Wednesday, May 31, 2023

Your Brain Is Not a Computer, It Is a Transducer

Let’s start with my 95-year-old mom. Her memory is unreliable, but she’s still lucid, churns out sarcasm like a pro, and plays a lightning-fast game of double solitaire. Today I finally quit after she won seven games in a row, and, yes, I was trying my best.

She also hears music continuously, and it’s not the kind of music that drives us nuts when we can’t get a tune out of our head. She mainly hears original music, and she will sometimes try to hum or sing what she’s hearing. She says it’s coming from "the neighbors downstairs," and it doesn’t bother her, she says, because some of it isn’t bad and because it helps her fall asleep. The fact that other people can’t hear it doesn’t bother her either. She simply smiles slyly and says, "Maybe you should get your hearing checked."

Am I concerned? Well, just a bit — not about the music but about its source. As I told my mom the other day, I would be more comfortable if the inconsiderate neighbors lived upstairs. She laughed and said, "I see what you’re getting at, but don’t worry.  I’m not going to hell."  Very determined, my mom. Was she planning to negotiate the issue with a hand of double solitaire?

... 

The main reason we should give serious thought to such a theory has nothing to do with ghosts. It has to do with the sorry state of brain science and its reliance on the computer metaphor. One of my research assistants recently calculated that Beethoven’s thirty-two piano sonatas contain a total of 307,756 notes, and that doesn’t take into account the hundreds of sections marked with repeat symbols. Beethoven’s scores also include more than 100,000 symbols that guide the pianist’s hands and feet: time signatures, pedal notations, accent marks, slur and trill marks, key signatures, rests, clefs, dynamic notations, tempo marks, and so on.

Why am I telling you about Beethoven? Because piano virtuoso and conductor Daniel Barenboim memorized all thirty-two of Beethoven’s sonatas by the time he was 17, and he has since memorized hundreds of other major piano works, as well as dozens of entire symphony scores — tens of millions of notes and symbols.

Do you think all this content is somehow stored in Barenboim’s ever-changing, ever-shrinking, ever-decaying brain? Sorry, but if you study his brain for a hundred years, you will never find a single note, a single musical score, a single instruction for how to move his fingers — not even a “representation” of any of those things. The brain is simply not a storage device. It is an extraordinary entity for sure, but not because it stores or processes information.  (See my Aeon essay, “The Empty Brain,” for more of my thinking on this issue, and for a truly great thrill, watch Barenboim play the third movement from Beethoven’s 14th piano sonata here.)

Over the centuries — completely baffled by where human intelligence comes from — people have used one metaphor after another to ‘explain’ our extraordinary abilities, beginning, of course, with the divine metaphor millennia ago and progressing – and I use that word hesitatingly — to the current information-processing metaphor. I am proposing now that we abandon the metaphors and begin to consider substantive ideas we can test.

To be clear: I am not offering transduction theory as yet another metaphor. I am suggesting that the brain is truly a bidirectional transducer and that, over time, we will find empirical support for this theory.

... 

This brings me to the claustrum, a small structure just below the cerebral cortex that ispoorly understood, although recent research is beginning to shed some light. Many areas of the brain connect to the claustrum, but what does it do? If the claustrum turns out to be the place where signals are transduced by the brain, you will probably never discover this remarkable fact if transduction is not on your list of possibilities. (If you’re a history buff, you might also be aware of another small brain structure — the pineal gland — that could conceivably be a transduction site. In his first book, Treatise of man, written in the early 1600s, French philosopher René Descartes identified this gland as the seat of the soul. Remarkably, in the late 1900s, scientists discovered that tissue in the pineal gland responds to electromagnetic radiation.)

If modern brain scientists begin to look for evidence that the brain is a transducer, they might find it directly through a new understanding of neural pathways, structures, electro-chemical activity, or brain waves. Or they might find such evidence indirectly by simulating aspects of brain function that appear to be capable of transducing signals. They might even be able to create devices that send signals to a parallel universe, or, of greater interest, that receive signals from that universe. Comparative studies of animal brains, which could conceivably have limited connections to the OS, might help move the research along.

