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Roundup — 42 Comments

1. On (5), It’s been an open scandal for years that large NGOs associated with mainstream religious denominations get huge sums from the federal government for “resettlement” of “migrants.” The Episcopal Church, one of whose bishops was blatantly political at the “National Prayer Service,” is one of them, but one of the smaller ones.

2. I’m guessing that the name of the female helicopter pilot is not being released because she is a member of one of those favored, special, “diverse” demographics. There are even rumors floating around that “she” is really a “he”. Unconfirmed of course.

3. Marisa: nope. White female, UNC-ROTC grad.

   https://www.cbs17.com/news/local-news/durham-county-news/durham-woman-identified-as-third-aboard-black-hawk-involved-in-dc-midair-collision/

4. Today we are announcing that we have stopped all grant funding that’s being abused by NGOs to facilitate illegal immigration into this country. So it’s amazing to me the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent by the federal government that has been sent to NGOs to facilitate this invasion of our country.

   –Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem
   _____________________________________

   I continue to be amazed how little open discussion there has been on the Dem/Deep State imperative to flood the zone of America with illegal immigrants.

   Is it just that everyone knows that it’s really about cheap labor and shifting US demographics towards the Democrat Party?

5. The Catholic Church has been in business with our government regarding immigration (legal and illegal–mostly illegal would be my guess) for years. And this is the original reason why for many years we have stipulated that funds we give our parish be used solely at our parish.

6. Can you do that, Sharon W.? One of the reasons I left the Episcopal Church years ago was that parishes were required to send a set percentage of their receipts to the diocese and national organization without regard to restrictions from donors.

7. You may have seen the recent stories about how China is fast eclipsing the U.S. in the field of Robotics.

   Take a look at this comparison between what the Chinese are presenting as the current accomplishments of their wonderful, ground-breaking robots, and compare that to what the robots produced by Boston Robotics were able to do around five years ago. *

   As with many other aspects of China’s vaunted technological progress, this “progress” in robotics is illusory, fabricated, deliberate propaganda, repeated and amplified by all of the shills in the media.

   I wonder how much truth there is to the reports, just out, of Chinese progress in things like Quantum computers and AI?

   * See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Sj83lRGOtQ&t=327s

8. I’ve been exercising the various LLMs with a scheduling problem: it involves a single-track railroad line and trains of various priorities operating in both directions. None of them have covered themselves with glory–all have responded to the initial prompt with schedules that are not workable. At first I was impressed with Deepseek’s performance; it nicely explained how it was thinking, where it found problems with its own thinking and went back and corrected them–but it, too, came up with an invalid schedule.

   The OpenAI model I’d have to say did best–it came up with an initial bad result, but when I challenged it, it thought some more and eventually concluded that the problem as stated was unsolvable. (That hadn’t been my intent, I just made up something quickly, but I think it actually was unsolvable as stated)

9. Kate, at least in the Catholic Archdiocese you are able to write on your check something that separates it from that funding. We have been to 2 different parishes in the last few years and I’ve asked the priests what I should write and have done so accordingly.

10. House Republican leadership had a veto on all this NGO spending, but they wanted their own cronies to get paid, and probably didn’t mind the illegals that much: it’s long been true that the GOPe has had little interest in effective enforcement of the border and sabotaged the wall during the first Trump term. Let’s hope that their spines are a little stiffer these days.

    Funny to see Kristi Noem pretending she’s just figuring this out now. Every governor knows how these organizations work. She’d rather sound stupid than admit what she knew when she knew it:

    “I was one of those Americans that years ago, when somebody said NGO to me, I thought, oh, that’s amazing,” she explained. “That’s a nonprofit that’s out there telling somebody about Jesus, or spreading faith and salvation, or doing good work and charitable work, helping people that are less fortunate.”

    “And then I realized over the years, it’s been perverted into this shadow government.”

11. You may have seen the recent stories about how China is fast eclipsing the U.S. in the field of Robotics.
    —
    I read the same stories forty years ago. About Japan.

12. ”House Republican leadership had a veto on all this NGO spending…”

    No, they didn’t. They could pass a bill without it — and did — but it went nowhere in the Democrat-controlled Senate. At the end of the year that spending got rolled up with all the other spending in a must-pass omnibus bill. They didn’t have the power to stop that.

13. I told my Wife, She Who Must be Obeyed (and is mostly), that Trump ought to have a US Airforce transport take the bodies of the 6 Mexican Nationals to Mexico. Along with Marco Rubio.

14. Re: Chinese AI — Deepseek R1

    The current consensus online is that Deepseek works as benchmarked, but the Chinese claims for its development in terms of time, project cost and number and types of GPUs are highly misleading or lies.

