“Some of ’em, you open it up, and, aw, nah, you ain’t going in there,” says Vernon Russell.
Russell is one of the hundreds of tent dwellers in D.C., and he spoke to 7News Monday about some of the portable toilets available on the street.
The main provider of toilets to D.C.’s tent cities announced that, as of Tuesday of last week, he stopped servicing about 40 of the 60 tent city toilets because D.C. Public Works and the D.C. Office of Contract and Procurement are between four and five months behind in paying their bills.
“It’s so bad right now I had to lay off three of the workers that were assigned to these routes,” said Fred Hill, owner of Gotta Go Now portable toilet company.
The 60 toilets at tent city sites are paid for by three different city agencies. Hill says D.C. Homeland Security pays its bills so his company continues to service the 20 toilets it controls. That means vacuuming them out, replacing the fluids, and installing new paper products every day at a cost of $120 per week, per toilet.
He says he called repeatedly and sent emails to the non-paying agencies and neither has responded.
When we asked Mayor Muriel Bowser about the issue in her news conference Monday she said she would have to investigate, but “we pay what we owe.”
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison spoke to the UN General Assembly last week. The Aussie leader promoted his country’s long tradition of freedom and human rights.
Deactivist took the Prime Minister’s speech and filled it in with reality.
Australia under Morrison is unrecognizable. Surely, he knows this. And obviously, he doesn’t care.
This is one of the best videos made on the new world order and lying politicians.
The video is already marked for adults by YouTube for some reason.
You know it will not be live on the Google platform for long.
Muzzle brakes are quite useful out on the flat range during a competition or just casual shooting for making faster follow-up shots but they don’t often make you any friends on the firing line. Lantac is proud to introduce their latest addition to the Dragon Muzzle Brake lineup with the new Dead Air KEYMO mounting […]
*EDITOR’S NOTE: This one is going to violate the feelings of those still cemented in the left vs. right paradigm lie. That’s your warning. Don’t read if you’re going to be offended by the truth, and continue to lie to yourself to uphold the system that’s working together against you. We need to stop deluding ourselves into thinking that Trump is anything other than one of them. No one sits on the throne unless they are meant to sit there. The truth hurts. But the sooner we face it, the sooner we can remove the last bit of slavery from this planet permanently. Opening our eyes is the first step.
Under the leadership of then-Director Mike Pompeo, the CIA in 2017 reportedly plotted to kidnap—and discussed plans to assassinate—WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange, who is currently imprisoned in London as he fights the Biden administration’s efforts to extradite him to the United States.
Citing conversations with more than 30 former U.S. officials, Yahoo Newsreported Sunday that “discussions over kidnapping or killing Assange occurred ‘at the highest levels’ of the Trump administration.”
According to Yahoo:
The conversations were part of an unprecedented CIA campaign directed against WikiLeaks and its founder. The agency’s multipronged plans also included extensive spying on WikiLeaks associates, sowing discord among the group’s members, and stealing their electronic devices.
While Assange had been on the radar of U.S. intelligence agencies for years, these plans for an all-out war against him were sparked by WikiLeaks’ ongoing publication of extraordinarily sensitive CIA hacking tools, known collectively as “Vault 7,” which the agency ultimately concluded represented “the largest data loss in CIA history.”
President Trump’s newly installed CIA director, Mike Pompeo, was seeking revenge on WikiLeaks and Assange, who had sought refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden on rape allegations he denied. Pompeo and other top agency leaders “were completely detached from reality because they were so embarrassed about Vault 7,” said a former Trump national security official. “They were seeing blood.”
Yahoo‘s reporting makes clear that Assange is not the only journalist U.S. officials have attempted to target in recent years. During the Obama presidency, according to Yahoo, “top intelligence officials lobbied the White House to redefine WikiLeaks—and some high-profile journalists—as ‘information brokers,’ which would have opened up the use of more investigative tools against them, potentially paving the way for their prosecution.”
“Among the journalists, some U.S. officials wanted to designate as ‘information brokers’ were Glenn Greenwald, then a columnist for The Guardian, and Laura Poitras, a documentary filmmaker, who had both been instrumental in publishing documents provided by [NSA whistleblower Edward] Snowden,” Yahoo reported.
