Vint Hill Farms Station is in a very rural area and Warrenton was chock full of rednecks. I was concerned about the reception the Egyptians would get in that area but it turned out not to be a problem at all. It was up to me to arrange all of their needs: hotel, meals, transportation, entertainment, etc., etc. I was told to go out and purchase a 15-person van so they could be transported back and forth. Got a pretty good deal, if I do say so myself.
I put them in a hotel on the outskirts of Warrenton and arranged with The Inn at Vint Hill (a historic building that used to be the home of the base commander) to provide all their meals, stressing that they were Muslim and would need special menus. I had to pick them up at the airport, which entailed several trips since they got hung up in NY and were split up. My roommate helped with his truck, and so did Heather.
One of them, young Magdi, was engaged (arranged by his family) and was supposed to purchase a wedding gown for his fiance. Yeah, no, THAT didn’t happen!!! By the end of their visit, he didn’t even want to return to Egypt – and his Father was an Admiral in the Navy!! I talked him out of staying and convinced him the right thing to do was to return to Egypt. I am in contact with Aziz on FB and he told me Magdi did end up marrying the girl!
I invited them to my house for an old fashioned American bar-b-cue. They loved my Z, of course, given his Egyptian bloodlines, and had a ball playing basketball on the cement court. And, man, did they ever love Gage! I invited them for Thanksgiving dinner and, in return, they came to my house and prepared the Ramadan meal. Pffftt….burned the hell out of my pyrex pans (they didn’t know how to cook in them)…..but the food was great. First time I ever had Cilantro, which they used in the salad.
They all varied in the depth of their religiosity – one of them, Mo, asked me if I had a room where he could pray where no dogs had been present. During Ramadan, most adhered to the rules but Magdi…..oh, Magdi…..he struggled!
The REAL fun, however, was when Heather took them out partying in DC. She worked as a bartender at the time and the bar owner had a limo all decked out with a full bar in the trunk that he let her have for the night. I told her in no uncertain terms – DO NOT LET THEM GET ARRESTED!!!! Of course, I was worried sick and was up at 5 am waiting for Heather to get home. Seven o’clock comes and goes and still…..no Heather. I am freaking by this time. I got on the phone and finally tracked her down at some friend’s apartment; however, she couldn’t come to the phone because she was in the bathroom puking. Oh, Lord!!!! I’m like: WHERE ARE MY EGYPTIANS????
I finally decided to just go over to their hotel to see if they had shown up there. Sure enough – just as I pulled in, here came the company Tahoe, with one of the Egyptians driving. Peter, who was supposed to be “in charge,” was passed out in the back!!! I haven’t a clue when or how they got hold of the Tahoe!!!
All-in-all, a very enjoyable and educational experience! The company closed down ever year between Christmas and New Years and, since I lived only a mile from the office, Hans told me I could have extra vacation time if I went into the office to take care of the daily needs during that period. I told him I would prefer going along on one of the teams’ trips to Egypt; he agreed and I got my passport updated. It did not surprise me when he backed out of that promise!!! Have I said yet that I do NOT like Austrians???!!?? He was a little man in many ways, NOT just physical status!!!! And that’s all I’ll say about Hans!!!!
I am wondering how many of you have had the experience of introducing foreigners to our country……it is interesting to listen to their expectations and views and fun to show them our way of life.
Sew Colorful 
Good morning all! My hand is steadily getting better, thankfully. Most of the swelling is gone, as is the redness, and it doesn’t hurt nearly as much. I can see that the puncture wound is now drying up. They are the worst kind of wounds to heal.
Wheezer was waiting as usual, asleep on the chair. I put Jake in the bedroom, then opened the door and went to get his canned food. When I returned to the door, he was hunkered down with his front paws up on the door sill, waiting patiently. After he ate, he took a tour thru the living room & kitchen, even jumping up into my old recliner to check it out. When I could see he was going to spray, I walked over towards him, so he stopped and made his way back outside thru the kitchen.