    Furthermore, they didn’t train Deepseek from the ground up, but apparently stole their data from OpenAI by a process called distillation, in which a student AI asks millions of questions of a teacher AI and thereby acquires the teacher’s model without doing the real training work itself.

    In some of its responses Deepseek will refer to itself as ChatGPT.

    Classic CCP.

15. Snow on Pine

    China wasn’t the one attacking DeepSeek when it became hot recently – knowing our Govt I suspect they were at least partially involved.

    Yes, on some questions – DeepSeek seems to almost be repeating other AIs; however, they all can seem in unison at times. Speaking of Grok, Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and DeepSeek.

    DeepSeek is as good or better than all the one’s I’m testing. Lots of misinformation from our own Govt, MSM, and probably China’s also so I don’t pay much attention to most of it and just test it myself.

    AI is still fairly new to the public, i.e., not even the tip of the iceberg is showing yet…

16. Around 1964 or 65 my father was an Air Force captain and we had a Cessna 172 and we flew into Washington National at night. It was pretty cool. It was the first time I visited DC. I can’t remember if we left from Forbes AFB in Topeka or Minot AFB but I remember Johnson was president.

17. I’m going to venture a guess that Congress approved increasing the number of flights because they enjoy the convenience, instead of having to drive to Dulles or BWI.

    I read somewhere that the direct flight between Wichita and DC involved in the crash was created roughly a year ago at the specific request of a representative from KS.

    I shudder to think what the air traffic patterns would be like if the USAF were actually still flying out of Bolling AFB, right across the river from DCA.

18. From the always-very-readable Matt Bracken on the aircraft collision in DC:

    And this, dear readers, is why military helicopters are routinely flying directly under the busy airliner flight path descending into Reagan National Airport. To me, this is just as insane as having a “safe pedestrian corridor” across an active rifle range. “Just crawl on your hands and knees, and don’t stick your head up, and you’ll be fine.”

    https://steelcutter.substack.com/p/why-are-so-many-helicopters-flying

19. “Classic…”

    Indeed…
    “China Cuts the Cord: Beijing’s Plan To Disconnect America and Its Allies”—
    https://freebeacon.com/columns/china-cuts-the-cord/
    H/T Powerline blog.

    Nor should one—EVER—forget the classy, classic encomium mouthed by WEF/WTF’s Dear Leader Schwab regarding Dear CCP…

20. As regards the commenters who believe that they can designate their charitable giving so as to direct it away from activities in their denomination with which they disagree, it is well to remember that money is fungible. A gift to one specified thing or activity only means that other funds become available to support those things or activities one opposes. So at the end of the process, there is no difference, other than to make the donor feel better about his or her donation.

21. I see a report, out yesterday, that our government still lists many governmental organizations on it’s books which no longer exist.

    If you look at some of the ridiculous things our government spends our tax dollars on, one wonders if money is still being paid out to some of these nonexistent government entities, and where that money may actually be going.

    I am reminded of the considerable amount of money spent some years ago to figure out how to be able to get a small crayfish to run on a tiny treadmill to measure something or other (videos of which are still on the Internet), and the current expenditures reportedly slated to pay for putting on a “gay opera” somewhere in South America.

    I have no doubt that the folks at DOGE will find plenty of money being wasted on silly or non-essential projects, or, which are really just payoffs to this or that special interest or voting group.

    That is why often unread budget bills run to hundreds or even to thousands of pages of small type.

    You can cram all sorts of stuff in there under obscure or innocuous sounding titles, or mentioned perhaps in just one line of the budget. *

    * See https://www.rd.com/list/wasteful-government-spending-examples/

    and https://fee.org/articles/7-ridiculous-examples-of-government-waste-in-2023/

22. @mkent:must-pass omnibus bill. They didn’t have the power to stop that.

    There is no such thing as a “must pass” bill, that is a Swamp term to describe how they choose to do business. McCarthy was elected Speaker on his promise to return to regular order, which he has not kept.

    The Republicans in the House had the power to stop every bill. Unlike the “must pass bill” fiction, that both Houses of Congress have to approve spending is in the Constitution. Without House Republican agreement, no bill could be passed. That is a veto. They had the power to stop every single bill. They did not have the will.

    They knew what they were funding and they were fine with it because their own cronies were getting paid too. They knew what these NGOs were doing with the money, and it was less important to let that happen and make sure their people got paid than to stop it.

    It’s like we all forgot what McCarthy tried to slip through just a few weeks ago, and Musk and Ramaswamy caught them and publicized it. And in the end, though they cut 400 pages, it was still stuffed with pork.

    One thing Trump is demonstrating, every day since he took office, is that things can be different if different choices are made, and that these choices are in many cases what the public has clamored for for years and the Establishment politicians would promise and never deliver. He also demonstrates every day that the legacy media can yammer about it as much as they want, and the people have learned to tune them out.

