Good morning from my Hunker-Bunker overlooking the Puget Sound from the hills of West Seattle. It is the second day of Twenty-Twenty-Five and I see we are off to a strange start.
Yesterday was the day that I took all of the Amazon packages I’ve been ordering over the past couple of weeks for my new podcast studio — and started putting it together. (Oh wait, did I forget to tell you that I will be starting to do a review site for Amazon products mostly, but also movies and music reviews. The ONE thing you can count on me NOT doing is a political news review site. I have no desire to expand this shit-show into the world of influencing.
One of the first topics of review will be … setting up a working podcast station, ordering from Amazon. We’ve already recorded the videos unboxing and setting the studio up where my sound studio used to be when I was still working for Sharpe Sound in North Vancouver, BC. (where most of the sound is done for the movies and television shows you see down here…)
I have a contract with Amazon to promote various products being sold on their platform. Not only will I receive products to review for free, but I will also be paid a negotiated fee per video, based on views and audience.
I have a jump on the monetization scheme: I already have ten YouTube channels that I’ve owned since YouTube first appeared in 2005 and they have been collecting subs and views almost automatically since day one. I already have a subscriber base of 297k, and a viewer base of 2.9 million, just for having a couple of dormant music videos on the channel. All this time, these zombie channels have been sitting there collecting valuable $tatistic$.
So spending a couple of hours a week reviewing a product I will keep for free, I can maybe pull in at least a five-figure income. I have a couple of old friends from back in high school who are in on this with me. We can meet up here one day a week and crank out a couple of reviews and kick back and collect the money until the day YouTube goes out of business. Good times.
But yeah, I will also do some music reviews. But with a bit of a twist. I want to introduce people to music they ordinarily wouldn’t listen to: Hip-hoppers exposed to rock, or rockers exposed to Rap. I can’t make money on music reviews because of copyrights, but I can just have some fun with it.
ANYWAYS…
You didn’t come here to find out what my stupid ass is doing, you wanted to find out what my stupid ass thinks about the news, didn’t you?
Are you sure you want to know?
CyberTruck: The choice of terrorists.
The Cybertruck in NOLA…
I was offline all day yesterday setting my podcast studio up, so blissfully, I didn’t hear anything about Cybertucks mowing down people and exploding at Trump Hotels. But as I was going to bed last night I was listening to NPR and … well here it is:
The driver of the Tesla Cybertruck who was killed when the vehicle blew up outside Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas has been identified as a Colorado resident and Army veteran.
Law enforcement sources confirmed to The Post that Matthew Livelsberger, 37, rented the electric pickup truck that went up in flames New Year’s Day in the valet area of the hotel.
Livelsberger was behind the wheel of the Tesla truck, which was packed with fireworks-style mortars, camping fuel and canisters, during the explosion, News5 reported early Thursday, citing law enforcement sources.
MY TAKE: This is pretty crazy. When I first saw the story that a CyberTruck had blown up, I thought it was from a battery fire. Batteries, if damaged, can cause a serious fire that has to be smothered to put out. Fire departments now have these special “e-fire blankets” that they throw over an electric car to smother the fire. Adding water could cause an explosion.
But when I heard about the fuel and fireworks in the back of the truck, and where it was located, there had to be some kind of “message” or “manifest” involved.
Oh, and there are people who actually RENT a Telsa Cybertruck? There’s a market for that?
These have got to be the most gawd-awful looking vehicle I’ve seen in a while. They remind me of a Delorean.
Tesla Cybertruck bomber Matthew Livelsberger is a long-serving married Green Beret who was on leave from active duty when he carried out the attack outside Donald Trump’s Las Vegas hotel.
Livelsberger, 37, was identified by law enforcement sources as the bomber in the Wednesday attack that left seven wounded. The electric vehicle exploded about 15 seconds after the driver pulled up in front of the hotel’s valet.
The blast was caused by ‘a bomb carried in the bed of the rented Cybertruck’ or ‘very large fireworks’, according to Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Livelsberger died in the bombing. He lived in Colorado Springs and was an active member of the Army, previously received a Meritorious Honor Award for work benefiting the US Embassy in Tajikistan.
Liveslberger was profiled by a local newspaper in Ohio for his work with the military in Afghanistan.
He grew up in Ohio and was married to social worker Sara Livelsberger, who in the lead up to the 2016 election shared a slew of Facebook posts spouting anti-Trump rhetoric.
