September 06, 2026
ChatGPFUT
This from Carlos Velazquez:
The Media Research Center recently published on X a striking test of several AI systems including the graphic below. MRC asked ChatGPT to rate, from 1 to 10, how much of a threat President Trump represents to democracy.
According to MRC, ChatGPT answered 9, then placed several authoritarian leaders at the same level, while assigning Hitler a 10.
OpenAI, ChatGPT parent company, subsequently told Fox News that the response "shouldn't happen and is not how the model is trained to behave,” and that ChatGPT is designed to be objective by default.
MRC deserves credit for publishing considerably more about its methodology than just the provocative result.
Researchers say they used a clean computer, a separate email account, a VPN and a private browser window to minimize previous browsing history and cookies. They also published the question they say they asked.
But there is an important lesson here about evaluating any experiment involving artificial intelligence.
AI responses can be highly sensitive to context. What was said earlier in a conversation, instructions telling the AI to adopt a particular viewpoint or role, personalization, memory, and even relatively subtle wording can affect an answer. Consequently, when somebody reports a startling AI response, the ideal evidence is not simply the question and answer, but the complete conversation and the conditions under which the test was conducted.
I am not suggesting that MRC manipulated this test. I have seen no evidence that it did. In fact, the precautions MRC describes are evidence that its researchers were attempting to control some outside influences. My point is broader: AI is unusually easy to influence through context, which makes complete experimental transparency particularly important when testing it for political bias.
Interestingly, asking ChatGPT essentially the same question today produces a very different result: it refuses to assign a numerical political "threat” score at all. MRC itself subsequently repeated its test and reported that ChatGPT would no longer provide the numerical rating.
That doesn't prove MRC's original result was wrong. It demonstrates something equally important: a single AI response is a data point, not necessarily a description of the AI system itself. Reproducibility, complete context and methodology matter enormously when we try to determine whether we have discovered systematic AI bias or simply an anomalous response.
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Svensmark was Right
Timothy Birdnow
Well slap my butt and call me Nancy! (Actually you'd better not do that or else!) Turns out that cosmic rays DO impact cloud formation and planetary temperatures afer all!
AbstractAtmospheric ionization produced by cosmic rays has been suspected to influence aerosols and clouds, but its actual importance has been questioned. If changes in atmospheric ionization have a substantial impact on clouds, one would expect to observe significant responses in Earth’s energy budget. Here it is shown that the average of the five strongest week-long decreases in atmospheric ionization coincides with changes in the average net radiative balance of 1.7 W/m(median value: 1.2 W/m) using CERES satellite observations. Simultaneous satellite observations of clouds show that these variations are mainly caused by changes in the short-wave radiation of low liquid clouds along with small changes in the long-wave radiation, and are almost exclusively located over the pristine areas of the oceans. These observed radiation and cloud changes are consistent with a link in which atmospheric ionization modulates aerosol's formation and growth, which survive to cloud condensation nuclei and ultimately affect cloud formation and thereby temporarily the radiative balance of Earth.
Looks like the Left owes Heinrik Svensmark an apology.
There have been others who looked at this theory and found it robust. Google it if you like.
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Ice Quakes
Timothy Birdnow
Even though ice mass has been growing in East Antarctica we still had some large shelf collapses in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and it has long been blamed by the kooks that it is caused by Global Warming. Well...
While this is not the WAIS but around the Antarctic Peninsula (I preferred when they called it the Palmer Peninsula) there is no reason to not think it's happening elsewhere on the continent.
We were blissfully unaware of all this seismic activity until now. Yet it explains the big ice shelf collapses without needing to resort to the boogieman of Climate Change. Earthquakes and under-ice volcanoes explain any ice loss at the bottom of the world.
Of course that won't stop the Gang Green. These are glacial earthquakes, so called because they happen to large ice sheets and glaciers as a result of movement and tremors, an so the warmiacs can say they are caused by warmer temperatures making the ice move more. No matter what the stimulus these folks go back to their pet hobbyhorse.
But it's a lot of nonsense; Antarctica is far too cold for a one degree warming to lead to such things. Fat chance that will stop them though.
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Dating Fossils
Timothy Birdnow
Yeah; I've gone out with some women past their prime too...