Efficient and clear transduction might also prove the key to understanding the emergence of human language and consciousness; here is a possible explanation for what might have been the relatively sudden appearance of such abilities in humans (see Julian Jaynes’s 1976 book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind).  Neural transduction might also prove to be the mechanism underlying Carl Jung’s concept of the “collective unconscious.” Even Noam Chomsky’s theory of universal grammar could get a boost from transduction theory; it would hardly be surprising that most or all human languages share certain grammatical rules if languages are all constrained by signals emanating from a common source.  And then there’s that ‘flow’ state my friend Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi taught everyone about. When I’m in a hyper-creative mode – now, for example, as I’m writing – I have almost no awareness of this world or of the passage of time. Is the OS the source of our creativity?

GO READ THE WHOLE THING

Robert Epstein (born June 19, 1953) is an American psychologistprofessorauthor, and journalist. He was awarded a Ph.D. in psychology by Harvard University in 1981, was editor in chief of Psychology Today, and has held positions at several universities including Boston UniversityUniversity of California, San Diego, and Harvard University. He is also the founder and director emeritus of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies in Concord, MA.

How Lockdowns Bolstered an Industrial Cartel

Among the many grim memories from the depths of lockdowns were boarded up local shops and long lines outside the big-box stores like WalMart, Kroger, Whole Foods, and Home Depot. For very strange reasons, small business was universally declared to be nonessential whereas the big chains were deemed essential. 

This amounted to a massive industrial subsidy to large companies, which emerged from the pandemic period richer and more bloated than ever. Meanwhile, millions of small businesses were utterly wrecked. 

Nearly every day, my inbox fills with tragic stories of family businesses that were just getting going when the lockdowns came and destroyed everything. Not enough of these stories were ever told. Major media were not interested. 

The government loans (PPP), later mostly forgiven, could not possibly make up the difference for the losses from old-fashioned revenue. In addition, their supply chains were wrecked because they were either starved for business or gobbled up by the large companies. There are no firm numbers but it is possible 25-40 percent of small businesses closed permanently. Dreams were shattered and millions of jobs were disrupted or destroyed. 

As a result, retail trade (declared nonessential except for chosen businesses) has yet to recover in employment, despite the frantic hiring. Neither has hospitality. However, the information sector (declared essential across the board) is larger than ever. 

It was a brutal attack on commercial freedom but what a way to gain an industrial advantage! 

GO READ THE WHOLE THING

Save Ferris
The World Is New

Tuesday, May 30, 2023


Memorial Day Shocker: New York Mayor Eric Adams Denounces Communism and Socialism, Issues Stirring Call to Young Americans to Embrace Patriotism


Comedian On Vaccine Fascism, "It Turns Out I'm The Sort Of Person Who, When The State Tells Him To Do Something, Says, "Fine!"



Media polling from Harvard-Harris showing that Americans hold almost diametrically opposing viewpoints from those that news corporations predominantly broadcast as the official “truth”


‘The Official Truth’: The End of Free Speech That Will End America

  • Media polling from Harvard-Harris showing that Americans hold almost diametrically opposing viewpoints from those that news corporations predominantly broadcast as the official “truth.”
  • Americans have correctly concluded that [with the “Russia Hoax” and suppressing reported influence peddling in Hunter Biden’s laptop ] journalists and spies advanced a “fraud” on voters as part of an effort to censor a damaging story and “help Biden win.” Nevertheless, The New York Times and The Washington Post have yet to return the Pulitzer Prizes they received for reporting totally discredited “fake news.”
  • “Under the current approach to journalism, it is the New York Times that receives a Pulitzer for a now debunked Russian collusion story rather than the New York Post for a now proven Hunter Biden laptop story.” — Professor Jonathan Turley, George Washington University Law School, Twitter, May 15, 2023.
  • The government apparently took the public’s censorship concerns so seriously that it quietly moved on from the collapse of its plans for a “disinformation governance board” within the DHS and proceeded within the space of a month to create a new “disinformation” office known as the Foreign Malign Influence Center, which now operates from within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Although ostensibly geared toward countering information warfare arising from “foreign” threats, one of its principal objectives is to monitor and control “public opinion and behaviors.”