    Congress collectively chooses to create bills stuffed with pork and call them “must pass omnibus legislation”. It is past time that they choose differently. It is past time that Republicans in Congress fulfill their promises and see to it that Congress chooses differently. It will never happen if we continue to make excuses for their failure to do so.

23. On the micro version of directing funds away from what the donor wished: same thing happened at my former employer. Alums would send money in directing it was to be given only to the physics department. Instead, the college would dump it into the general fund and not tell the donors. When I was chair I got a call from an alum asking if we got her generous donation. I said, “no”, and then looked into it more and found out what happened. I then wrote a letter to all our physics alums telling them what was going on. Everyone said they would no longer send any money to the college. Now, the population of physics alums is not large, and they tend not to be big donors, so the cut in donations probably didn’t hurt. However, I did stand up in a faculty meeting explaining the situation so other departments would be aware. Another act which did not endear me to the administration.

24. Lest we forget

    It’s like we all forgot what McCarthy tried to slip through just a few weeks ago …

    McCarthy was removed as speaker of the house about 18 months ago and left the House of Representatives, as did Matt Goetz.

    Mike Johnson (R, LA) has been the Speaker since October 23, 2023.

25. Juan has his video up on the Lear Philly crash. He shows very convincingly that reports of a stall are not correct given the ADS-B data. Worth a look:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6_bLhBMngY

26. RE: Government payments for essentially everything.

    According to the story linked below, DOGE tried to get access to the central government system which actually disperses all government payments, to see what the Federal government was paying out and for what purpose, and was refused access by a Biden political appointee, who has since resigned. *

    Similarly DOGE has gotten access to OPM’s personnel records, reportedly limiting some government officials access to these records.

    Given all of the reports about how Biden supporters/democrats in government are devising ways to block Trump’s orders and to sabotage Trump’s second term, it seems like a very wise thing to do to limit their access to these records, and the ability to manipulate them, or cover things up.

    I am sure that there are a lot of budgetary and personnel items which a lot of people would not want to see the light of day.

    * See https://andmag azine.substack.com/p/this-will-be-a-long-war-doge-looks

27. P.S. There is a process in the Federal government known as “burrowing,” in which a political appointee–who can be easily fired–is transferred over to being a regular government employee–who is much harder to fire.

    I’ve seen at least one news article reporting about one person from the Biden Administration who has done such burrowing, but I’d bet that there have been a lot more.

28. @Steve (retired/recovering lawyer), 5:51 a.m.: Exactly right. If I told my then-ECUSA parish to keep my donation local, they nonetheless would have to pay 20% or some such thing to the diocese, which supported and funded lots of things directly contrary to my understanding of the Christian faith (in my case at the time, elective abortion and euthanasia). Someone else who didn’t specify would end up picking up my share of the diocesan assessment.

29. I had thought that Democratic Party humor was dead in the (swampy) water.

    I wuz wrong.
    Enjoy!
    https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2025/02/01/why-this-billionaire-is-putting-far-left-sen-warnock-on-notice-n2651452
    H/T Instapundit.
    Key punch line:
    “Man do I regret ever helping you”….

30. (5) I had always imagined that it was someone like George Soros was funding much of the illegal immigration. But yeah, why spend your own money when you can spend somebody else’s instead.

    Daniel Hannan explained quite a bit about these types of groups in his 2010 book, “The New Road To Serfdom.” He called them quango’s. Quasi autonomous non-governmental groups.

31. I’ve now seen several statements from the lib loons I follow about how Trump is now executing a coup of the US. Here’s a link which has shown up several times. There’s some serious mental health issues occurring for millions of our fellow citizens.

    https://roberthubbell.substack.com/p/call-it-by-its-name-a-coup?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=271358&post_id=156224507&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=9dxl9&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email&fbclid=IwY2xjawIMkdhleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHdBSPGi0cOjfoFi83xFDgnFnriA5zeI2xaOVix5h8ml34nMILO9HSJFySQ_aem_apCRFZHpjCD205KEpKtuFw

32. That’s amazing, physicsguy. So the elected leader of the executive branch taking control of the executive branch is a “coup.” These people clearly think the government bureaucracy is an independent entity having no connection to the elected chief executive.

33. The coup was a 150 year effort to unconstitutionally limit POTUS power via statute. If this is a coup, it is a counter-coup. I think Trump wins this and what the term jurisdiction means for birthright as well.

34. Kate,

    I’m also seeing a trend; they are now calling themselves “The Resistance”, in caps. They fancy themselves as the bulwark for freedom, and claim they are recruiting many from inside the government. That I can believe. Several have said, as I mentioned a few days ago, that they expect to be taken out by the government or MAGAs for their “heroic efforts”. Truly delusional.