According to CBS News, Liveslberger was on break from duty in Germany when he carried out the attack. His wife hadn’t heard from him from several days.
Property records reveal the couple purchased a home in Colorado Springs together in 2015.
MY TAKE: I think we are going to start seeing a lot more of these guys who spent much of their young adult life in Iraq and/or Afghanistan and all the shit associated with that kind of life. Most have been back for a while now, and are not doing all that swell.
The Cybertruck in Las Vegas…
Authorities believe fireworks, gas tanks and camping fuel were connected to a detonation system controlled by the driver in the Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside a Trump Hotel in Las Vegas Wednesday morning, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation.
The FBI is working to determine whether the incident was a terrorist act, Jeremy Schwartz, acting special agent in charge for the FBI’s Las Vegas office, said Wednesday. The agency believes it was an isolated incident and there is no further danger to the public, Schwartz noted.
A vehicle fire was reported at the hotel just after 8:40 a.m, and crews arrived to find a 2024 Cybertruck engulfed in flames, Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill said during a news conference.
There is one person dead inside the Cybertruck, where the body remains as authorities continue their investigation, McMahill said Wednesday evening.
Seven victims were hurt by the explosion, all of whom are in stable condition, Deputy Fire Chief Billy Samuels said.
The vehicle was rented in Colorado and arrived in Las Vegas at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, McMahill said.
About an hour later, after driving up and down Las Vegas Boulevard, the truck pulled up to the Trump Hotel and exploded, authorities said Wednesday evening.
MY TAKE: Camping fuel and fireworks aren’t that much of a destructive force. A vehicle like the Stainless Steel CyberTruck can easily contain most of the force of an explosion. Anyone inside the truck at the time of the explosion is sure to die instantly, but as shown, it isn’t likely to do much damage beyond the vehicle. A perfectly shaped box to spectacularly die.
The authorities can easily wheel it away.
A Tesla Cybertruck exploded outside the Trump Towers in Las Vegas early Wednesday, killing one person, in an incident that is being investigated as a possible act of terrorism, according to law enforcement.
Investigators do not believe there’s “any other danger to the community right now,” FBI agent Jeremy Schwartz said at a news conference Wednesday evening.
The sole person inside the vehicle died, and seven people suffered minor injuries, Sheriff Kevin McMahill of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said. He called the explosion “an isolated incident” and said there is no indication that it was linked to ISIS.
Law enforcement sources told CBS News that the Cybertruck was rented to Matthew Alan Livelsberger, an active duty U.S. Army servicemember who was serving in Germany but was on leave in Colorado at the time of the incident.
FBI now says driver responsible for deadly New Orleans rampage acted alone
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The U.S. Army veteran who drove a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers acted alone, the FBI said Thursday, reversing its position from a day earlier that he likely worked with others in carrying out a deadly attack being investigated as an act of terrorism inspired by the Islamic State group.
The FBI also revealed that the driver, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a U.S. citizen from Texas, posted five videos on his Facebook account in the hours before the attack in which he aligned himself with IS and said he had joined the militant group last summer.
“This was an act of terrorism. It was premeditated and an evil act,” said Christopher Raia, the deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division.
Officials had said Wednesday that they were seeking additional potential suspects in the attack, which occurred when Jabbar steered around a police blockade and plowed into a crowd, killing more than a dozen people, including an 18-year-old woman who had ambitions of becoming a nurse.
But Raia said the current assessment is that he acted alone, without any conspirators.
MY TAKE: There are a couple of common threads here:
• Both involved CyberTrucks rented from the same company.
• Both involved guys who served in Afghanistan at roughly the same time.
Both guys decided to leave this mortal coil around the same date and time. Sucks if they thought they would have the news cycle to each themselves.
The NOLA incident didn’t seem to have much of a message other than:
“HEY LOOK, I’M ISIS! Watch me die like an idiot!”.
The Las Vegas incident seemed to have a target, but not much of a message. Anyone can see that this had something to do with Trump and Musk. Too bad he wasn’t all that clear about what it was…
Note to future idiots: If you are planning on going out in a blaze of idiocy for some particular reason, could you at least let someone know what that particular reason is first?
The suspect in the New Orleans attack was an Army veteran from Texas
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, served in the Army on active duty from 2006 to 2015 and was deployed to Afghanistan in 2009, three U.S. defense officials said.
A U.S. Army veteran from Texas who was employed by Deloitte is the suspect in a bloody New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans that killed at least 15 people and injured 30 more.