In a statement to Yahoo, Poitras called the intelligence officials’ efforts “bone-chilling and a threat to journalists worldwide.”
If you’re a journalist, American or otherwise, you need to understand that turning a blind eye to this story moves the entire world toward a paradigm where the criminalization of journalism is routine.
Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement that “these new revelations, which involve a shocking disregard of the law, are truly beyond the pale.”
“The CIA is a disgrace,” said Timm. “The fact that it contemplated and engaged in so many illegal acts against WikiLeaks, its associates, and even other award-winning journalists is an outright scandal that should be investigated by Congress and the Justice Department. The Biden administration must drop its charges against Assange immediately. The case already threatens the rights of countless reporters.”
You really have to read this entire, well-reported investigation to believe it.
Truly appalling behavior by the CIA involving illegal kidnapping and assassination plans. The Biden admin needs to drop its charges against Assange immediately. https://t.co/N72BSmdTPR
The Trump Justice Department charged Assange with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act for publishing classified documents, something journalists do often. Despite urgent pleas from press freedom advocates, the Biden administration has refused to drop the charges and continued its predecessor’s attempt to extradite the WikiLeaks founder.
As Poitras wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times last year, “It is impossible to overstate the dangerous precedent Mr. Assange’s indictment under the Espionage Act and possible extradition sets: Every national security journalist who reports on classified information now faces possible Espionage Act charges.”
“It paves the way for the United States government to indict other international journalists and publishers. And it normalizes other countries’ prosecution of journalists from the United States as spies,” Poitras noted. “To reverse this dangerous precedent, the Justice Department should immediately drop these charges and the president should pardon Mr. Assange.”
An Ultra Beauty store in northern Illinois was robbed by vandals in broad daylight in Chicago on Monday.
The entire robbery was caught on video. The black vandals broke into the perfume cases and loaded their bags with bottles of cologne. Then they ran from the store.
This all took place in broad daylight.
You can hear the siren going off as others continue to mill around the store as the robbery is taking place.
The robbers then leave the store, bags in hand.
They are not worried about the police and not ashamed at all for committing the crime in broad daylight with dozens of witnesses.
This is Biden’s America in Democrat enclaves across the country.
Maricopa County relegated numerous election activities to its ballot printer Runbeck and then allowed them to trickle in thousands of ballots after election day, never providing exact counts of ballots received by Election Day.
We’ve already reported how the United States Postal Service (USPS) is heavily involved in the election process.
In Arizona, the USPS distributes and receives ballots across the state. In addition, there are massive voter registration drives before every election by organizations trying to stuff the registration systems. In Maricopa, the VRAS (Voter Registration Access System) stops accepting registrations on October 5th. Maricopa’s ballot printing vendor is Runbeck Election Services headquartered in Phoenix. The “QUALVOTER” list is pulled from VRAS and provided to Runbeck. They must begin mailing early ballots on October 7th, by law. However, the liberal organization Mi Familia waited until days before this deadline to file a lawsuit. They partnered with UnidosUS (LaRaza) and the Lincoln Project. The court changed this Oct. 5th deadline to the 23rd. A week later the date was changed to the 15th during an appeal by AG Mark Brnovich. Over 43,000 voter registrations were added during this extra 10 days of registration chaos.
Reviewing voter rolls from Dec-Feb show 860 residential locations had 10 or more registered voters, some with over 20. In fact, there were thousands of addresses with between 5 and 9 registered voters. The goal of nefarious actors would be to stuff VRAS with as many names and addresses as possible and ensure they make it on the QUALVOTER list sent to Runbeck. The “Deputy Registrar” initiative by County Recorder Adrian Fontes gave 638 volunteers from left-leaning groups, access to VRAS allowing them to process registration forms.
Like most ballot print shops, Runbeck delivers the sealed ballots directly to a USPS P&DC for distribution. In Phoenix this is a massive 400,000 sq. ft. facility with 56 letter sorting machines.