Target's VP of brand management is treasurer at LGBTQ group that pushes school districts to allow children to secretly change gender: Company donated $2.1 million to organization

Will The Gay People 
We Supported Over The Last 40-50 Years 
Ever Stand Up Against This Abomination
A marketing executive at Target also serves as the treasurer of a LGBT organization which receives millions of dollars from the retailer and advocates allowing trans and nonbinary school students to keep their gender identity secret from parents. 
Carlos Saavedra, 43, is Target's vice president for brand management and also volunteers as a director at GLSEN, which supports LGBTQ youth in schools. 
Details of Saavedra's role at GLSEN come as Target's donations to the organization were placed under the spotlight following a backlash to the retailer's Pride month range, which includes 'tuck-friendly' women's swimwear. 
Target has reportedly donated $2.1 million to GLSEN, whose policies include ensuring school staff should 'ensure that all personally identifiable and medical information relating to transgender and nonbinary students is kept confidential'. 
GLSEN's policy said this should include withholding the information from 'parents or guardians... unless the student has authorized such disclosure'. Critics say the policy 'violates [a parents'] right to parent their own children]'.

GO READ THE WHOLE THING

Some Animals are More Equal Than Others


I listen for the prophetic in music, because I believe the musically inclined have embedded within their spirit the prophetic gift. Something in music speaks to future generations. And sometimes what "preaches" does not impact a current generation, but what is sung calls out in strong manner. 

FROM THE LAST ENGLISH PRINCE:
It does seem like a twisted form of Communism is being superimposed over the Republic. The “company store” now owns your soul too. 
Corporations which engage in calculated subversion of the social compact which has served us well for centuries must be brought to account for their utter wickedness against what went out as clarion call: 
America as “a shining city on a hill”. 
Immorality is a commodity now: From Bud Light, to Nike… 
Target, stockholders enter a cultural Nasdaq without their permission and minus their participation in the process. 
Small example: If your find your 401K is being invested in blood diamonds in Africa will you protest? What if your investment is being used to elevate and affirm perversions which reach out to grasp your children? 
Will you – protest now? 
Or does none of this really matter? 
What exactly – matters to you as a human in possession of normative conscience? Do we really have anything to offer the world anymore? We export corruption… moral depravity… callous disregard for children. 
Add to the list. We no longer lead with moral superiority but we limp along with our own diseased herd of humanity. We can no longer lay claim to a strength of standard (across the board) which is unassailable in both wisdom and extension of blessing. 
We do seem to offer blighted cultural guidance. And we consistently bully weaker nations into acceptance of our own sin. They should – push back! 
We must bankrupt the brands which seek to hoist their filth and immorality upon our nation.   
The call is going out today: “He hath shown thee oh man what is good. And what doth the Lord require of thee?” What is your part? 
And if nothing else, locate your damn vocal cords. 
Listen for the prophetic in the song. It is there and it is beautiful. Turn the volume up as you listen to this – and then take the appropriate legal actions.

THE LAST ENGLISH PRINCE HAS MORE HERE

The Man Who Talked Back: Jay Bhattacharya On the Fight against COVID Lockdowns

Toby Keith
American Soldier

Sunday, May 28, 2023

URGENT: Huge new study shows mRNA Covid jabs sharply raise the risk of severe vaginal bleeds