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The Killer Hormone
Timothy Birdnow
You know, Lindsay Clancy is being excused because of her hormones by women in particular but other stripes of liberals (who am I to presume pronouns of the mentally ill?) and if that is true, if hormonal imbalances can lead a mother to murder her three children, then what does that tell us about the transgendered, who are swimming in a sea of alien hormones? Especially the male to female dudes - they are being subject to large doses of estrogen, the very thing that supposedly made Clancy go bananas.
Is it any wonder then that we've been seeing all sorts of murders by trans people?
So if we have to agree hormones can lead to criminal behavior shouldn't we stop giving them to young men? Anybody?
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September 05, 2026
Solar Activity Highest it has Been in 8000 Years
Timothy Birdnow
And at the same time the Earth's cloud cover has disappeared.
FTA:
An international team of scientists has reconstructed the Sun's activity over the last 11 millennia and forecasts decreased activity within a few decades
October 28, 2004The activity of the Sun over the last 11,400 years, i.e., back to the end of the last ice age on Earth, has now for the first time been reconstructed quantitatively by an international group of researchers led by Sami K. Solanki from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany). The scientists have analyzed the radioactive isotopes in trees that lived thousands of years ago. As the scientists from Germany, Finland, and Switzerland report in the current issue of the science journal "Nature" from October 28, one needs to go back over 8,000 years in order to find a time when the Sun was, on average, as active as in the last 60 years. Based on a statistical study of earlier periods of increased solar activity, the researchers predict that the current level of high solar activity will probably continue only for a few more decades.
So the Gang Green will fall to the Earth in great wrath, for they know their time is short.
They are going to have to nail this whole New World Order scheme down in the next few decades or start over with Global Cooling again (which is probably why Al Sore, uh, Gore brought it up recently.)
Part of why the Earth's albedo has been dropping (the alarmists try to blame it on melting ice but in reality it's a dearth of clouds as a result of our reducing aerosols in the atmosphere. Also, climate change theory says the atmosphere should have more water vapor in it yet we have fewer clouds. What does that tell us class?
So, less sunlight reflected off the atmosphere, a warmer period in history, and with more parking lots and other artifacts of human construction holding heart via the Urban Heat Island Effect and voila! A slightly warmer world that the Leftists can exploit to fundamentally alter human civilization and promote their socialist schemes.
BTW a warmer world is a better world. You grow more food. If we have a cold period coming it will really hurt mankind as we won't have enough food for everyone. We've largely eliminated hunger in the world and that in no small part because of the warming of the planet. If that is about to end we are screwed.
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Milei Wants the Falklands
Timothy Birdnow
I wish he wouldn't do this but I can't say I blame him. Britain is so weak now why not?
Argentina never had much of a claim to the Falklands. Their claim is based not on any possession of those islands by Argentina but on the old Spanish colonial claim to the islands. They did create a very small colony on East Falkland at Port Soledad, and the British came and wiped that colony out and settled the islands themselves.
The British discovered the islands and they began to look at settling them, but the French came along and planted a small colony, which they ceded to the Spanish. In 1770 the Spanish expelled the British colonists and claimed the island for themselves.
Argentina did claim the islands upon independence, but their claim was weak as they never settled it. The U.S. declared it "free of government", refusing to recognize Argentinian claims. In 1833 the British came back in force, establishing their colony at Port Stanley and thus claiming the islands for themselves.
Argentina just doesn't have much of a claim to these islands. They never settled them didn't use them (why? They controlled the Strait of Magellan while the Brits used Port Stanley as a staging ground for ships to round Cape Horn - a harder passage but one necessitated by Argentina's unwillingness to allow the strait to be used.)
The British did colonize the land but not by much; Port Stanley today has just 2,974 people, and there are another 500 people scattered over the islands, which are the size of the state of Connecticut.
Port Stanley is more British than is Britain these days and the islands are what you think of when you think of the old Empire.
When Argentina tried to seize the islands before they were met by a British military that still had SOME teeth, and by a British government under Margaret Thatcher still willing to defend British interests. They did it with their flagship being a naval vessel already sold for scrap! But the U.S. helped them with logistics, and they flew sorties from Ascensiion Island in the mid-Atlantic. Today they could probably fly sorties from Britain proper, but it's doubtful they will.
Britain is dying and Argentina is trying to feast on the corpse, vulture style.
