimony to the committee last month and quickly was attacked by Mr. Trump and his allies. One of the most significant disclosures from Ms. Hutchinson was that there was an angry dispute between Mr. Trump and his security detail in his car when the detail refused to drive him to the Capitol to join his supporters. Testimony played on Thursday from an anonymous White House security official and a sergeant in the Metropolitan Police Department who was driving in Mr. Trump’s motorcade corroborated that claim. “The only description I received was that the president was upset and was adamant about going to the Capitol,” Sergeant Mark Robinson said in testimony of his deposition played at the hearing. “And there was a heated discussion about that.” Other testimony played by the committee showed that White House aides believed that if Mr. Trump headed to the Capitol he would have been joining a violent event.
Trump refused to admit that the election was over on Jan. 7: A day after the assault, Mr. Trump taped an address, but he still could not bring himself to say that the election was over. Outtakes from that address obtained by the committee showed an angry Mr. Trump telling the teleprompter operator to edit out of the address a phrase about the election now being over. His daughter, Ivanka, can be heard responding to some of Mr. Trump’s edits.
I do hope nobody is shocked that white nationalist infest the Secret Service. They already infest law enforcement, the military, the legislature(city, state and federal), the judiciary and the executive branch.
We need to go after these MAGATs when they slip up and break the law.
There’s not a single person on the planet who has not experienced a liar going into full meltdown trying to save themselves. We see it now on a grand scale. The GOP is mired in the quicksand of their lies. They don’t want to admit their untruthiness nor do they want to face the consequences of a humbling, contrite confession.
Bad choice because the opportunity for the GOP’s plea bargain is evaporating as we watch. Doubling down on the lie just makes it worse as it becomes a mathematically untenable sequence.
What is really confounding is that America is such an historically, forgiving country, and all they have to do is fess up. Just say, like you, I was duped! America is also an unforgiving country when they learn they’ve been the victim of a long con.
I’m a Democrat so, yeah, keep it up GOP, the hole you’ve dug is about to collapse.
Melanie lied about her education, her degree, her U.S. citizenship, her tourist visa, work relations as a lesbian porn model, working for a man who “supplied women for rich men”, being sold at auction, living in the White House.
I do not believe she was lying when she claimed she did not care.
The bipartisan US Senate Intelligence report – all 5 volumes covering 990 pages – details the collusion between trump and Putin, including the conclusion that when Manafort gave internal polling data to the GRU, it constituted “a grave counterintelligence threat.” This report has been online for a few years. It is not new, nor news. The Mueller report then detailed 10 instances of trump obstructing justice to try and prevent that very investigation from taking place. This report was available from Amazon a few years ago, at a cost of I think $10. The only people on Earth that do not know this are trump supporters, who are unwilling or incapable of understanding reality and facts.
Disgustingly IMO, the DOJ has completely walked away from using the Mueller report to indict Trump for the crimes it enumerated. So, evidently Merrick Garland is also unwilling and/or incapable of understanding the reality and facts of the matter which require that laws be enforced to have any meaning.
Republicans are trying to convince us that they are not watching, and are not interested in, “the January 6th witch hunt”, yet many turned away from FOX to catch it on other networks. Some have even told me what they didn’t like about the programming, just after telling me they weren’t watching it. They even lie when they didn’t have to.
The entire government has been captured by one corporate entity or another
Paid Lobbyists need to be made illegal
and Citizens United needs to be killed
Just for starters.
And the insider Trading that BOTH SIDES love so much need to be made a felony
Yup. That is actually a well known form of corruption. It is called “regulatory capture” (see Wikipedia). Regulators are being taken over by the industry they are supposed to regulate.
That is why ATF is run by the gun industry.
That is why the CDC and FDA are run by big pharma.
Why You Should Replace Old Surge Protectors
ANDREW HEINZMAN
There’s nothing better than knowing that your valuable electronics are safe. And surge protectors give you that peace of mind for a very low price—but only if you replace them every few years. While the old surge protectors in your home may seem to function normally, they likely offer zero protection for your electronics.
Table of Contents
How Do Surge Protectors Work?