Women 45 and over had a high risk of severe vaginal bleeding after receiving mRNA Covid shots, Swedish researchers found after studying almost 3 million women. 
The increased risk lasted for at least three months after women received a shot and was even higher after the third shot than the first two. That finding suggests what scientists call a “dose-response relationship,” strong evidence the link was not coincidence. 
Overall, a third mRNA dose raised the risk of severe, medically diagnosed bleeding episodes by 25-45 percent. Some women required inpatient hospital care. 
Younger women also had a higher risk of bleeding episodes, although the researchers said hidden factors unrelated to the vaccine might have driven that finding. Vaginal bleeding is not merely painful and uncomfortable. 
n about 9 percent of cases, severe bleeding episodes are a sign of cancer of the endometrium, the lining of the uterus. 
The researchers did not examine whether the extra bleeds were linked to increased diagnoses of endometrial cancer. 
Because of its size and reliance on formal medical diagnoses rather than self-reporting of vaginal bleeding, the study offers the strongest evidence yet that the connection between Covid shots and bleeding is real. 
Bizarrely, though, the researchers downplayed their own findings when they discussed the paper, which was published in the British Medical Journal. 
Meanwhile, the Journal of the American Medical Association relegated the study to a three-paragraph summary in its “Medical News in Brief” section - and inaccurately reported that it had not found the jabs caused menstrual changes in women under 45. It did.

GO READ THE WHOLE THING

From a reader whose wife suffered severe post-mRNA vaginal bleeding

Astonishing rise in atrial fibrillation says the British Heart Foundation

 

BBC launches HILARIOUS "disinformation" department to keep you safe

The BBC is trying to target misinformation with fake Twitter accounts. They admitted as such with the launch of their project called Verity. That’s interesting because Twitter expressly forbids fake accounts but the BBC says that they are doing this to investigate conspiracy theories. The journalist who introduced this, Marianna Spring, says that she is trying to look into conspiracy theories such as those around Covid. She doesn't say which ones because most conspiracy theories have proven to be true conspiracies but she will let us know on her upcoming podcast called “Marianna in Conspiracyland."" Can't wait.

Meanwhile, reporter Max Blumenthal has shown that Spring was connected to British journalist Paul Mason and his plot to smear investigative journalists. He asked her if she ever followed through with these meetings on Twitter but she has not replied. This project raises important questions: Should the media get involved in labeling “disinformation” or “conspiracies” or should they just do their job with better reporting? Who verifies the verifiers? Do these projects do more harm than good?

George Thorogood
Who Do You Love

Saturday, May 27, 2023

SKATEBOARDING LEGEND, WADE JAMES LEE THOMPSON DIES SUDDENLY AT 33

Fully Vaccinated Four year old DIES SUDDENLY AND UNEXPECTEDLY in her sleep

Daniel Greenfield: The DHS Is Criminalizing Political Dissent

 

From Daniel Greenfield:

 Instead of focusing on preventing actual violence and terrorism, the program is now being used to target the entire spectrum of the political right and Christians through “media literacy and online critical thinking initiatives” and other so-called training seminars as part of a coordinated effort to make America into a one-party system.

The University of Dayton, one of several grantees, targeted groups including The Heritage Foundation, Fox News, Christian Broadcasting Network, Turning Point USA, PragerU, the National Rifle Association (NRA), Breitbart News, the American Conservative Union Foundation and the RepublicanNational Committee.

The pyramid of extremism speaks for itself. First you watch FOX News, then some PragerU videos and then you become a Nazi.

Also, “The seminar also compared former President Donald Trump to Pol Pot and suggested Florida Governor Ron DeSantis might wish to start a second Holocaust.”

Sure.

Among the organizations and movements displayed on the pyramid were the Republican Party, the Heritage Foundation, the American Conservative Union, Fox News, Breitbart News, the National Rifle Association, PragerUniversity, Tea Party Patriots, the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, the pro-police Blue Lives Matter movement, and the Christian Broadcasting Network.

The pyramid also included hate groups like The Base, a neo-Nazi paramilitary group, and the Daily Stormer, a pro-Nazi publication, seemingly comparing them to mainstream organizations such as the GOP.

This is about criminalizing political dissent. Plain and simple.

Elementary School Transhumanist Sex Ed Curriculum

Our Culture Is Turning To Steam: Alan Moore on Capitalism, A.I. and More

Join the legendary author of Watchmen, Jerusalem, and V For Vendetta for a journey into the fantastical underside of reality.