Cool @ 67 and humid this morning with a few high clouds – slight chance of showers but I don’t expect any – then it starts heating up into the 90’s for a few days. Good – my lopes need heat and sun to ripen!
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EXCERPT: “The First Amendment does not allow the United States to adopt “Oceania’s Ministry of Truth.”
That line from George Orwell’s dystopian novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” opens U.S. District Judge John Sinatra’s order Thursday imposing a preliminary injunction on New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is threatening pro-life pregnancy centers for telling women about so-called abortion pill reversal, as their lawsuit proceeds.
Her office may not enforce state consumer fraud laws against the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA), Gianna’s House and Options Care Center, which sued in May, for referring to APR, calling it safe and effective or directing people to the APR Hotline and website in their ads, social media and promotional materials.
The injunction is limited to the plaintiffs, represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom.
“Women in New York have literally saved their babies from an in-progress chemical drug abortion because they had access to information through their local pregnancy centers” about the protocol, ADF senior counsel Caleb Dalton said.
ADF told Just the News this was the “first substantial ruling” in the recent spate of Democratic Attorneys General threatening pregnancy centers and chilling their speech, and said it provides a template to other courts hearing similar challenges.
One of the more notable conclusions by Sinatra, nominated by President Trump: He’d issue the injunction even if James were correct that the centers were practicing “commercial speech,” a category that receives less constitutional protection.
The Thomas More Society preemptively sued James in upstate Monroe County on behalf of Heartbeat International, CompassCare and members of a “pregnancy help collective” after the AG sent intent-to-sue letters. James then followed through with her own suit in Manhattan.
The state trial judge in the centers’ preemptive suit approved their motion to consolidate the two cases in their backyard June 12, previously telling James they would suffer “avoidably unfair logistical disadvantage” in a Manhattan transfer. Her office has appealed.
Blue-state AGs on both coasts have charged hard against the shoestring nonprofits for allegedly misleading women by saying that taking supplemental progesterone, a natural pregnancy hormone, after mifepristone can counteract the abortive effects of the latter – before taking misoprostol to complete the chemical abortion – and save their pregnancies….”
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/abortion/federal-judge-bans-letitia-james-ministry-truth-censoring-ny-pro-life
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Good! They need to go after BlackRock!!! Corrupt thru-and-thru!
EXCERPT: “Indiana’s state securities regulator issued a cease and desist order against BlackRock Thursday, accusing the investment giant of fraudulent actions related to its ESG products and offerings. The company denies the allegations.
According to the Indiana Securities Division, BlackRock has repeatedly made false and misleading statements to Indiana investors with regards to the company’s ESG products. Indiana accuses BlackRock of pushing ESG factors on portfolio companies and informing clients they would see better long-term returns on their investments through ESG-backed funds. Though, according to the order, there was little to no evidence to substantiate the claim.
“Investment companies that engage in fraudulent activities not only betray the trust of their clients but undermine the integrity of our financial markets. My office is committed to rigorously enforcing the law and strengthening our regulatory frameworks to ensure Hoosier investors are protected and that those who exploit the system are held accountable,” Diego Morales, Indiana Secretary of State, said in a statement.
BlackRock, which has $10.5 trillion in assets under management, told Just the News that the allegations are baseless.
“Yesterday’s action by Mr. Morales is a politically motivated attack that completely mischaracterizes BlackRock’s approach to investing. We are only focused on helping hundreds of thousands of Hoosier clients achieve their investment goals. We intend to defend ourselves and our clients against this arbitrary use of state power,” BlackRock said. Both BlackRock and Morales refer to Indiana’s citizens as “Hoosiers.”
Indiana’s order points to statements the company made, saying that BlackRock claimed ESG-backed funds would produce better long-term outcomes, and advocated for climate disclosures. The company, according to the order, doesn’t explain what these disclosure reporting frameworks are or why they should be a priority for investors.