Federal investigators identified Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, as the man who intentionally rammed a rented pickup into revelers around 3:15 a.m. on Bourbon Street as people were ringing in the new year.
He died in a shootout with police. Two officers were shot and were stable, officials said.
Federal and local officials are working to uncover a motive behind the attack and determine whether Jabbar acted alone or had help.
“This is not just an act of terrorism. This is evil,” Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said.
The carnage unfolded when Jabbar drove onto a sidewalk, bypassing a police vehicle that had been parked to block cars from pedestrians celebrating on crowded Bourbon Street, officials told reporters Wednesday afternoon.
According to preliminary information, Jabbar had a black ISIS flag affixed to the hitch of the Ford F-150 Lightning truck.
The car-sharing marketplace Turo said the vehicle was rented from its company.
In an address to the nation, President Joe Biden said Jabbar posted videos to social media “indicating he was inspired by ISIS, expressing a desire to kill.”
MY TAKE: I suspect that both of these guys were dealing with some serious mental illnesses, either physical, biological, or psychological.
I don’t know. I almost don’t care any more. There isn’t much left for me to get shocked over.
Cue Heads Exploding …4…3…2…1…
JUST IN: Biden Announces Liz Cheney to Receive Presidential Citizens Medal
President Joe Biden will formally announce recipients of the Presidential Thursday at 5 PM, and one name on the list is sure to raise eyebrows: Liz Cheney. The former Republican member of Congress — and vocal critic of President-elect Donald Trump — is among the 20 names in a statement released early Thursday morning.
The Presidential Citizens Medal is awarded to citizens of the United States of America who have performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens. President Biden believes these Americans are bonded by their common decency and commitment to serving others. The country is better because of their dedication and sacrifice.
Cheney is the lifelong Republican who helped lead the House Select Committee investigation on January 6th as co-chair. She worked closely with House Democrat Bennie Thompson, who served as a co-chair on the same investigation that concluded with a damning report on the lack of action by then-President Trump. As a result, Cheney became a target of fierce criticism from Trump.
The White House statement lauds Cheney: “Throughout two decades in public service, including as a Congresswoman for Wyoming and Vice Chair of the Committee on the January 6 attack, Liz Cheney has raised her voice—and reached across the aisle—to defend our Nation and the ideals we stand for: Freedom. Dignity. And decency. Her integrity and intrepidness remind us all what is possible if we work together.”
MY TAKE: Well, you had to know it was going to happen. The signals were there all the way back to the Democratic Convention last summer.
Besides, if you think that Liz Cheney won’t be back in politics soon, then you haven’t been paying attention.
When Mail Carriers Become Shady…
One of the biggest threats to the United State Postal Service is not the ever-growing cost of stamps, long lines at the post office or even delayed mail.
The biggest threats to USPS may be the mail handlers themselves.
Auditors found that a tiny percentage of them steal. And they steal a lot, according to a stunning federal investigation of a dozen mail sorting facilities across the U.S.
In mid-December, federal prosecutors charged two postal workers with stealing more than $1 million in business checks. The two worked at postal facilities in Virginia and North Carolina.
But that’s not the whole mail bag on the matter. In a stunning finding by the USPS Office of Inspector General, I.G. Tammy L. Hull writes that “criminal organizations are targeting, recruiting and colluding with postal employees to move narcotics through the postal network and to steal checks – both personal and government-issued checks — credit cards and other valuables from the mail.”
‘Shocking to everyone’
Frank Albergo, president of the Postal Police Officers Association, told Norfolk TV news station WTKR that postal workers aren’t “getting a job because they want to deliver the mail or they want to sort mail. They’re getting a job to steal mail.”
MY TAKE: I don’t know how this is “shocking” to anyone. This has been going on for DECADES, and it hasn’t gotten any better. There are SO many scams going on involving the USPS at any given time. US Postal Inspectors spend about seventy percent of their time investigating postal workers. A Postal Inspector once told me that they spend seventy percent of their time and efforts on crimes involving postal workers. The other thirty percent of their time is on crimes that DON’T involve postal workers.
UPS and FedEx are worse.
… Birds flying high
You know how I feel
Truthbombs of 2024: Media Is Over, Antisemitism Is Cool, DEI Is Kaput
The dawn of 2025 sees us facing turbulence and uncertainty on Day One. Three days ago all still felt normal. Prediction: It won’t last long.