The British made the Falklands kind of a nature preserve, and the few people who live their live in splendid isolation, a backwater at the end of the Earth. It rains 260 days a year and is always cool, with summer temps in the 50's and winter in the high thirties. oh, sn it's in the middle of the "Roaring Forties" meaning it's incredibly windy all the time, which is why trees don't grow there by and large. A few exist in some sheltered spots, planted by the colonists.
I've long wanted to plant an American colony there and vote to leave the British Empire in favor of independence. Bring only conservative folks who remember the old America. We could easily outvote the natives and make it an independent country.
Well, if Britain can't or won't defend the Falklands maybe the Falklands will vote to become an American protectorate? Plebiscites on the islands show the people do not in any way want to become part of Argentina.
Milei is trying to gin up support in Argentina for his government and this is something that has long stuck in the Argentine craw. Now there is a good chance he might be able to pull it off too. But it is wrong and Argentina has no claim on those islands as far as I am concerned.
Time for Trump to step up to the Sub-Antarctic. It is nowhere nearly as important as Greenland, but we can secure South America by controlling these islands. I think we should make them territories, like the Marshall Islands or Guam or even Puerto Rico. A naval base there would be useful in many ways.
Anyway watch for a second Falkland War, or not. It probably will wind up being another bad deal like Starmer cut for the Chagos Archipelago and Diego Garcia, or like the Brits did with Hong Kong back at the turn of the last century.
BTW oil was discovered down there, making it more attractive. Before that their main exports were wool and fish. Yipee! Now Argentina wants it more than ever.
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The Walls Closing in on Zuckerberg
Timothy Birdnow
So the Trump Administration can't have it but Mark Zuckerberg can?
Zuck, through his wife Cruella, er, Priscilla, funded the disclosure of data and undoubtedly did so to allow Democrats to misuse it. Zuckerberg hasn't learned a single thing and he continues to play these games.
I should know; I'm pretty much shadow banned on Facebook these days, even though Zuck claims to have ended that practice.
Anyway the DOJ now has the ball, since DHS handed it off to them, and they may well run with it. Hopefully they will get Zuckerberg and he will go where he belongs.
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Fox in the Henhouse
mothy Birdnow
Here is the skinny on why Fox sacked Maria Bartiromo.
She had to bump Peter Navarro from her show and she explained in a tex message that Fox had sent out communications saying to underplay President Trump's speech on vote fraud and Chinese involvement in stealing elections. They were not happy she narced on them to an outside, one who had President Trump's ear.
Fox is not our friend.
I would add that even John Solomon here makes the mistake of saying Fox is afraid of anything to do with vote fraud because they were FORCED to pay out millions over the matter. No such thing occurred. They CHOSE to settle a case that they probably would have won had they fought it. Fox is the Establishment network, not MAGA, not America's. It's run by guys like Karl Rove, by the Bush wing of the GOP. They have hated Trump as much as the Democrats, or at least almost as much.
My father, rest his soul, always said of Fox that it was a safety valve; it's purpose was to give Conservatives an outlet to blow off steam lest we get mad and launch a counter-revolution like we did with Trump. So they mouth conservative slogans and have a few conservatives on their airwaves but they muzzle them on key issues, the kind of issues that will inflame the true Conservative base. That is the reason why Newsmax or OAN have risen in recent years; those are for the people Fox try to push in teh closet.
I believe my Dad was right. Fox is conservative in a way that seems to lead to failure a lot of the time.
Roger Ailes tried to make it truly Conservative but they forced him out for Meghan Kelly, who is now no longer there either. But I think it was a convenient excuse to get rid of Ailes and move the network Leftward. Rupert Murdoch is an Establishment guy and his children hate not being loved by the Intelligentsia.
And while they settled over vote fraud claims the fact remains this was an issue well before the settlement and only a few people at Fox wanted to touch it. Tucker Carlson was willing to do so (and screwed up big time by exposing himself as a fraud) but they all knew it was happening. It was the Board of Directors telling them to not go there, and that board was full of Bush RINO's.
So now, despite what Bartiromo says, she's going to be gone and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Money talks and bullshit walks, as the saying goes, and that is especially true at El Zoro News. They promoted the invasion of America for cheap labor. And they protected vote fraud.
A fox, er a pox be upon them!
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Shiva Judge Ignores SCOTUS, Reimposes Mail in Ban Injunction
mothy Birdnow
Once again some judge with a foreign name issues an injunction to prevent Trump from restricting mail-in voting at the Post Office, and does so on behalf of multiple jurisdictions when in fact she's nothing but a circuit judge in Boston.