24-0013 CD – BlackRock Cease and Desist Order – 8-22-2024.pdf
In March, Mississippi issued a cease and desist order against BlackRock making similar allegations.
“Investment companies will not push their political agenda on Mississippians, especially through fraudulent and deceptive means. All citizens should have the opportunity to make informed and educated decisions when investing their hard-earned money. If not, our office will hold these bad actors accountable,” Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson said in a statement. Under Mississippi law, investment managers are prohibited from making untrue statements of material facts regarding the sale or offer of securities. For each infraction, violators can be fined up to $25,000 in penalties, according to the Magnolia Tribune.
A spokesperson with the State of Indiana told Just the News that through securities registration, regulation, enforcement and protection, the state has received complaints and concerns about misrepresentation of ESG investments from individual and institutional investors.
“Many Hoosiers manage their own investment and retirement savings. A much larger number of Hoosiers are beneficiaries of institutionally managed pension funds, which can be adversely impacted by false or misleading ESG representations,” the spokesperson said….”
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/energy/indiana-issues-cease-and-desist-order-against-blackrock-alleging-misleading
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Those bastids! All you have to do is send a few million less to Ukraine, jitbags!!! THAT LAW MUST GO!!!
Just The News: “The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has demanded that veterans repay billions of dollars over the past decade that they were given as incentives to leave service, according to a news report on Friday.
The United States military has offered incentives to service members who were slightly injured on duty, to leave service when it needed to downsize its active-duty forces. But disabled veterans have had to repay those incentives in order to receive disability compensation, and have repaid at least $2.5 billion collectively so far, according to NBC News.
The repayment orders are because of a little-known law that Congress authorized in 1949, which prohibits veterans from receiving both the separation payout and disability payments.
“It felt like I would never see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Damon Bird, who was forced to repay a $74,000 incentive from the Army, told the outlet. “We were barely keeping up with our day-to-day cost of living. It was already bad enough as it was, but I had already been dealing with mental health issues prior to losing that income.”
Bird was diagnosed with service-related bladder cancer, and post-traumatic stress disorder, and was receiving a monthly VA disability check of $2,400 before the VA stopped the payments in 2021 due to the federal law.
The VA said it is legally obligated to recover the separation payouts before they can send those veterans their monthly disability stipend. Approximately $364 million still needs to be recouped. Veteran advocates are calling for a change to the federal law, and Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) introduced a bill in 2022 that would eliminate the disability recoupments.
“We need a statutory change,” Gallego told NBC News. The bill has received bipartisan support, Gallego said, but has been slow to pass because of the cost.”
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Just The News: “An offshore wind farm has experienced another blade failure by the same manufacturer that made the blade that broke off a wind turbine off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard in July.
The Dogger Bank Wind Farm, off the coast of England, announced Thursday that it is aware of a blade failure at the facility, and the company is working with the blade manufacturer, GE Vernova, to investigate the cause of the problem.
“In line with safety procedures, the surrounding marine area has been restricted and relevant authorities notified. No one was injured or in the vicinity at the time the damage was sustained,” the announcement stated.
GE Vernova manufactured the blade that broke off a turbine in the Vineyard Wind project, which is located off the shores of Martha’s Vineyard. The Nantucket Current reports that the Dogger Bank failure is the third such failure involving blades GE Vernova produced, including a second blade that broke off a turbine at Dogger Bank.
The Vineyard Wind blade failure scattered foam, fiberglass and epoxy across the beaches of Nantucket, impacting the area’s tourism industry during its peak summer months. That failure is being blamed on a “manufacturing deviation,” according to the Current.”
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Have to be wary of some of them but they have their uses!
Good!