The Arizona USPS P&DC forwards those ballots out to the 74 U.S. Post Offices located around Maricopa County. Each local PO sorts the ballots by carrier routes and puts them in sequence for the line of travel (LOT). Ballots are then loaded into the vehicles used by the mail carriers (mailmen). These carriers typically have 350-700 locations on their daily routes. This includes apartments, centralized mailboxes, businesses, etc. A typical city ZIP code like those in Phoenix could require 15-30 carrier routes (mailmen) and have 15-25,000 total locations. The Tucson P&DC will soon be consolidated (closed). After that, every inbound and outbound ballot in Arizona will be processed at the Phoenix P&DC.
In 2020 there were 5,330 USPS mail carriers employed in Arizona. They deliver mail by “fleet or feet”. These are not the clerks, machine operators, or sorters. Maricopa County has 62% of Arizona’s population. This means roughly 3,300 USPS mail carriers were in possession of the 2,364,426 ballots sent to voters over the 24 election mail days in Arizona for 2020. Any completed ballots collected during their routes are sent back to the Phoenix P&DC. Maricopa election officials then pick up the completed mail-in ballots at this P&DC. A similar ballot delivery process to the above takes place all across America. But in Maricopa, when ballots are picked up at the Phoenix P&DC by election officials, they are not taken to the county tabulation center.
Runbeck is the first to receive completed mail-in ballots in Maricopa from the USPS. They store them in their Phoenix headquarters while scanning the outside signature area of the envelopes. This area also includes an optional date and phone number section. Runbeck provides these digital images to MCTEC (tabulation) poll workers who compare signatures to those on file. Those that do not match are separated from other ballots and Runbeck delivers both sets to MCTEC.
Next, the ballots are forwarded to poll workers who open the envelopes, remove ballots, and start the ballot tabulation process.None of the chain of custody documentation for ballots picked up at the P&DC or Runbeck were provided to Senate auditors.In fact, Recorder Adrian Fontes reduced absentee ballot scrutiny specifically for the 2020 election (see image below).
In the image below you can see that the inspection boxes were reduced from 3 to 2 in the lead up to the election. Again, no documentation validating the move of ballots between entities was provided to the auditors of the County’s election process.
We’ve reported on concerns with Runbeck previously. For one, the entity is connected to the Democrat party.
Maricopa never provided exact totals of uncounted ballots after November 3rd. On election night almost every County knew exactly how many ballots they had left to count. Maricopa would only provide a range, like the below (400K-430K ballots left). This went on for days after the election, always just ranges.
In fact, poll workers testified that MCTEC supervisors thought they were done counting several times. Then a Runbeck van would show up. If they never publish an exact total, new ballots can be injected as needed.
Finally, when the Arizona Senate finally started their audit of the 2020 Election results in Maricopa County, mail in ballots were in their audit scope and the images of all ballot envelopes were requested by the auditors. On April 27, 2021 Maricopa’s Supervisors stated these digital images of signatures had been delivered to Senate auditors. They resisted for months while making disparaging comments about the auditors. Maricopa finally delivered these images on August 19th, without any apology. We have no idea what was being done to these ballot envelopes and images during these months when the County claimed wrongly that these images had been provided to the Senate auditors.
Why does the county outsource ballot envelope imaging to Runbeck once received? Runbeck also performs the signature verification. Shouldn’t these activities be done by a separate entity?
Why did Runbeck never provide exact numbers of ballots received by Election Day and why didn’t they provide for days?
Also, there is no chain of custody documentation provided to the Senate auditors related to this process which, if lacking, is likely against the law.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has authorized an investigation into Facebook for “alleged” election interference.
DeSantis cited the Wall Street Journal’s bombshell report on internal Facebook documents stating that the company allows certain users to break the rules.
On Monday, DeSantis announced that he was authorizing Secretary of State Laurel Lee and the Florida Department of State to open an investigation into Facebook’s alleged election interference through its whitelisting program.
“Floridians deserve to know how much Big Tech has influenced our elections,” DeSantis tweeted along with his letter to Secretary Lee.
I am authorizing @FLSecofState and the Florida Department of State to open an investigation into Facebook’s alleged election interference through its whitelisting program.