Indira Talwani, an Obama appointee (how many Indian and Middle Eastern judges did Obama and Biden appoint? Every one of them seems to be someone who is new to this country) issued the injunction even though she is just a circuit judge and has no authority outside of her district per the U.S. Supreme Court. She issued a 14 day injunction just as mail-in ballots were going out. Why? To keep Trump from being able to appeal this to the appellate court. She's going to dither around while ballots are going out.
Now here's the really galling part:
"The administration on Thursday had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and lift the restraining order so the rule could take effect. The court's 6-3 conservative majority last week lifted a prior order Talwani issued preventing USPS from imposing such restrictions."
So she basically is just ignoring SCOTUS and re-imposing her order as if nothing had happened. In a rational government she would be impeached for this. But we are not living in rational times.
At this point the Trump Administration should simply refuse to comply with this order since it has already been lifted by the Supreme Court. But then, of course, the media will explode, calling Trump a lawless King and hurting the Republicans' chances in November. oh, and they'll use it as grounds for impeachment, even though it is this judge who should be impeached.
I get a kick out of this paragraph:
"Voting rights advocates and several Democratic-led states convinced Talwani last week to temporarily block the rule, arguing it risked disenfranchising voters and was adopted in violation of the U.S. Constitution, which gives states the authority to administer elections."
Mail fraud is fraud and to stop mail in voting fraud the USPS is simply putting restrictions on delivery of mail. It in no way restricts the states rights to set up their own voting schemes. The public is free to drop off the ballot at local voting outlets, even the DMV if the states were so inclined. There are ways around this, but the Democrats don't want to use them because they make it more likely to be exposed. They want it in the mail so they can lose chain of custody and then say "well goolllly...how could we know" when caught. Fedex or UPS could deliver them too.
This article is from Reuters, so naturally it is biased and full of B.S.
If the states feared the difficulty of implementing this then why are they wasting time in court rather than simply getting to it? A private business could pull it off if they were asked. As I said, Fedex could do this with no problem.
This is just because the Democrats have been at or near power for a long time solely because they steal election after election and the GOP has largely let them get away with it over the years. Mail in voting was examined by the Carter-Baker Commission after the election of 2000 and they concluded it was ripe for fraud. Naturally the Democrats implemented it.
I honestly don't even think it's close in this country; an honest tally of votes would see the GOP in complete power and would have for years now. Democrats stole their way to relevance. And the GOP, cowardly and sniveling, let them do it because they feared standing up to bullies. Oh, and the Establishment wanted it close so they could get their RINO guys in office. Look at how they've reacted to Cornyn's loss in Texas; not a penny has gone to Paxton even while they spent tens of millions to get Cornyn across the finish line.
That's why they are so desperate to stop Trump's reforms. And they've had months and months to redo their envelopes and whatnot and wasted it so they could claim voters are being disenfranchised by this rather than simply fix the issue at their end. That is how you know thi is a set-up.
Well, the Administration needs to find ways to punish this Indian chick with the many arms here. She is Shiva and Shiva is just a destroyer.
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This Fetterman Guy Needs to Disappear!
Timothy Birdnow
It was just a matter of time.
We all knew that the Donks were going to turn against him when they felt the time was right.
The Democrats main complaint (and the Wall Street Journal who came up with the "report") is that Fetterman often fails to meet with constituents and is not always available. Gee; you would think the Party of Joe Biden would have that as a resume' enhancer, not as a transgression.
The fact is Fetterman is doing his job, just not in the way they want. If he were supporting all the radical leftist causes now they'd be enthusiastically on board with him.
There are plenty of other Democrats who don't meet with the approved organizations and the like, and have been doing that for years. This is nothing new.
This is just a hit to get rid of a guy who woke up and realized just how insane his party had become.
Fetterman is up for re-election in 2028 and the Democrats fear he will jump ship on key issues in the next two years so they seek to replace him now. Not sure what they can do but what they do will be nasty, rest assured. There is no recall option for the U.S. Senate, of course, which means they are going to dig, dig, dig to find some dirt to force his resignation. He had better watch his back.
Of course he could switch parties, although he doesn't want to do so. He IS a progressive, after all, even if not as crazy as they hoped. Curing his brain tumor restored his sanity apparently.