Surge Protection Wears Out Over Time
Old Surge Protectors Are a Fire Hazard
When Should You Replace a Surge Protector?
How to Recycle Old Surge Protectors
How Do Surge Protectors Work?
Most people use the terms “power strip” and “surge protector” interchangeably. But a power strip is just a big plastic thing that gives you extra outlets. Surge protectors are much more useful—not only do they give you extra outlets, but they regulate the amount of power that your electronic devices receive.
Think of surge protectors like a pressure-release valves. When the incoming voltage is too high, they send it to ground instead of letting it hit your electronics. And if the voltage is too low, your surge protector increases resistance to keep electronics functioning normally.
So, while a surge protector can keep electronics online during a “voltage sag,” they’re most useful during power surges. As the name implies, a power surge sends an excess of voltage through your home wiring. This spike in voltage can destroy or damage electronic devices, and unfortunately, damaged electronics are a common source of house fires.
Surge protectors are an essential item in any home, and at the very least, you should use them to defend valuable electronics from power surges. But you can’t just use the same surge protectors for the rest of your life; they need to be replaced every few years.
Surge Protection Wears Out Over Time
When surge protectors receive an excessive load of electricity, they divert or “shunt” the extra power to ground using a metal oxide varistor (MOV). But in the process of diverting this power, the MOV exposes itself to the excess voltage. And over time, it wears out.
Every surge protector has a rating that describes how much excess voltage the MOV can handle. This rating is in joules—most power strips are equipped for 800 or 1,000 joules, while more expensive models can handle several times that amount.
But this rating is cumulative; it’s like health points in a video game. If a surge protector that’s rated for 1,000 joules is hit by 100 joules during a thunderstorm, then it can only handle another 900 joules.
Once a surge protector’s “health points” fall to zero, it no longer offers surge protection. It becomes a simple power strip that won’t protect your electronics or your home.
Old Surge Protectors Are a Fire Hazard
The worst mess of surge protectors and dust you’ve ever seen.
I gasped when my editor showed me this picture. Josh Hendrickson
Once a surge protector is “used up” it becomes increasingly sensitive to low voltages. And that’s a problem, because it will still try to soak up excess voltage and send power to ground. If it’s hit by a large power surge, it may become damaged, which creates a fire hazard. It could also overheat and immediately catch fire.
Plus, an old surge protector offers little protection for your electronic devices. These devices may become damaged due to the lack of surge protection, and that damage leads to its own fire risks.
And even if we ignore surge protection altogether, surge protectors tend to be crammed behind furniture and appliances. They’re in the nastiest parts of your home, and they collect dust, crumbs, hair, and dead bugs—flammable stuff that slowly builds up over the years.
These are not theoretical risks. As the Consumer Safety Guide explains, functional surge protectors lower the risk of a house fire. But old or broken surge protectors are often the cause of fires. So, please replace your old surge protectors.
Unfortunately, you can’t really tell when a surge protector needs replacing. Experts generally agree that you should replace surge protectors every two or three years, which is a good (though somewhat costly) rule of thumb.
And while you might think that a fancy surge protector will “last longer” than one that’s only rated for 200 joules, that isn’t necessarily the case. A large power surge can exceed 1,000 joules and instantaneously wear out the more expensive surge protectors in your home. A high joule rating simply provides extra peace of mind, especially for valuable or sensitive electronics.
Now, you may notice that some power strips have a “surge protection” LED. This light will turn off (or turn on) to tell you that surge protection is no longer functioning properly. It’s a useful feature, especially when paired with sensitive electronics, but it isn’t 100% reliable.
When you buy a new surge protector, I suggest writing the date on its backside. That way, you’ll know to replace it when it’s two or three years old.
How to Recycle Old Surge Protectors
A pretty recycling symbol.
Sunset Paper/Shutterstock.com
Unless you live in a region with strict e-waste laws, there’s nothing stopping you from throwing old surge protectors in the trash. But that’s pretty wasteful. Surge protectors contain several recyclable components, including copper, which may be reused for new electronics or home wiring.