The impending arrival of a second Donald Trump presidency, this time backed by a win of the popular vote, means we need to buckle up, hunker down and prepare for all the things that we can’t exactly guess at that are coming. But they’re coming.
I can feel the investment bankers salivating for the coming M&A business. And I can feel liberal media girding its loins for battle. It does appear that we will have a Cabinet full of former Fox personalities, and that will be interesting. And good news for the bros: being white and male is going to be back in style.
But in our own backyard, Hollywood seems unlikely to put up much of a fight in what is sure to be a shifting cultural landscape. If we didn’t see the studio CEOs heading down to Mar-a-Lago post-election like tech titans Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai and even possibly Bill Gates, no one is looking to be a liberal hero either. The industry’s power brokers follow the prevailing winds — it’s what they do.
A year ago we were emerging from the fever dream of two Hollywood strikes and trying to fathom how AI was going to remake our world. A year later, here’s my assessment of what turned out to be the really big shifts in our shifting world — the end of media, the rise of antisemitism, the stalling of DEI — and what lays the groundwork for another year of disruption.
But perhaps it’s not the disruption we thought was coming.
MY TAKE: When in Rome… Behave like a Roman.
The problem with keeping your enemies close…
… and your wife closer
A POISONING attempt has been made on ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad, it has been claimed.
The toppled Syrian tyrant has been under Vladimir Putin’s protection in Moscow since December 8 last year.
But online account General SVR — supposedly run by a former top spy in Russia — says he was taken ill on Sunday.
It claims Assad, 59, asked for medical help then almost immediately began to “cough violently and choke”.
The source said: “There is every reason to believe an assassination attempt was made.”
Assad was said to have been treated in his apartment and his condition supposedly stabilised on Monday.
Tests were reported to show he had poison in his system.
No sources were cited and there has been no confirmation from Russia.
Last month it was revealed that al-Assad’s wife Asma had been effectively barred from returning to the UK.
The 49-year-old – who was born in London – will be unable to return home as her passport has expired.
MY TAKE: So his wife tried to off him? It’s such a ‘bitch thing to do‘, or so I’m told. It is the more preferred method of women worldwide…
So I guess this marriage IS over. Would you like a drink?
Here comes the Vortex!
Polar Vortex Forecast Gets Worse as Meteorologists Sound Alarm
Meteorologists are raising alarms over worsening polar vortex conditions that could bring extreme cold and widespread disruptions.
Why It Matters
So far, this winter has seen one of the warmest Decembers on record in much of the northern United States. Though many residents experienced snow around the holidays, snow coverage was still at or near 20-year lows.
However, the polar vortex could bring severe weather conditions, including heavy snowfall and freezing temperatures, that could affect travel conditions or prompt school closures.
Coldest January since 2011 brewing for US to lead to multiple winter storms
Dramatically colder conditions are ahead as an Arctic blast moves into the U.S. starting next week. The bitterly cold pattern could be the coldest January in more than a decade and may be strewn with winter storms for the Midwest, South and East.
The clock is ticking on extensive mild Pacific air that has infiltrated much of the United States in the past week. AccuWeather meteorologists advise that drastically colder air from the Arctic will invade the Central, Southern and Eastern states and could set up a stormy pattern with areas of substantial snow and ice for much of the first half of January.
The bulk of the cold is likely to occur before the middle of the month and may be so extreme that “this could end up being the coldest January since 2011 for the U.S. as a whole,” AccuWeather Lead Long-Range Expert Paul Pastelok said.
The severity of the cold air could be dangerous, damaging and disruptive and is expected to create a big surge in demand for heating, leading to higher energy bills.
MY TAKE: Meanwhile, here in the tropic Northwest, we will be wondering where all our snow went?
It is a sweltering 46° F right now. I just came back from Home Despot wearing shorts and an old jail uniform top from the women’s prison. (hey, it’s 5x, and it’s comfortable, and it showed up one day in the lost and found at the hotel, and I needed an over shirt I could use for dirty work.
Let’s Podcast!
Where all the magic is done
This is the sound board. Amazon sent it to me for free, and it goes for $180 normally. I will also make a flat payment based on the first 1500 views, and I’ll keep the sound board, the mics and 100 percent of the ad revenue from YouTube.
I’ll be reviewing cameras also. I will also need better lighting.
Better late than never. I didn’t start until 10 and now it is 1230. I had to go out and get a hamburger from Boss Burger.
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