35. Well, non-cooperative bureaucrats may very well be fired, but “taken out” as they phrase it isn’t going to happen.

36. following through on your promises, is a coup, ‘all righty then’ of course if they were clever, they would use autogolpe, like fujimori in peru in the 90s, and bordaberry did a generation before, in uruguay,

    this semiotic slop is tiresome to trudge through, in a dark comic sense, it’s a little like the in joke that le carre had to his readers in absolute friends, where a minor character is quoting all the avant guarde ‘thought leaders’ like naomi klein and arundat roy, the twist is this person is actually an agent for West German intelligence, who had served as a foil for the hapless Teddy Mundy, At least I like to read it as a in joke, le carre might not have been that self aware, from some of his subsequent work,

    more unintentional comedy

    https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2025/02/02/lloyd-austins-ex-chief-of-staff-attacks-pete-hegseth-over-plane-crash-n2651520

37. (4)
    Lying about January 6?
    Of course they were.
    They were/are lying about EVERYTHING…

    ‘Australian Spy Agency Collected “Signals Intelligence” On China COVID Origins: Former State Department Investigator”‘—
    https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/australian-spy-agency-collected-signals-intelligence-related-covid-china-origins-former

    (For anyone who still doesn’t quite understand why Fauci HAD TO BE pardoned by Decent Joe.)

    + Bonus (continued):
    Remember “The border is secured”!? (But if it’s not, then it’s ALL THE REPUBLICANS’ FAULT)

    ‘”It’s Like A Switch Was Flipped”: Border Encounters Plummet 94% Under Trump’—
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/its-switch-was-flipped-border-encounters-plummet-94-under-trump

38. Re: Lib loons

    From my experience that’s the way progressives have talked whenever Republicans were in power, going back to Richard Nixon at least.

    Republicans are always fascists intent on shadowy means to absolute power.

    I will concede that I have never seen such rhetoric ratcheted up so high as today with Trump.

    Judging by the new DNC Chair and Vice Chair the Democrat Party has doubled-down on its commitment to looniness.

    https://pjmedia.com/robert-spencer/2025/02/02/the-new-dnc-chair-is-bad-enough-but-the-new-vice-chair-is-far-far-worse-n4936609

    Good. Unless Trump goes nuts that puts 2028 in the R bag.

39. Trump foreign policy is doing some serious winning. Additions to Neo’s round up

    First, The Columbian president agrees to take back their citizens illegally in the United States.

    Trump then sends Ric Grenell to Venezuela and gets Maduro to take back their illegal aliens. As a bonus, he brings back six American citizens who had been illegally held there. The Biden regime did nothing for them.

    Next, we hear that the Panamanian president has agreed to stop their agreements with China on operating the canal.

40. At least we now have some idea of WHY “Biden” NEEDED the Ukraine war in the first place…and needed it to last and last and last…):

    Now that Trump is in office and the charade is over, Zelensky admits he did not receive over $100 billion of our tax dollars.

    He says he “does not know where all the money is”.

    Meaning Ukraine was a massive money laundering operation….

    https://blazingcatfur.ca/2025/02/02/wtf-3614/

    Figures…
    …since it’s perfectly CONSISTENT with all of “Biden”’s other money-laundering ops.

    That’s right: the Obama-“Biden” administrations are THE BIGGEST MONEY-LAUNDERING OPERATION IN AMERICAN HISTORY.

    (Gosh, if I were them I would also have tried to steal the 2020 elections…)

    File under: To understand is to forgive…or actually maybe…not…

41. WAIT!!
    There’s MORE………………….
    CORRUPTION:
    (But then we knew that, didn’t we…)

    “YEP. LEFTY POLITICS LIVES ON A STANDING WAVE OF OTHER PEOPLE’S ILL-OBTAINED MONEY. Democratic States Are Wards of Washington: There’s a reason for the panic over the Trump White House’s temporary federal spending pause.”—
    https://instapundit.com/700144/

    YEP! The Democratic Party is in fact THE RESISTANCE—resistance to any sense of ethics, decency, integrity, morality, honesty, transparency or accountability…

    File under: By their coverups thou shalt KNOW THEM…

42. WAIT!!
    There’s MORE (continued)…..

    “NGOs AS MONEY LAUNDRIES”—
    https://instapundit.com/700023/
    Key phrases:
    “The level of corruption and waste is unreal!…”

    “I spent today tracing some of these USAID dollars and they’re all tangled up with former political appointees, prominent Democrats, and establishment GOP…”

    “To some extent, NGOs appear to be a retirement home for many key political appointees…”

    Well, you get the idea…

    To be sure, for the Democrats, trying to uncover and end government waste, graft and corruption is…UNCONSCIONABLE!

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