Hi everyone. I am very tired but I wanted to do this post before I crash out and go back to doing other things. Ron and I just got done working together to slice three hams. Small boneless ones. We wait until they go on sale and get a couple. Turns out we had one in the freezer waiting for this. So a good sale came up on small boneless hams and Ron pounced like a lioness after an elk. We once got lucky, a large shoulder ham was at a really low price and had a small bone. That is important. The bone has to be small, if you get one of those that works great. You can have a ham dinner then carve the largest chunks off the bone. Those you slice on the meat slicer and the bone part you boil for soup. (insert Bernie Sanders yelling “Suooop”)! here.
So rather than describe it I will simply but the pictures below. But before I do that you might wonder why I have a meat slicer. Well for about 15 years I made bread for us and our friends. I love the taste of fresh baked bread and I had three great machines to do it. I made a two pound loaf every three days. I tried several ways to cut the bread loaves into slices. The meat slicer has a variable speed and worked great for cutting the bread into even regular slices. I used my machines so much I burned out three Breadman upright loaf machines. I liked that kind because the paddle was in only the one end of the bread loaf and so you did not lose much bread slices. I have never found another like it. I bought two, one was 200 dollars with a squat fat pan that gives an unusable loaf. If anyone has or knows of a good machine Ron keeps asking me to go back to making bread again. Ok below are the pictures. Loves, best wishes, and hugs to all.
Hello Everyone. Before I turn you over to Ethel to watch her informative video on the same group attacking trans people making up lies about furry’s to try to attack trans people through them. Of course according to the hate group anything not cis straight that they don’t understand is attacking children somehow. But my good news I won’t have to dump my main computer. I figured out what was causing two of my programs that I need to refuse to work. I combed through the setting of both programs. I then dumped the video computer. I later realized I did not have to. There was a setting that said make this program work with the VPN (paraphrased) Then the other side of that said make programs not work with VPN. So I had placed the switched it to work with VPN. For two days I couldn’t get the two program. This morning at 3 am I dumped the computer, resetting it, then loaded up the two programs and kept changing settings and things until suddenly everything works. Then I check to make sure the VPN was not leaking my location with the settings that way. The switch should have said this way bypasses the VPN, this way makes the program use the VPN. Why do I need the VPN? I live in Florida, a republican nanny state that thinks adults in the state need permission to visit sites labeled NSFW if you get my meaning. Anyway. Now I have to reload all my programs on the video computer. Now to the video. Hugs
Lee Moran Thu, March 20, 2025 at 2:02 AM CDT 1 min read
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt faced mockery on Wednesday after another apparent slipup during a press briefing.
Leavitt stated that President Donald Trump is “committed to passing a big reconciliation package later this year,” which includes “ending no taxes on tips.”
Leavitt says Trump is committed to "ending no taxes on tips"
Critics quickly seized on the phrase, interpreting it as an accidental double negative that contradicted Trump’s 2024 election campaign promise to nix taxes on tips. Trump has yet to implement the policy.
Leavitt on Monday drew similar mockery after she accidentally claimed the Department of Justice will focus on “fighting law and order” when “fighting for law and order” was likely what she meant.