But every city has its own recycling process. If there aren’t any dedicated e-waste facilities in your area, you may need to call your city’s waste department for recycling instructions. Or, you could use a website like call2recycle, earth911, or Greener Gadgets to find a recycling location near you.
My suggestion is relatively simple—go to Best Buy for electronics recycling. All Best Buy locations offer e-waste recycling and may give you a gift card if you recycle something of value.
Great info. Thank you. I just dated my current surge protectors as they are less than 1 yr old.
Putin joke
Putin dies and goes to hell, but after a while, he is given a day off for good behavior.
So he goes to Moscow, enters a bar, orders a drink, and asks the bartender:
-Is Crimea ours?
-Yes, it is.
-And the Donbas?
-Also ours.
-And Kyiv?
-We got that too.
Satisfied, Putin drinks, and asks:
-Thanks, how much do I owe you?
-5 euros.
Just to balance things off. How about one on the Left?
DEA officer stops at a ranch in Texas and talks with an old rancher.
He tells the rancher, “I need to inspect your ranch for illegally grown dr*gs.”
The rancher says, “Okay, but do not go in that field over there,” as he points out the location.
The DEA officer verbally explodes saying, “Mister, I have the authority of the Federal Government with me.”
Reaching into his rear pants pocket, he removes his badge and proudly displays it to the rancher.
“See this badge? This badge means I am allowed to go wherever I wish… On any land. No questions asked or answer given. Have I made myself clear? Do you understand? ”
The rancher nods politely, apologizes, and goes about his chores.
A short time later, the old rancher hears loud screams and sees the DEA officer running for his life chased by the rancher’s big Santa Gertrudis Bull…
With every step, the bull is gaining ground on the officer, and it seems likely that he’ll get gored before he reaches safety.
The officer is clearly terrified.
The rancher throws down his tools, runs to the fence, and yells at the top of his lungs…
“Your badge… Show him your badge!”
BREAKING NEWS
The W.H.O. declared monkeypox to be a global health emergency. With cases already in dozens of countries, many experts had urged faster action.
Saturday, July 23, 2022 10:19 AM ET
Hell, it the nukes don’t kill us instantly, these diseases will get us slowly.
If a nuclear war broke out between the U.S. and Russia, does Russia have the advantage since they have hypersonic missiles and those would hit American cities way before U.S. missiles, which are only supersonic, will take longer to hit Russia?
All US ICBMs are hypersonic. The flight time from the east coast of the US to Moscow is about 30 minutes, a distance of 7,500 km. Which means their average speed is about Mach 12; missiles are classified as hypersonic if they travel at more than Mach 5. So US intercontinental missiles travel at well over twice the speed needed to be classified as “hypersonic”.
You are buying into the marketing buzz and propaganda from Russia and China. Hypersonic missiles have formed the basis of the US’s strategic defence for over 50 years; this isn’t some new idea.
Have you ever lost any respect for someone instantly?
Yep.
When my girlfriend and I were leaving the supermarket I spotted a very old woman very visibly struggling to lift her bottles of water to put them in her trunk all by herself.
I said : “Oh, hang on, I’m gonna help her.”
My girlfriend’s response was : “Why? Let her manage what she bought.” There was genuine deep suspicion and smugness in her voice. My jaw just dropped, and I went to help the old lady.
I broke up with my girlfriend the following week, despite having been together for quite some time, because of that. (and many other displays of that sort)
Also despite how unlucky in love I am and how much I would have fought for this relationship, in the past.
But I just couldn’t sleep anymore with someone so nice to me, and so cold to others. A fucking granny struggling to lift a bag.
How deep in fear, hatred and/or selfishness you must be, to genuinely not want to help her. To close yourself, by mere reflex, in the face of the most simple scene there could be?
I did try discuss this reaction with her, yes (many times before, and this time again), but in vain.
And it was far too symbolic and just opened my eyes to the kind of person I was with.
The shame came in a big wave, and all respect was gone with the tide, this last time.
A lot of old people can perfectly take care of themselves, of course!
A lot of them are freaking assholes even, I don’t deny that.