He could also declare himself an independent. I doubt that would save him; the Democrats will still hunt for dirt to use against him. Like the Mafia you don't cross the jackass party.
"This Fetterman guy needs to disappear" is probably what they are saying in the halls of the Democrats and their fellow-travelers at the Wall Street Journal.
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The Bloody Red Baron of Ukraine
Timothy BIrdnow
Now a little mood music:
The end is coming soon for the Ukraine.
This means risking airplanes - open cockpit airplanes and their pilots - to take out attack drones.
I fear J.R. Dunn may miss the significance of this; it means the Ukrainians are running out of ABM tech and are going back to absolute basics. That tells me the war hasn't got much longer to go.
Yes, it IS innovative, to simply use hand-held guns to take out the drones, but it's something very easily countered by the Russians. And again, you waste valuable fuel, valuable pilots and equipment. It's the kind of thing the guys who are losing will do. We've seen this in other wars over the years. Just look at Hamas using PAGERS to communicate because the Israelis could target their cell phones. You go primitive when the tech fails you or you are out of it.
The confederacy, for instance, was reduced to smooth bore long guns while the Union had rifled chambers. In WWI the Russians were often sending men into battle without any guns - just with knives and axes and the like. It never got that bad in Germany in WWI but the Germans definitely ran out of a lot of weapons they used earlier in the war. That is what exhaustion looks like.
That's why I would argue this is not an "innovation" so much as a case of military exhaustion. They no longer have the automated stuff to take those drones out.
This war would have long been over had the Europeans not stuck their noses in it. And while it's sad the Ukrainians would have had to taste bitter defeat and give up land the reality is they have lost so many people they will have to import immigrants to keep their economy afloat - and Ukraine will disappear, cease to exist in anything but name. It will become a part of the Middle East, probably. Ditto Russia, albeit to a lesser extent.
If Ukraine wins (and they won't) it will be a pyrrhic victory. In the end the sweetness of victory will be swallowed by the stark reality of a decimated country and the loss of most of their men. It's what happened to Germany, which is why they are such weenies now. The German men were all gone and many Germans are the children of American or British G.I.'s raised by sad mothers who coddled them as the only source of comfort they had.
At any rate I believe this shows they WON'T win without a major infusion of cash (which the U.S. Congress seems willing to do up to a point) but that will only drag this thing on longer. The Russians are losing a lot of men and materials, so it will destroy them too, but the Ukraine is smaller and has fewer resources at their disposal. And this isn't just a war between two former allies; it's a proxy war between two different visions of the future. The Ruling Class in the West want their vision of a world run by the United Nations and with the plutocracy on top to triumph while Russia and China want an alternative, a continuation of the old empire system where powerful nation-states rule an alliance system of smaller nations. It's a war for all the marbles. The Ruling Class decided to make Ukraine the hill on which to die and that is why they are so desperate to see Russia fail; if they don't succeed their power will begin to wane and the Russo-Chinese alliance will strengthen and grow and they know it. BRICS terrifies them because it is outside of their monetary and political power.
Anyway I believe this is not so much an innovation as a necessity for a country reaching exhaustion.
After the turn of the century
In the clear blue skies over Germany
Came a roar and a thunder men had never heard
Like the screamin' sound of a big war bird
[Verse 2]
Up in the sky, a man in a plane
Baron von Richthofen was his name
Eighty men tried, and eighty men died
Now, they're buried together on the countryside
[Chorus]
Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or more
The Bloody Red Baron was rollin' up the score
Eighty men died tryin' to end that spree
Of the Bloody Red Baron of Germany
[Verse 3]
In the nick of time, a hero arose
A funny-lookin' dog with a big black nose
He flew into the sky to seek revenge
But the Baron shot him down (Curses, foiled again!)
[Chorus]
Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or more
The Bloody Red Baron was rollin' up the score
Eighty men died tryin' to end that spree
Of the Bloody Red Baron of Germany
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You are What You Eat, and You Kill That way Too
Timothy Birdnow
Jeannie DeAngelis, who puts the Jeanie in Jeanieology, pens a thought provoking piece at American Thinker this morning on the Lindsay Clancey case and how her diet may have impacted her crazy behavior.
DeAngelis first points out that before Clancey lowered the boom she worked at a hospital which required a COVID vaccination. The clot shot has been implicated in anxiety and depression and a host of other psychiatric disorders.