Utah Target EVACUATED after it received a bomb threat for 'turning its back' on LGBT community after Pride collection walk back - store is one of several across Midwest to receive threats

Tuck-Friendly Target Targeted By Trans-Terrorism

With thanks to The Last English Prince:

A Utah Target has been evacuated and a bomb squad has been called in after multiple threats were made against stores across the state and five in Ohio after the company's annual Pride collection sparked fury. 
A Layton Target - located at 810 West 2000 North - was evacuated after receiving multiple bomb threats. 
A bomb squad and a K9 unit were deployed to the store around 1pm, according to KUTV. All staff and customers were directed to the parking lot. 
Police said stores in Layton, Salt Lake, Taylorsville and Provo were threatened. Authorities became aware of the threats after local news stations received emails threatening danger and referencing the company's new controversial Pride collection. 
Five Targets in across Northeast Ohio and Pennsylvania were also threatened, according to Cleveland 19, who received a threatening email listing stores in Stow, North Canton, Boardman, Niles, Ohio and Monaca, Pennsylvania. 
'Target is full of [redacted] cowards who turned their back on the LGBT community and decided to cater to homophobic right wing, redneck, bigots, who protested and vandalized their store,' the email to Cleveland 19 read. 
'We won't stand idly by as the far right continues to hunt us down. 'We are sending you a message, we placed a bomb in the following Targets,' the email continued. 
'We will continue to bomb your Targets until you stop cowering and bring back your LBGT merchandise. 'We will not be erased, we won't go quietly.'

Sounds like a clear cut case of terrorism to me.

GO READ THE WHOLE THING

Anyway, (cough), I can't imagine why anyone might be angry with Target:

Target partners with org pushing for kids’ genders to be secretly changed in schools without parental consent

Friday, May 26, 2023

The Doobie Brothers
50th Anniversary at Radio City Music Hall

CBS Shows IRS Whistleblower Exposing Hunter Biden Investigation Abuses

"I immediately saw deviations from the normal process."


Sometimes the medium is as important as the message.

This is on CBS News and it’s being reported by Jim Axelrod, the Chief Investigative Correspondent for CBS News. Back in April, Axelrod and CBS had broadcast an interview with the whistleblower’s lawyer.

It’s not just the lawyer now.

“There were multiple steps that were slow-walked — were just completely not done — at the direction of the Department of Justice,” said Gary Shapley, a 14-year veteran of the agency, who spoke exclusively to CBS News chief investigative correspondent Jim Axelrod on Tuesday. “When I took control of this particular investigation, I immediately saw deviations from the normal process. It was way outside the norm of what I’ve experienced in the past.”

Shapley is not just holding down a desk, he’s a high-level figure.

Shapley is a supervisory special agent with the IRS’s criminal investigations department, currently overseeing a team of 12 agents who specialize in international tax and financial crimes. Previously, he was an officer with the National Security Agency’s Office of the Inspector General. He was assigned to a “sensitive” investigation in January 2020, and within months, he said he grew concerned about how the Justice Department was handling the investigation. CBS News has learned that was the Hunter Biden probe. Shapley says he began documenting his concerns around June 2020.

That predates the Biden administration, but that should also surprise no one. If there’s anything that Russiagate should have hammered home to those in denial, it’s that elected officials don’t run the government unless they take serious steps to exercise control. Talking and writing memos doesn’t cut it. So it should surprise no one that under a Republican administration, the DOJ was protecting Hunter Biden.

The letter alleges “irregularities” in the Department of Justice’s handling of the case,and cites a “charged meeting” Shapley’s team had with Justice Department prosecutors last October. According to the letter, following that meeting, Shapley’s team was effectively excluded from the investigation.

Shapley’s revelations are predictable enough, but what interests me more is the willingness of CBS News to broadcast it. And that is less likely to reflect journalistic integrity than lingering nervousness about a Biden candidacy. Once the nomination is locked in, no journalist will touch a story like this with a ten-foot pole, but for now there’s perhaps a lingering hope that Biden can still be pushed aside. And in the process, journalism happens.

That the Hunter Biden investigation is being slow-walked and handled irregularly is no surprise, that CBS News is willing to talk about it is.

Tyranny, baby

Founder of the Oath Keepers, Stuart Rhodes, Who Committed No Violence on January 6 and Did Not Even Enter the Capitol, Sentenced to 18 Years in Prison By Corrupt Evil Regime

Another fake "seditious conspiracy" conviction.