March 21, 1937 On Palm Sunday (the Sunday before Easter), the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico was to march in Ponce (city on the southern coast of the island) in support of Puerto Rican independence. They were also protesting the imprisonment of Albizu Campos, leader of the Party and the lawyer for the sugarcane workers who had led a general strike.The colonial military governor, Blanton Winship (a Georgian who had been Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Army), revoked the parade permit at the last minute. Nationalists insisted on marching regardless and, surrounded by the well armed police, were fired upon as they began. Whoever fired the first shot, 18 Nationalists and 2 policemen died. 200 others, Nationalists and bystanders, were injured, 150 arrested. This incident is known as Masacre de Ponce, or “The Ponce Massacre.” Families of those who died in the Ponce Massacre A history of Puerto Rico The Ponce massacre remembered
March 21, 1960 South African police opened fire on unarmed demonstrators in the black township of Sharpeville near Johannesburg. The demonstrators were protesting the establishment of apartheid pass laws which restricted movement of non-whites. In Sharpeville itself, 69 were killed and 176 wounded when police fired on the crowd, 63 of them shot in the back. In the aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre, protests broke out in Cape Town and elsewhere, and there were further casualties. Overall, 13,000 were jailed. The organizer, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, head of the Pan-Africanist Congress, had written to the police commissioner, notifying him of the plans, and had said at a press conference, “I have appealed to the African people to make sure that this campaign is conducted in a spirit of absolute nonviolence, and I am quite certain they will heed my call.” The Sharpeville Massacre and its significance in South African history
March 21, 2003 The report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa was released. The commission was led by the Reverend Desmond Tutu, a bishop in the Anglican Church, the first black General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches, and Nobel Peace Prize winner for his efforts to bring peace and justice to all South Africans. .Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu The Commission was charged with investigating and providing “as complete a picture as possible of the nature, causes and extent of gross violations of human rights” under the racial separatist apartheid regime from 1960 until the inauguration of Nelson Mandela in 1994, South Africa’s first black president. But the Commission sought to go beyond truth-finding to promote national unity and reconciliation, to facilitate the granting of amnesty to those who made full factual disclosure, to restore the human and civil dignity of victims by providing them an opportunity to tell their own stories, and to make recommendations to the president on measures to prevent future human rights violations. Reverand Tutu concluded in his foreword to the report, “Quite improbably, we as South Africans have become a beacon of hope to others locked in deadly conflict that peace, that a just resolution, is possible. If it could happen in South Africa, then it can certainly happen anywhere else. Such is the exquisite divine sense of humour.” The complete report of the Commission
March 21, 2008 More than 300 people participated in an annual Good Friday peace action at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, organized by Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment (CARES). The lab is a key participant in the design of all weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The Alameda County Sheriff arrested 91 of the protesters. CARES Executive Director Marylia Kelley said, “The emphasis is on nonviolence and rejecting violence.” The organization behind the action
March 21, 2011 An estimated 14 million Egyptians voted in an essentially problem-free election. 77% voted to endorse a process that would bring elections for parliament within six months and a presidential election later.
Elon Musk’s DOGE continues to lie about Social Security, and now very alive recipients are being told that they are actually dead?!
Sam Seder of The Majority Report joined Francesca to set the record straight about Social Security.
Elon has been busy destroying our federal agencies for a while now, and Social Security has been at the top of his list despite being the most popular federal program. Heaven forbid someone other than Elon gets money from the government!
Musk has attempted to sell a bunch of lies about the program, from 150 year olds getting checks (they aren’t), to claiming the program is increasing the national debt (it isn’t). Both these claims were very easily disproved, and yet, Elon is still pushing to gut the program. Unfortunately, we may already be seeing the results of his efforts.
There have been multiple recent reports from Social Security recipients who stopped receiving their checks. When these retirees looked into the reason why, they found out that they were listed in the system as being deceased! We don’t know for sure if DOGE is behind this, but it is extremely sus to say the least.
Personally, I fail to see how they’re preventing serving 2 Masters, but I guess we will see. I do see flaws (bringing the Kingdom of Heaven to Earth is not possible in Christianity, and is said to mean similar actions to what the current US President is doing in regard to “undesirables,) but am trying to not judge just yet; techies may have mixed up some terms, or could be trying to redefine terms.
A high-profile network of investors and founders in Silicon Valley are promoting a new moral vision for the tech industry, in which job choices and other decisions are guided not by the pursuit of wealth, but according to Christian values and Western cultural frameworks.
At an event in San Francisco last week hosted in a former church, Trae Stephens, cofounder of the defense contractor Anduril and a partner at the Peter Thiel–led venture capital firm Founders Fund, characterized the idea as the pursuit of “good quests” or careers that make the future better, a concept that he said has theological underpinnings.
“I’m literally an arms dealer,” Stephens said at one point, prompting laughter from the crowd of roughly 200 people, which included Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan. “I don’t think all of you should be arms dealers, but that’s a pretty unique calling.”
The hour-long discussion was part of a series of ticketed gatherings organized by ACTS 17 Collective, a nonprofit founded last year by Stephens’ wife, health care startup executive Michelle Stephens. The group, whose name is an acronym that stands for “Acknowledging Christ in Technology and Society,” is on a mission to “redefine success for those that define culture,” she says.