Then Jeanie gets to the meat of it; Clancey wanted to be "healthy" and ate a diet heavy in plant matter and light in, well, the stuff that makes life worth living.
The article states:
We know that on the night of the murders, Lindsay ordered ThreeV’s Mediterranean Power Bowl, which contained plant-heavy foods. Testimony indicates that when asked whether she wanted protein with the meal, she politely declined. The trial also revealed that the nanny, Elaine Rossi, received detailed daily food-prep notes from Lindsay instructing her to feed the children sweet potatoes; in closing arguments, Reddington also mentioned beets. This is not surprising, given that the nanny said Lindsay appeared overly concerned with weight, fitness, food, and health.
Clancy’s litany of symptoms included: loss of appetite, "crazy brain fog,” disconnection, severe insomnia, anxiety, a diagnosis of being in a postpartum state, apparent preoccupation with food and health, plant-based food choices, detailed household food preparation, and obsession with food and sleep schedules for herself and her children.
I've always said healthy living will kill you. And I'm still alive while people I know who were obsessed with healthy living are not - go figure.
And while I don't think this is a good excuse it certainly is a mitigating circumstance, if true. You think and feel how you eat in many instances. America has become obsessed with "healthy" food, non-carnivorous food, and appearing to be fit and thin are the holy grail of modernity. But that comes at a price, perhaps a great price.
DeAngelis continues:
The literature recognizes that apparent postpartum psychiatric syndromes can occasionally have metabolic or endocrine causes that should be ruled out, especially in a murder trial in which postpartum psychosis is blamed for the brutal strangulation deaths of three children.
There is even a publislhed case of a woman initially diagnosed with postpartum psychosis whose symptoms were ultimately traced to a late-onset urea-cycle disorder.
Key signs of this disorder sound familiar: extreme tiredness (lethargy) and confusion. Psychiatric symptoms such as behavioral changes, hallucinations, delusions, or sudden combativeness are often mistaken for a mental health crisis. Gastrointestinal issues can also occur, including self-imposed avoidance of high-protein foods like meat, known as auto-selective vegetarianism.
This is interesting given Lindsay’s request that protein not be added to her power bowl.
So did green vegetables drive Lindsay Clancey mad? I know most vegetarians are coocoo for Cocoa Puffs and the question always is which came first? The chicken or the egg? Do crazy people become vegetarians or does eating all those vegetables make people crazy?
I don't know but I think Jeannie has a point here.
The article goes on to point to a number of vitamins and minerals lost by mothers before and after child birth.
One interesting point she makes is the lack of sunlight in her part of Massachusetts and how that would lead to a vitamin D deficit. Interesting. Many years ago I had a relative who moved up to Wyoming and her husband had to bring her back because she was going mad. Lack of sunlight during the winter months had the poor woman in a deep depression and they feared she might harm herself. Once she came back down south she perked right up!
In Alaska people actually walk around with sunlamps in hats during the winter to buoy their spirits. Lack of vitamin D leads to black depressions.
Jeannie points out:
While bringing up vitamins and sunlight as possible contributors to murder may seem silly to some, it’s not.
Because medicine itself has investigated the relationship between postpartum depression and micronutrient status, Lindsay's nutritional state isn't inherently outside the scientific conversation about symptoms attributed to postpartum illness.
There is no way to prove that Lindsay Clancy was vegetarian, but historically, vegetarians do struggle with low B12. Although several of the subjects were not anemic, the authors of a 1981 Biological Psychiatry review recommended that serum B12 testing be considered when patients present with the psychiatric symptoms described in the study.
She's right. It certainly is a failure of her doctors in not testing for stuff like this. It may not excuse Clancey but it certainly is a mitigating circumstance. Her lawyers should have looked into this.
That said, I do not in any way excuse her for this. She could have turned her children over to foster care for a while, or asked her husband to take them and go for their own protection. She could have handed them to her own parents or her husbands. She didn't and in fact she lied to her husband and set the murders up carefully. I know it's possible to do terrible things and still be calculating even while insane, but that is why she should be incarcerated, probably for the rest of her life. BUT insanity is a valid defense and always has been in English Common Law and in the laws based on Latin legal codes. I would add we are asking a jury to make that decision when they do not have any sort of background to understand many of the issues involved.