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Another note about the Egyptians – a couple of them wanted me to find some esctasy for them. I gave them a good talking-to about that! That’s all we needed, for our Egyptian students, here in the US for training with OUR company: getting caught at the airport when they flew out!!! SMH
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“Oh No! DNC Abortion Bus Breaks Down And Four Babies Get To Live”
U.S. · Aug 23, 2024 · BabylonBee.com
CHICAGO, IL — In a tragic turn of events, the DNC Planned Parenthood abortion bus broke down, resulting in the lives of four babies.
“This is a tragic day,” Planned Parenthood Spokesperson Camille Cooley told the press. “Those babies had a right to be murdered by their mothers and now they’ll be forced to live long, fulfilling lives. This is a huge tragedy.”
Democrats held a moment of silence for the alive babies, followed by an impassioned speech by nominee Kamala Harris decrying the devastating turn of events.
“These women were robbed of their chance to end the lives of their children,” Harris said. “When this bus broke down, and I love a good bus, it allowed four otherwise unwanted babies to continue to develop and grow. This is what Trump wants for America!”
Sources close to Planned Parenthood say the organization is deeply sorry for the mishap and is working tirelessly to fix the bus and get their abortion processing services up and running.
At publishing time, the vasectomy bus had also broken down, resulting in no change whatsoever to the already sterile male convention attendees.
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“Trump Adds A Kennedy In Hopes He Will Draw All The Sniper Fire”
Politics · Aug 23, 2024 · BabylonBee.com
GLENDALE, AZ — The presidential race underwent a shakeup today, with Donald Trump adding a Kennedy to his team in hopes he will draw all the sniper fire.
Following an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania campaign rally in July, Trump sought to take drastic steps to increase his safety for the remainder of the campaign, including bringing on Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a member of a family with a reputation for being shot at.
“A brilliant move by the Trump campaign,” said one political strategist. “With lingering questions about the competence of the Secret Service, Trump has decided to take matters into his own hands. Nothing will draw gunfire away from him more effectively than having a Kennedy standing next to you.”
Political experts predicted Kennedy’s departure from the presidential race and subsequent endorsement of Trump could be a significant boost for Trump’s campaign with the added bonus of being an extra layer of protection from attempts on his life. “It’s like having a rodeo clown,” one analyst said. “If there are any other would-be assassins along the campaign trail, they won’t be able to resist the lure of a Kennedy.”
At publishing time, pundits speculated that RFK, Jr.’s endorsement was likely to be rewarded by his receiving an appointment as CIA Director in Trump’s administration, which, in turn, could open the door to the ironic possibility of the CIA being killed by a Kennedy.
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“RFK Jr.’s Endorsement Is A Game-Changer And Tilts The Scales Now Decisively In President Trump’s Favor — What better way to defuse the momentum of an overall lackluster Democratic National Convention than to have the greatest third-party challenger endorse Donald Trump?”
Paul Ingrassia, Aug 24, 2024
EXCERPT: “What better way to derail the momentum of an overall lackluster Democratic National Convention than to have the greatest third-party challenger for the presidency of the last three decades, who just so happened to be a member of America’s most famous Democratic political dynasty, endorse the Republican candidate for President of the United States: Donald J. Trump?
Well, that is exactly what occurred late Friday afternoon, when RFK, Jr., who was running as an Independent after being forced out of the Democratic Party primary earlier this year, formally suspended his campaign in most states, including every battleground state of consequence, and tossed his support behind President Trump.
In Kennedy’s speech, he reiterated his contretemps with the party long associated with the Kennedy name; a party that is famously linked to his uncle John, the 35th President of the United States, his father Robert, who served as Attorney General in his brother’s administration, and another uncle, Ted, one of the longest serving senators in American history. Yet, the Democratic Party has transformed drastically in recent years. The party of John and Robert Kennedy, which exalted classical liberal values like free speech, the right to privacy, and due process is no longer accepted in the Democratic Party of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
The Biden-Harris Party is one that treats populist insurgents with contempt, using heavy-handed tactics to keep those voices marginalized while coopting the press to demonize and censure Democrats, like Kennedy, who call for a big tent coalition – the kind that his late father and uncles championed, one that seeks to elevate regular Americans over powerful DC lobbyists.