We must pass a law giving both defendants and prosecutors the right to change venues in politically-charged cases where the local... inhabitants and Regime Enforcers of the judiciary are strongly biased to one side or another. In fact, it's an absolute scandal that this law doesn't already exist.

Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right Oath Keepers, was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison for his involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol -- the longest sentence handed down to date and the first for a charge of seditious conspiracy.

"You, sir, present an ongoing threat and a peril to this country, to the republic and to the very fabric of our democracy," said U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta, characterizing Rhodes as a uniquely powerful driver of the threat to democracy that day. "You are smart, you are compelling, and you are charismatic. Frankly, that is what makes you dangerous."

Let me translate: You are an articulate spokesman for a political cause that threatens The Regime, so you must be put in the gulag.

Is this America?

I'm loyal to America, but I'm sure the hell not loyal to whatever this sh1thole we're living in is called.

Rhodes, 58, is the first of 14 Jan. 6 defendants, including nine Oath Keepers, to face sentencing after being convicted of -- or pleading guilty to -- seditious conspiracy. Enrique Tarrio, who was the national chairman of the far-right Proud Boys on Jan. 6, was convicted of the charge earlier this month.

Prosecutors say Rhodes masterminded a weekslong effort to derail the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden, marshaling dozens of allies across the country to descend on Washington on Jan. 6. Rhodes and his allies spent weeks pressing Trump to forcibly prevent Congress from certifying the election -- and girded for violence even if Trump refused. Rhodes also encouraged Oath Keepers to assemble an arsenal of weapons just outside of Washington that could be deployed to the city if necessary.

Antifa literally does this every other month.

But they're "just a myth," right?

Ultimately dozens of members of the Oath Keepers surged with the pro-Trump mob into the Capitol, while Rhodes rallied them from outside the building.

Dozens of people trespassing!

Can you imagine something like that? Politically-motivated people trespassing in political buildings?!

This is literally the go-to tactic of every leftwing group in America when a state legislature is attempting to pass a law they oppose.

It was a brazen attack that threatened the most important and vulnerable part of American democracy, prosecutors said, urging Mehta to issue a sentence of at least 25 years.

Mehta largely agreed with prosecutors' characterization of Rhodes' role as a leader of the Jan. 6 attack and agreed to classify his crimes as an act of terrorism against the government, a categorization that sharply increased his ultimate sentence.


"What we cannot have -- we absolutely cannot have -- is a group of citizens who because they didn't like the outcome [of the 2020 election] were then prepared to take up arms in order to foment a revolution," Mehta said. "That's what you did.

That's literally what antifa did after the 2016 election -- and then they violently attacked people leaving the Republican National Convention in 2020, decking Rand Paul in the face, for example.

No "seditious conspiracy" there. No "terrorism" there.

It used to be said that the State had the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.

Now it's the State and their protected, promoted Street Militias in antifa and BLM.

And if anyone watches the State encouraging those violent paramilitaries and coddling them, and thinks, "Say, that's how you advance your cause in America now" and tries to emulate them, the State quickly reminds you that only some paramilitaries have the right to throw molotov cocktails at cop cars and burn down courthouses.

Oilfield Rando @Oilfield_Rando

We can do National Divorce or we can have a capital city that plucks dissidents out from anywhere in the country and throws them in prison for 20 years for crimes manufactured by the intel community.

It's that simple.

Compare and Contrast:

Michigan man gets community service for shooting anti-abortion campaigner

A western Michigan man who pleaded no contest to shooting an 84-year-old woman campaigning against abortion rights at his home was sentenced to community service Tuesday.

Richard Harvey, 75, was ordered to complete 100 hours of community service. Judge Suzanne Hoseth Kreeger also gave him a suspended jail sentence of two months and a delayed sentence of one year on probation.

Harvey pleaded no contest last month to felonious assault, careless discharge of a firearm causing injury and reckless discharge of a firearm.