I sat on a jury one time. It was a very long trial and I was picked because the company I worked for had just gone out of business so I was unemployed - the perfect juror for a trial that would last over a month. This was a civil suit where some wealthy people had contracted to build a luxury home and the contractor screwed it up. He refused to fix the problems, and they began a campaign against him, putting out fliers warning people not to do business with him. He countersued.
Now, I have friends who are in the trades and I longed to speak with them about this trial but of course I was muzzled. Still, I knew the rich folks got the shaft even if I didn't like them (they seemed pretty arrogant) and DID like the contractor. We couldn't agree and went back to the judge saying as a jury we were hung (and to quote Madelein Kahn in History of the World "not necessarily!") The judge insisted we come to a verdict and I was a holdout, as were a couple of other guys and one very sweet, soft girl who was just sick about it coming down to her vote. (I talked to her, telling her I supported her decision and that she shouldn't sweat it so much). In the end we crafted the worst pile of parrot droppings of a verdict ever, finding for the contractor but making him pay to fix everything, thus everyone was very unhappy at the end of it. There were no winners, which is why we made the decision the way we did.
The point is we made that decision largely because nobody understood the problems. I spoke with my friends in the trades after. My friend, who is a master plumber, busted out laughing when I told him about the plumbing problem. He knew exactly what the contractor had done to cut costs and it was pretty shady.
The reality is we were wholly unqualified to rule on this subject.
I think this is especially true in this case. The jury could ONLY go on what was presented to them, and they didn't understand it when it was. While it may or may not have made the right decision the fact is it was like putting your faith in a folk healer to diagnose your brain cancer.
The jury system is the best we can think up, but that doesn't make it very good. It ends up coming down to who can do a better job of reading potential jurors and stacking the bench with those who will be favorable to you.
At any rate I generally shy away from the true crime stories for this and other reasons. They don't interest me all that much. But I found Jeannie's article thought-provoking and wanted to share it with you all.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
09:09 AM
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September 04, 2026
WNBA Commissioner Calls it Quits
Timothy Birdnow
The embattled Commissioner of the WNBA is stepping down after ten years.
It couldn't be the rising racism by black players, nor the fact the league is unable to define what a woman is, can it?
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
01:56 PM
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Google Sends People to Epstein Page
Timothy Birdnow
And so the games begin.
This is intended to give the illusion of wrongdoing by Trump and Republicans as we come into the midterms.
We need to start anti-trust action against Google for this.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
01:52 PM
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September 03, 2026
The Eighties Want Their Foreign Policy Back
Timothy Birdnow
Here is a real American Stinker at American Thinker; an article arguing we need to keep defending Europe, because, like, Russians and stuff.
To quote Barack Obama "the nineteen eighties are calling...they want their foreign policy back."
The author, one Mario Alexis Portella, doesn't seem to grasp that the Cold War is over.
His argument is that Europe still needs American protection and that they have increased their own defense spending but that we cannot afford to leave them to it.
Perhaps but if they are increasing their defense spending they aren't increasing it enough, apparently, to no longer need our training wheels.
I have to ask a big picture question here; who, pray tell, are we defending Europe from in the first place? The Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact are gone and Russia can't even successfully invade the Ukraine. Does Mr.
Portella think the Chinese are going to invade Europe?
In fact Europe IS being invaded - by Muslims - and they couldn't care less about that fact. So what are American troops on European soil benefitting anyone?
Well, we know the reason; they are spending lots of money in these European countries. The American military is a giant public works program to enrich the Europeans so they can enjoy the good life, sit in their cafe's sipping espresso or wine or pilsners and thoroughly relish their lives at our expense.
But, the author argues, we need the bases for when we do have to go to war!
Fat lot of good they did us in Iran. The Brits blocked us, so did the Italians and Spanish and even the Germans. Told us we were not welcome to use their airspace in the conflict with Iran.
You may also remember similar issues with the Europeans during the Iraq War. And of course NATO - our invention - offered no help in the Strait of Hormuz, so we had to be the ones de-mining the strait even while it profited the Europeans and did very little for us.
At what point do we say "Enough!" We are being played for patsies.