“It’s no secret that Big Tech censors have long enforced their own rules inconsistently,” DeSantis said in a press release. “If this new report is true, Facebook has violated Florida law to put its thumb on the scale of numerous state and local races.”
“Floridians deserve to know how much this corporate titan has influenced our elections. That is why I am directing Secretary Lee to use all legal means to uncover violations of Florida’s election laws,” he added.
If you engage in climbing as a pastime, professional pursuit or in any other capacity you likely have cause to use carabiners day in and day out.
But even if you aren’t working in high places you have probably seen these D- or oval-shaped spring loaded clips attached to backpacks, key rings, wrenches and anything else that needs to be handily attached to something else or hung nearby.
greenish carabiner rated at 150 lbs. of load
But many of these devices, though they look similar or identical are not true carabiners, instead being generic snap hooks. What’s the difference?
The difference between a carabiner and snap hook is one of semantics and classification. All carabiners are snap hooks, but not all snap hooks are carabiners. Both feature a one-way, spring loaded gate that opens inward to allow quick one-handed attachment. Carabiners are rated to support higher loads, but snap hooks can be made of plastic.
Depending on the activity you are engaging in, mistaking one for the other could have fatal consequences.
Even if you are never leaving Terra Firma, learning the difference between carabiners and garden variety snap hooks will save you money and let you use the right tool for the job. Keep reading to learn more.
Snap Hook Defined
A snap hook is defined as a small metal or plastic ring or loop that is designed to attach a load to standing rope or some other firm point by means of a one-way gated opening that opens when pressed inward.
In practice, this allows the snap hook to be pressed into and snapped over a rope, with the gate closing under its own built-in spring tension once the rope is enclosed by the snap hook.
Snap hooks have been around for a very long time, and used in all kinds of applications, from industrial settings to completely mundane utilitarian chores. Chances are you have seen snap hooks used for equipment straps, dog leashes, key rings and more throughout your travels.
The ability to quickly attach something to something else with assurance that it will not easily come undone no matter how it is handled while still being easy to remove with a minimum of fuss is valuable for a wide variety of chores.
What is a Carabiner Anyway?
A carabiner is very much like a typical snap hook in many ways, and a carabiner definitely meets the definition of snap hook.
Compared to snap hooks, carabiners are available in a smaller but more distinct number of sizes and configurations, and all carabiners are designed for safely bearing substantial loads when attached to a rope or other rigging.
The word carabiner is a funny one, and in English is derived from the German word for “carbine hook”, with a carbine being a compact rifle and hook being the attachment point used to connect a sling to the rifle. A little bit of mashing up, and presto, we have the English word “carabiner.”
In mundane usage, we see carabiners used for all the same things that snap hooks are used for, most commonly on key rings, attached to backpacks, carrying water bottles and so forth. Quick and easy operation with reliable attachment is the same more or less.
True Carabiners Bear Loads, Snap Hooks May Not
The biggest difference between a proper carabiner and a snap hook is it a carabiner is intended to bear a load, typically quite a large one, and is purpose designed for use in climbing, rappelling and other pursuits that require ropes, webbing and harnesses to conduct safely. Garden variety snap hooks are not.
How can you tell the difference, if all carabiners are indeed snap hooks of a sort and much of the time the two could look more or less identical?
Simple: all carabiners made by reputable manufacturers will be marked accordingly and will prominently feature a ‘kN rating’, meaning kilo-Newtons, to advise the user of what kind of load they can bear.
Actually, it describes a specific gravity as you weigh much more as far as the carabiner is concerned after coming to a sudden stop from an unexpected fall than you do at a dead hang.
Additionally, many carabiners feature an additional locking system or sleeve that slides over the movable gate and closes over the tip or nose of the body of the carabiner.
This locking system provides additional assurance that it will not inadvertently open when the user can least afford it.
Locking systems vary depending on manufacturer, purpose of the carabiner and shape of the carabiner, and might release utilizing a twisting, pulling or some other motion.
Try to use some cheap, chintzy snap hook for the purpose and you are probably going to go plummeting to your end, or that vital equipment to your trying to spend will go crashing to the ground with a heartbreaking and wallet emptying crunch.