Kreeger also must pay $347.19 in restitution and cannot have any contact with the woman he shot, 84-year-old Joan Jacobson.

Jacobson was shot Sept. 20 at Harvey's home in Odessa Township, a community about 130 miles (210 kilometers) northwest of Detroit. Jacobson told investigators that she was asking a woman at the home to vote against a proposed constitutional amendment that would guarantee the right to abortion in the state when she was told to leave. The amendment later passed.

Harvey has said the shooting was accidental, but Jacobson has maintained she believes it was intentional after she had argued with Harvey's wife, Sharon Harvey.

18 years for rallying people to halt the certification of an election you sincerely believe was fraudulent, but leftwingers are allowed to shoot pro-life activists and face no jail time at all.

This is how the double-standard works. Do actual harm, get undercharged, plea out and walk if you're on the right side. Do no actual harm, get railroaded, have the book thrown at you, and go to jail for a generation if you're on the wrong side.

Tyranny, baby.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!)

The IRS Whistleblower Goes Public and Goes On Camera; The IRS Kept Changing the Rules On His Investigation of Hunter Biden -- "Each and Every Time, It Seemed to Always Benefit the Subject [of the Investigation]"

—Ace

He has not publicly said this concerns Hunter Biden, but sources have confirmed it is about Hunter Biden, and the mobbed-up DoJ and IRS running interference for him.



The 14-year-veteran of the IRS, Gary Shapley, claimed the Justice Department gave special treatment to the investigation in ways he had never witnessed before during an interview with "CBS Evening News" Tuesday.

"There were multiple steps that were slow-walked -- were just completely not done -- at the direction of the Department of Justice," Shapley told CBS News chief investigative correspondent Jim Axelrod in his first public remarks. "When I took control of this particular investigation, I immediately saw deviations from the normal process. It was way outside the norm of what I've experienced in the past."

The IRS investigator -- who was recently removed from the highly sensitive probe in what he believes was an act of retaliation -- is scheduled to testify before the House Ways and Means Committee in a closed-door meeting Friday.


...

Shapley was assigned to supervise the investigation in January 2020 and said over the summer, he grew concerned at how he saw the Justice Department treating the case and certain measures being used to seemingly shield the first son.

"Each and every time, it seemed to always benefit the subject," he said during the CBS News interview. "It just got to that point where that switch was turned on. And I just couldn't silence my conscience anymore."

Shapley had expressed concerns about the case being swept under the rug internally for years before bringing his misgivings to the public.

He said the final straw came following a "charged meeting" with Justice Department officials in October 2022 that ended with him and his team being removed from the investigation after years of work.

"It was my red-line meeting," Shapley told CBS News.

Continue reading

Missouri v. Biden Lawsuit Discovery: Biden Regime Designates YOUR THOUGHTS as Part of Government Infrastructure – They Call It “Cognitive Infrastructure” and They Believe It Is Their Right to Control It


The Gateway Pundit previously reported in May that then Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, along with Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry,  filed a lawsuit (Missouri v. Biden) against the Biden Administration, including Biden himself, Anthony Fauci, the Department of Homeland Security, and nearly a dozen federal agencies and Secretaries.  Schmitt has moved on to represent Missouri in the US Senate.

The suit alleges a massive coordinated effort by the Deep State (permanent administrative state) to work with Big Tech to censor and manipulate Americans – from average citizens to news outlets – on issues including the Hunter Biden Laptop from Hell, 2020 Election Integrity, COVID-19 origin and extent skepticism, COVID-19 vaccine skepticism, among other issues.

The Gateway Pundit reported back in August 2022, that TGP’s Jim Hoft himself became the lead non-governmental plaintiff in the lawsuit against the government.

On Wednesday Tracy posted on recent findings in the case.  The most shocking item discovered is that the Biden regime designates YOUR THOUGHTS as part of the government infrastructure.  They call it the “cognitive infrastructure” and they believe that they have the right to control it.

Talk about Orwellian!

These lawless beasts believe they have the right to control your thoughts.  And that is exactly what they have been doing.