Now, the party of the people is the Republican Party spearheaded by Donald Trump. To his credit, Kennedy sees with admirable clarity (which cannot be said of his siblings and other members of the Kennedy clan) the dire stakes of our political moment, and knows through his own experiences that Donald Trump, not Kamala Harris, is the true change agent and outsider candidate. Thus, his endorsement speech – in which he scathingly indicted the modern Democratic Party and its fascist leftward lurch, was no-holds-barred and packed with righteous indignation:
“As you know, I left that party in October because it had departed so dramatically from the core values that I grew up with. It had become the party of war, censorship, corruption, big pharma, big tech, big ag, and big money. When it abandoned democracy by canceling the primary to conceal the cognitive decline of the sitting president, I left the party to run as an independent.”
————
There is another part of RFK’s decision to support the 45th President worth highlighting. Kennedy made a deliberate strategic ploy to suspend his campaign, but not drop out altogether. That means he will only remove himself from the ballot in key battleground states like Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, which remain competitive between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
This has a twofold objective. First, according to President Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, pluralities – if not outright majorities – of the 3%-5% of the voter share that Kennedy was polling in these battlegrounds would break for Donald Trump over Kamala Harris. In Fabrizio’s own words, “[t]o put these numbers into perspective, the net vote gained in a state like Arizona based on just a 2020 turnout model would be over 41,000 votes nearly 4 times Biden’s winning margin or in Georgia the net gain would be over 19,000 votes nearly twice Biden’s margin.”
Even assuming the most conservative outcome, where, for example, just 2% of that vote breaks for President Trump, he will still garner more than twice Joe Biden’s 2020 winning margin in a state like Arizona, and enough to get him over the winning threshold in critical states like Georgia and Nevada.
Should the Kennedy vote break in accordance with expectations – with majorities swinging, following their candidate, to the Trump corner – that should be more than enough to put President Trump over the line in every battleground. As it stands, the 45th President was already leading in states like Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, and neck-to-neck in Michigan and Wisconsin, where Kamala Harris is just coming off a protracted, media-induced honeymoon following the heels of the Democratic National Convention.
The second part of the strategy to suspend, rather than officially end, his campaign would mean that Kennedy remains on the ballot in qualifying, deep-blue states like New York, where the thought is that Democratic operatives will presumably have to divert more resources to curtail the effects of a third-party challenge that can eat into Harris’ leads.
Whether that will amount to anything significant remains to be seen, but lest we forget, before Biden had dropped out, a few polls showed President Trump coming within single digits, if not outright leading, in states like New York and New Jersey just a few short months ago. Thus, the wildcard of Kennedy’s candidacy should not be written off, where many disenchanted Democrats living in those states might feel compelled to vote for an alternative to the Biden-Harris agenda, which has invited historic levels of crime and economic ruin upon so many deep-blue strongholds…..”
https://paulingrassia.substack.com/p/rfk-jrs-endorsement-is-a-game-changer
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I just finished reading the whole thing – ah, distractions! THIS….THIS is what it’s all about!
“All told, Kennedy’s endorsement is the worst thing possible for Kamala Harris, whose honeymoon just came to a crashing halt with Friday’s news, a surefire momentum killer. Now, with about two and a half months to go, and a presidential debate and tons of media scrutiny still on the docket, Kamala Harris is about to realize that the real contest has only just begun.
With Kennedy’s endorsement in the bag, Donald Trump now heads the most powerful political coalition in modern American history; a united front that includes voices across a consortium of industries, from politics to business to technology, creating a juggernaut like no other at a time when the stakes could not possibly be higher. And where America’s survival will be literally determined at the ballot box — once and for all.”
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Oh, I’d love to have one of these!!!
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No non-citizen should own American land or business.
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“Now, smarty pants, how you gonna swallow it?”
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