Never, Ever Use a basic Snap Hook for High-Risk Loads!
Snap hooks might be fine in service as a caller attachment on a dog leash, for hanging a water bottle or other gear from your backpack or for keeping your keys safely in your pocket or on your belt loop but as a rule they are not rated for serious, life or death usage.
Purchasing carabiners for a live climb event is a bit trickier than it has ever been unless you are purchasing from a known quantity upstanding retailer with a brick and mortar store or a vetted online presence.
Many legitimate, high end brands of carabiner that are rightly respected for their strength and performance in extreme conditions are knocked off by Chinese factories with frightening rapidity and proliferation.
Trying to purchase what seems to be a quality model of carabiner at a discount can often lead to folly as you are buying what is in reality a fake, however convincing the markings, color and other details might be.
If you are unfortunate enough to fall prey to one of these knock off carabiners you may yet discover the price of false economy you foolishly pursued.
For screwing around or everyday use, a snap hook is probably adequate for mundane tasks and chores, but never trust them to a real climbing operation and always ensure that you purchase proper carabiners from a reliable, trusted source.
Conclusion
Snap hooks and carabiners are different, even though certain models may appear identical for all intents and purposes.
All carabiners are a type of snap hook, but a legitimate carabiner is intended to support a substantial load during a climbing operation whereas a snap hook is not.
Both operate via way of a spring loaded, one-way gate designed to allow easy attachment to a rope or other firm point but there their performance similarities end.
US politicians cede the entire election distribution process to the United States Postal Service (USPS) despite the entity being unionized and 92% of its donations going to Democrats.
The early stages of the “Ballot Supply Chain” for mail-in voting require the list of valid voters, ballot printing, and blank ballot distribution. USPS is the sole distributor for every blank ballot in America. However, almost every public disclosure by USPS is about ballot collection. They deploy “extraordinary measures” like Priority Express Mail services, but only to collect ballots, not to deliver them. They hold RSVP hand-off events for the public, like the one in Maricopa County, to promote ballot transfer to election officials. But they have few measures in place to ensure only one blank ballot goes to one legitimate voter.
Every mail ballot is distributed to voters through one of the 308 USPS Processing & Distribution Centers (P&DC) in America. The completed ballots collected by USPS are returned to these same P&DC locations. To reduce costs, USPS has been consolidating the P&DC centers since 2011, eliminating 179 of the original 487. These centers are critical to elections and have hundreds of designated employees called Political and Election Mail Coordinators. Each USPS report, including the 2020 Post Election Analysis, is a marketing piece to make Americans “feel good” that ballots are returned swiftly to election officials. They say little about securing delivery of blank ballots to voters. If not for Senator Ron Johnson, USPS would have never disclosed 3 tubs of undelivered ballots were found inside the Milwaukee P&DC.
Almost every one of the 644,000 USPS employees across the country are union members of either the APWU, NALC, NPMHU, or RLCA (Rural Carriers). They are all affiliates of the AFL-CIO. These postal unions have over 5,700 members just in Maricopa County. The APWU donates 92% to Democrats. NALC is the most powerful postal union with $353 million in assets and represent USPS letter carriers who work in cities. They spend millions in lobbying with 84% of donations going to Democrat PAC’s and liberal candidates. All these unions exclusively endorse Democrats for President. The union that delivers mail to rural Americans (RLCA) donates the highest to Republicans at roughly 30%, and rose to 43% during Trumps term.
In the early days after the 2020 Election, the actions of the USPS were brought into question.
One driver in question was questioned by the FBI after he shared the USPS actions with ballots coming out of New York. The FBI wasn’t interested in the information the driver had regarding the questionable distribution of ballots, they instead questioned him and asked who was paying him to make the claims.
Muzzle brakes are quite useful out on the flat range during a competition or just casual shooting for making faster follow-up shots but they don’t often make you any friends on the firing line. Lantac is proud to introduce their latest addition to the Dragon Muzzle Brake lineup with the new Dead Air KEYMO mounting […]
(@MrAndyNgo) 