That wasn’t the point here. We didn’t get to know that. It was just out of blue spite against a perfectly fine stranger, from afar.
You can insult me, you can abuse me, you can hit me, time and time again. I’ll still accept you for what you are, accept the quid pro quo, the violence, the fear, the rudeness, I will still respect you.
You can do the most despicable things, if you’ve got some higher or deeper reason behind it. It’s alright, we’re humans, capable of the best and the worst, myself included.
But a granny struggling to lift a bag, inspiring in you automatic spite ? Come on! Hell no.
You’ve got to have a heart, as dark and tiny as it may be, but that was the line for me.
/pettyrevenge
•Posted by
u/Magpiebrain
Shitty boys meet GREATEST FATHER .
I was recently reminded of this story by a friend, this is my first time posting here so I hope it meets the criteria. I’m not a native speaker and this didn’t happen in the US.
It happened a couple of years ago. I’m not sure exactly how many because I have ADHD and time is an unknowable thing, but camera phones existed so it can’t be that long ago, right?
It also didn’t happen to me personally, I just got to be a gleeful bystander.
So some (undeterminable) time ago I was at a train station. This station had a shopping center attached to it. Sort of where the station part ended and the shopping part began there was an escalator (there were lots of escalators, but this is the only one relevant to the story), with one side going up and the other going down. I was grabbing a quick drink from a stand near the escalator and then I was planning on going down into the city center. While I was making my way over to the escalator I suddenly heard a young girl yell out “Holy shit, did you just grab my ass!?”. Right behind her were two teenage boys who were laughing and holding up a phone, obviously recording the whole thing. The boys were poc, I won’t tell you what ethnicity because I don’t need whatever racist takes reddit comes up with, I’m only mentioning it because it becomes somewhat relevant later.
Now I do not do confrontation in general, but this kinda bullshit overrides whatever anxiety usually gets in the way and I was ready to make my way over there and give those two little shits a piece of my mind, and also see if the girl was okay and needed some comfort.
Turns out I needn’t have bothered because RIGHT BEHIND THEM was the girls father! Who was NOT AMUSED and physically grabbed the two boys by the back of their shirts and hauled them over to the side and laid into them. This man was a freaking giant, btw. I swear he was easily 2m tall and extremely muscular. Picture the Mountain from GoT, but significantly more hairy and you’ve got a good approximation of this guy’s build.
Pretty much immediately after mountain-dad grabbed the boys their parents showed up! I assume they were waiting to meet them at the top of the escalator? Also, honestly, what kind of morons decide to harass someone on their way to meet their parents!?
Obviously their dad demands to know what is going on and why mountain-dad is manhandling his sons. So now mountain-dad lays into shitboy-dad who seems unconcerned with what his sons did and more concerned their expensive shirts are stretched. A+ on priorities dude.
The commotion attracts a nearby police officer who tells everyone to calm down and tell him what is going on. I don’t think there’s a police station nearby, if there is I never noticed, so I guess he was just around? The girl explains that she was on the escalator and the boys grabbed her ass and were recording it, the father corroborates and the boys surprisingly don’t deny it. In fact they stupidly double down on their asshole behaviour and snigger about it.
This sends mountain-dad flying into a rage who starts to yell that he wants to have them arrested for sexual assault and pedophilia because his daughter is only fourteen (the boys looked to be around 17-18 I guess). Now I don’t know if that is something that could have actually happened, but it sure does worry shitboy-dad who immediately goes on the offensive screaming that that’s racial profiling and mountain-dad (and somehow also his daughter ???) are a bunch of racists. The whole thing devolves into a shouting match between the dads. One yelling that the boys are disgusting pedophiles and the other yelling that mountain-dad is a filthy racist. The police officer just stands there looking a little lost.
At one point shitboy-dad makes a CRUCIAL mistake. He yells at mountain-dad that his daughter should “take it like a compliment, she’s not even that attractive”. He then follows it up with the galaxy brain take of “if people grab other people’s asses in public then they should be thankful for being made to feel prettier”.