The Missouri and Louisiana attorneys

Missouri v. Biden was filed on May 5, 2022. Since it was initially filed, it has taken quite a trip through the court system. The complaint has been amended 3 times, with the most recent Amendment being to transform the case into a class suit – due to the overwhelming evidence of broad harm to the constitutional rights of all Americans. You can view the docket by using this link.

The complaint alleged that the US Government was not only threatening and coercing social media companies to censor Americans on social media, but they were also working WITH social media companies to accomplish that goal.

It alleged that topics surrounding COVID-19, the origins of COVID, the Great Barrington Declaration, election integrity concerns, the COVID shot, the Hunter Biden laptop story (and more) were under scrutiny by the White House and other government agencies – and that the government had very publicly threatened to take action against social media companies should they not act to censor viewpoints on those topics that were disfavored by the government.

TThe Plaintiffs in the case (the states of Missouri and Louisiana, along with several other private plaintiffs) moved for expedited discovery to be able to obtain a limited set of evidence as well as depositions of certain officials. They argued that this evidence would allow them to make the case for a temporary injunction to stop the government from infringing on the first amendment rights of Plaintiffs and their citizens.

Unlike what many have come to expect, the judge GRANTED the motion for expedited discovery and depositions. A struggle ensued between the Government and the Plaintiffs, with the government fighting against the judge in this case (Judge Terry Doughty) to stop discovery and certain plaintiffs from being deposed. They took those complaints to the 5th Circuit of Appeals and a court in Virginia – a court that *usually* is friendly to the government.

At the appellate court level, the government argued that NO ONE should have to leave their government jobs to sit for lengthy depositions in this case, but certainly not the HEAD of CISA, for example.

The appellate court wouldn’t play ball with the government and remanded the case back to Louisiana with some guidance on how the judge should proceed. If memory serves me right, this happened three times.

One particularly interesting exchange came with the deposition of former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. She made threats to social media companies from the podium. They sought to depose her about those threats. She left the office. The government said they had no responsive documents to explain her comments. So Missouri and Louisiana said, “Then we have to depose Jen Psaki.”

The court agreed and ruled that now private citizen Psaki needed to testify. The government and Psaki- represented by Rhee – went to a court in Virginia to try to get THAT judge to stop the deposition.

Biden Regime Lumps Christians, Conservatives, and Republicans into Same Category as Nazis in New DHS Anti-Terrorism Program


Earlier this year we learned that the FBI was targeting and infiltrating Catholic parishes to spy on the congregations.

The FBI has also infiltrated protests and admitted to having dozens of federal assets who were working inside the January 6, 2021 protests in Washington DC.

The Biden regime was also caught working with private companies to censor speech in America.

Now this…

The Biden regime is lumping Christians, conservatives and Republicans into the same category as Nazis in their new Department of Homeland Security terrorism program.

This in unprecedented in American history.  Not only is the regime targeting its political oppenents and jailing hundreds of Trump supporters but they have broadened their targeted population to include Christians.

At what point will Americans wake up and understand they the country is in the middle of a Marxist takeover?

FOX News reported:

The Biden administration is doling out taxpayer money through an anti-terrorism grant initiative to a university program that has explicitly lumped the Republican Party, as well as Christian and conservative groups, into the same category as Nazis, according to documents shared exclusively with Fox News Digital.

The Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group, obtained documents through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests showing a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program meant to fight terrorism is funding a group whose work has explicitly targeted the American political right. The MRC outlined its findings in a report, arguing what the group found warrants criminal prosecution.

“This terrorism task force is engaged in an active effort to demonize and eliminate Christian, conservative, and Republican organizations using federal taxpayer dollars,” said Brent Bozell, founder and president of the Media Research Center. “What we have uncovered calls for criminal prosecution. The American people need to know those who are abusing their positions in the federal government will be held accountable for their criminal behavior.”

DHS’s Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grant Program (TVTP) provides funds to various public, private, and non-profit institutions — such as universities and county governments — “to establish or enhance capabilities to prevent targeted violence and terrorism.” Grant applicants must be based in the U.S. and implement a U.S.-based program.

Tim Timebomb and Friends
She's Drunk All The Time