In Michelle’s view, tech workers mostly believe in arbitrary metrics of success, like money and power, leaving some of them feeling empty and hopeless. She wants them to believe instead that “success can be defined as loving God, myself, and others.”
People of all denominations—including atheists—are welcome at ACTS 17 events. Last Thursday’s event had low-key party vibes. Bartenders served beer and wine, a DJ was spinning light worship beats, and prayer booklets rested on a table. The idea for ACTS 17 and a speaker series on faith actually took root at a party, Michelle says. In November 2023, during a three-day 40th birthday party for Trae in New Mexico, Peter Thiel led a talk on miracles and forgiveness. Guests were intrigued.
“Folks were coming up to us saying things like ‘I didn’t know Peter is a Christian,’ ‘How can you be gay and a billionaire and be Christian?,’ ‘I didn’t know you could be smart and a Christian,’ and ‘What can you give me to read or listen to learn more?’” Michelle says.
The Stephens have long-standing connections to Thiel. In addition to helping start Anduril and working at Founders Fund, Trae was also an early employee at data intelligence firm Palantir, a company cofounded by Thiel that develops tools used by the US military.
At the ACTS 17 last Thursday, Trae appeared to echo a number of ideas Thiel has also espoused about technology and Christianity. He emphasized that jobs outside the church can be sacred, citing Martin Luther’s work during the Protestant Reformation. “The roles that we’re called into are not only important and valuable on a personal level, but it’s also critical to carry out God’s command to bring his kingdom to Earth as it is in heaven,” Trae said.
Thiel made nearly identical comments in a 2015 essay arguing that technological progress should be accelerated. Science and technology, he wrote, are natural allies of “Judeo-Western optimism,” especially if “we remain open to an eschatological frame in which God works through us in building the kingdom of heaven today, here on Earth.” (snip-MORE)
You’ve likely heard that Judge Theodore Chuang has enjoined DOGE in the context of its destruction of USAID.
Just as importantly, he has ruled that an Appointments Clause challenge to DOGE is likely to succeed. As I have repeatedly argued, such a challenge — arguing that to wield as much power as Elon Musk does, you have to be Senate confirmed in a position created by Congress — would be most likely to survive a SCOTUS review. (It’s the same basis Aileen Cannon used to throw out the Jack Smith case.)
To be sure, I’m a bit skeptical about the order and injunction. The latter only enjoins DOGE from doing anything on their own; if they get USAID approval, they can do whatever they want to do.
But the opinion notes that the Appointments ruling only applies to two things that, the record before the court shows, Elon did himself: shutting down USAID as an agency and shutting down the building. While the injunction requires USAID to stop any further terminations and let employees start accessing payment systems again, even though it notes that Gavin Kliger sent the email that terminated at least a few of the plaintiffs, those decisions involved Marco Rubio and Pete Marocco.
The opinion is most fun for the two extended sections where it dismisses the government’s claim that Elon is not in charge of DOGE.
Most notably, on February 19, 2025, President Trump publicly stated, “I signed an order creating the Department of Government Efficiency and put a man named Elon Musk in charge.” J.R. 568. Musk spoke on behalf of DOGE at a joint press conference with the President on February 11, in a joint interview with the President on February 18, and at the Cabinet meeting on February 26.
Musk’s public statements and posts on X, in which he has stated on multiple occasions that DOGE will take action, and such action occurred shortly thereafter, demonstrate that he has firm control over DOGE.
[snip]
Althought the White House announced on February 25, 2025, that Amy Gleason is now the Acting USDS Administrator, that same day, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt maintained that “the president tasked Elon Musk to oversee the DOGE effort” while noting that others “are helping to run DOGE on a day-to-day basis.” J.R. 616. Notably, at the February 28, 2025 hearing on this Motion, Defendants’ counsel could not identify, despite having made an inquiry, who the USDS Administrator was before Gleason.
We shall see how this survives appeal (the suit was filed in Maryland, so it’ll go through a different Circuit than most DOGE challenges, including the New Mexico one that is closest to this stage).
But for the moment, it has held that Elon has absolutely no authority to do most of what he has done.
Scottie's Playtime 