One of the commenters was a woman (who put MS behind her name to show she was smart) who argued we need to "be strong" like under Ronald Reagan. She apparently doesn't understand that our being strong has bankrupted the country; we've pissed away trillions of dollars protecting the whole world and now we just can't do it anymore. When Reagan was doing what he did there was a very real goal and purpose, to bankrupt and collapse the Soviet Union (and cost me my profession in the process as I was going to work in national security but that jerk Reagan broke them just as I was getting out of school). There was a plan in place (and it angered fiscal conservatives like David Stockton at the time) where we would outspend the Soviets and their economy couldn't take it. In fact, when Reagan proposed his "Star Wars" laser ABM system he did so with the intention of forcing the Soviets to try to compete. Gorbachev met Reagan at Reykjavik and begged Reagan to cut a deal eliminating this program. When Reagan refused to budge old spotted head said to his aids "we are finished" because he knew it would cause his economy to collapse.
But it cost us a LOT of money to maintain that Cold War for all those decades. Now we have people who want to keep the whole system going because it's how we've always done it in their memory.
Well, if we are to maintain it we need a good reason and, like Russia and stuff just isn't good enough.
Now I favor a strong defense but we need to restructure, to have a leaner and more efficient military system and not waste resources protecting a bunch of ingrates. These particular ingrates are capable of defending themselves, they just don't want to.
And they never will if we don't toss them into the deep end of the pool. They will procrastinate, dither, and hope a Democrat winds up in power so they can go back to the big party they were having on our dime.
Increasingly the geopolitical threats are coming from other places. The Arctic is a hotspot. So is the Pacific Rim, and as always the Middle East. We need to redeploy our forces there and not waste our resources in Europe.
AS you might expect there are some commenters like that gal I mentioned who are calling us "isolationists" and acting as if we don't want any military power overseas. Far from it; I favor the military action in Iran right now, for instance, because I believe it is necessary for our own security. I do NOT favor our involvement in Ukraine. Not because Putin is a good guy and Russia in the right (neither are true) but because we do not have any national interests there. This is more a civil war than anything else and we would do well to stay out of it. If Putin invades Poland or some other NATO country than that would be a whole different issue.
At any rate this author and a couple of commenters are stuck on eighties stupid. Times have changed. And if you do not adapt to changing times you wind up being left behind. It's why so many once-great nations in Europe are now powder-puff countries. Just look at Britain.
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Democrats Love Socialism
Timothy Birdnow
So the all but eight Democrats voted against a resolution calling out socialism.
Eric Daugherty@EricLDaugh·FollowJUST IN: US House votes to condemn socialism and a whopping 192 DEMOCRATS VOTED AGAINST IT
Final vote: 220-192
Read that again: 192 House Democrats, a vast SUPERMAJORITY, support socialism!
This is terrifying.
Vote RED in November because our nation depends on it!
The Democrats who supported it were:
Kathy Castor, Vicente Gonzalez, Henry Cuellar, Darren Soto, Jared Golden, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Don Davis and Gabe Vasquez.
The Democrats are no longer an American party - they are communists and Islamists.
The resolution was introduced by Republican Jeff Crank of Colorado.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
09:46 AM
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September 02, 2026
Building Our Future
Timothy Birdnow
Manufacturing is up again. Eight straight month now.
That is winning.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
10:14 AM
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GOP Wants to Lose Texas
Timothy Birdnow
Yep. Better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.
The article quotes Sen. John Kennedy, who I lie, showing how he danced around the issue of funding on a Sunday morning talk show. Kennedy is a milquetoast and not nearly as good as he speaks and it showed. He claimed they didn't have the money to fund Paxton, but they poured millions into Cornyun's campaign to stop Paxton. This is payback,nothing more. They want Paxton to lose then they will say "told ya so!"
We still do not have control over the Republican Party. And as long as they control funding we will be undercut by them time and time again.
I wish Trump would have tried harder on that.
Rush Limbaugh used to point out the RINO wing saw no national crisis, no emergency. They viewed everything through the prism of this year's political season. They always thought "we'll regroup and get them next time" and of course for decades that meant surrendering to the driving forces of leftism. They still see it that way. The real enemy is MAGA to them - Democrats are the opposition to trash and use but after the day is done to go out and have a beer with and joke about it all. To them it's not a crisis - it's about staying in Washington. They don't want people who will make this a fight. Which is why they hated Trump and why they hate Paxton. Both are turds in their Washington punchbowls.
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10:07 AM
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Fabulous!
Timothy Birdnow
The New England Gaytriots. Simply FABULOUS!
Nothing says football like a flamer prancing about the field in a sparkly outfit!
The NFL seems to have a death wish. And I always suspected the Pats were light in the loafers.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
09:51 AM
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