I fully expected mountain-dad to deck shitboy-dad at this point, but mountain-dad goes eerily silent and then just says “Okay. Turn around”.
Shitboy-dad and the police officer look extremely confused, but mountain-dad’s face is hard as steel.
He says “I will drop whatever charges (again, I’m not sure if charges are a real thing, but shitboy-dad certainly considered it a credible threat) if you and your sons turn around, let me grab your ass and then turn back to me to thank me and say you feel prettier now.”
Shitboy-dad and his sons look horrified. For the first time in this whole fiasco they seem to understand the humiliation and violation of someone touching you against your consent. Shitboy-dad looks at his sons, his wife, the deliciously unhelpful police officer (honestly by this point he is more of a background ornament than anything else) and finally to the young girl and mountain-dad who is staring him down. And he makes a decision. He turns around.
His sons starts to protest but he hisses at them to shut up and turn around.
Mountain-dad’s expression turns into the most murderous grin I have ever seen and he turns to his daughter and tells her to pull out her phone and start recording.
Shitboy-dad (and his sons) immediately whip around and start protesting, but mountain-dad argues back that his sons were doing the same damn thing so either it’s perfectly fine or they get arrested for it. Shitboy-dad turns back around, visibly fuming and bright fucking red.
The girl starts recording and mountain-dad grabs first the boys’ asses, one hand per ass, and then shitboy-dad’s ass, with both hands and gives him a firm slap on the ass too. Then he loudly says “Now tell me you’re thankful and you feel prettier”. The boys look like they want the ground to swallow them up and shitboy-dad is vibrating with rage and humiliation. They mumble something but that won’t do for mountain-dad who is enjoying every second of this and his daughter who is desperately trying to stifle her crying laughter to get good footage. She is one hundred percent gonna play this back on repeat a million times. “No”, says mountain-dad, “I want to hear it, let’s try that again. Thank you, I feel prettier now. Say it”
And they do, before everyone gathered there (and by now it’s quite a crowd) they say “Thank you, I feel prettier now”. I’d like to tell you everyone broke out in applause, but this is real life and they didn’t. Some people laughed a bit, but that’s it. It doesn’t matter, it is to this day the greatest moment of revenge I have ever witnessed and it will nourish my soul for the rest of my years.
Shitboy-dad, btw, took off the moment he finished his sentence. Didn’t even look back to see if anyone was following, just booked it in a powerwalk. Sons and wife followed and that’s all I know.
Mountain-dad hugged his daughter really tight, kissed her on the forehead and then they giggled over the replay of the video she took. I like to think that girl grew up alright.
Is this a true event or just a story?
Regardless, I liked it. No, violence,(except against the young girl), and perhaps a bit of understanding to shit for brains father and two clueless teens.
It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. I certainly hope it is. I loved it, and thoroughly enjoyed the read. You are a wonderful storyteller.
Mountain-dad acted heroic in a situation that he could’ve shrugged off had he not taken the act of grabbing his daughter’s ass seriously or considered the ramifications it might have on her psyche afterwards.
And he didn’t just come to her aid but took a much deeper emotional step. Mountain-dad put his daughter back in the driver’s seat of her life, handed her back the controls in a situation where she was the victim, and so importantly, helped her take immediate revenge in a fun and empowering way.
More importantly, how different the outcome would’ve been had Mountain-dad not been there. Instead of taking action that created a beautiful bonding experience for father and daughter, not to mention a story they will forever tell and giggle about time and time again, it would’ve just been a bad experience to live over and over again, should he had taken the route of pressing charges.
We all wish we had a Mountain-dad in our lives to help us out of an ordeal, and turn it into something that we can put into our tool box and pull out anytime we needed to feel strong and empowered in future situations.
I think those two boys will most likely never grab a girl’s ass again, therefore preventing other girls from experiencing a similar ordeal and possibly a worse outcome, without having a Mountain-dad around to quell the situation.
Thanks for sharing!
Did You Know?
Cate Blanchett is the only actor to win an Oscar award for the portrayal of another Oscar award-winning actor—in 2005, she won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her portrayal of Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator.