The Irony of Trump’s Food Cart Escape

The odds are good that the Iranians don't want to assassinate him. CouchBoy might be better at the job than the obese demented incompetent that we have as president.

Fucking Our Allies; Trump Does It Again

President Donald Trump ordered the Pentagon on Sunday to scale back planned joint military exercises with South Korea after the Republican president said it declined to help denuclearize Iran.

Trump said in a social media post that the exercises slated to begin this week are costly and “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea, which he said “has been unthreatening and respectful” while Trump has been in the White House.

“Therefore, and based on the fact that it is too late to cancel, I have instructed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises!” Trump wrote. Trump added that he recently asked South Korea’s president to join the U.S. in its efforts to denuclearize Iran, “and they said, ‘No thanks!’”

The ROK has been our ally for over seven decades, but that doesn't matter to the Orange Sundowner, whose operating principle is "what have you done for me lately".

The United States is an unreliable ally, thanks to Agent Krasnov.

Daily Reminder

DHS and ICE are fascist organizations trying to persecute people for exercising their Constitutional rights.

No sane person should have any friends who work for either groups. Those who work there should not be employable for any job that heretofore hasn't been done by migrant labor.

And that goes for the FBI, as well. Hell, it goes double for them.

Damn Near Unheard Of, Navy Ed.

Guided-missile destroyer USS Benfold (DDG-65) spent four days in the South China Sea without power after an engineering failure, USNI News has learned.

Benfold suffered the engineering casualty resulting in a loss of power last month, Cmdr. Matthew Comer, spokesperson with U.S. 7th Fleet, told USNI News in a statement.
...
The loss of power meant sailors were without galley services, toilets and air conditioning. Potable water was also affected, Comer said. He did not respond to a question about how sailors handled waste.
...
Contractor tugboats towed Benfold to Subic Bay where it was met by personnel from the Ship Repair Facility – Japan Regional Maintenance Center on July 28, with crew receiving contracted lodging off the ship the next day. Power was restored on July 30, Comer said.

Dead in the water for days on a twin-screw ship? I don't know how the hell that happens. But in truth, I had no experience with those gas-turbine twidget ships. It would have to be one hell of a casualty to do that back in the day, but other than the gremlin-riddled Mitscher class, I never heard of a twin-screw ship going DIW for anything other than a towing exercise.

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the Navy's been cheaping out on ship maintenance, again. It's a cyclical problem. And they never fucking learn that deferring maintenance leads to small problems becoming big ones.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

Whenever I'm a bit cramped for time (or interest), there's always the Mach Loop:

Tab Clearing

Good morning. Just a friendly reminder that Ghislaine Maxwell is currently protected, enjoying pampering and puppy time while America's service members are forced to drink diseased water, eat rotten meat, and huff air infested by mold. She does yoga while they choose drowning.

...
Trump is retaliating against Colorado for convicting an election denier of trying to rig the election for him. In a normal political world, this would be a massive scandal. But it's just another day in TrumpWorld.
...
Meanwhile, in something that would be a massive scandal in normal times, AG Blanche spoke at a Trump rally.

Less than a week after Senate Republicans confirmed him as U.S. attorney general, Todd Blanche spoke at a political rally and appeared to endorse a Republican candidate for New York governor — a move that further politicizes the country’s top law enforcement role.

Blanche praised Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, the GOP’s nominee challenging incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), while speaking at an event on Long Island that doubled as an effort by the Trump administration to highlight recent reductions in crime.

Then-AG Loretta Lynch had a brief meeting with President Clinton on the tarmac of the Phoenix airport ten years ago and the GOP lost its fucking mind over it. But this time...meh. We all know that Blanche may be cosplaying as America's chief law-enforcement officer, but he's Trump's consigliere. It's just another weight on the scales of the judgment of history that this administration is the most corrupt, ever.

Besides that, the fact that uniformed cops on Long Island attended Trump's rally speaks volumes. The Gilgo Beach Killer operated for a long time with very little interest from those birds.
...
And when it comes to the Trump family, the Grift Goes On:

...
The GOP thinks they're not doing enough for the rich. News to me.

Caturday

Priss, the unofficial greeter:

Actually, she'll run off if she doesn't know you.

FBI is As Fascist As It Was in the Hoover Era, Now Joined by DHS

Members of community groups and non-profits are outraged by revelations that federal law enforcement infiltrated community meetings and surveilled anti-ICE activists in Minnesota over the winter.

Minister JaNaé Bates, co-executive director of the non-profit Faith in Minnesota, said sending undercover federal agents into meetings at places like churches and union halls is a “horrific” violation, because those are spaces where people safely gather to exercise basic rights like free speech.

“It is something that the American people and Minnesotans absolutely shouldn't tolerate,” Bates said. “Nothing is normal about departments being weaponized against people who are doing what Minnesotans do: love their neighbors and take care of them, deliver them food, make sure that they're safe.”
...
The revelations about widespread surveillance are contained in legal documents released Thursday as part of a motion for discovery in the case of 15 Minnesotans charged with felony conspiracies tied to anti-ICE protests.

The incomplete reports show federal agents scanning license plates outside protests and compiling personal information on people as part of a program they called Operation Puppet Master. The program was apparently intended to find what the government described as "violent opportunists," but undercover agents seem to have focused mostly on meetings in church basements and public protests. The federal government also subpoenaed financial records from local nonprofits and labor unions they saw as supporting anti-ICE efforts.

This is the same authoritarian bullshit that the FBI pulled during the 1960s. Doesn't matter if you have a Constitutional right to protest, the FBI and the DHS is going to put you under a microscope. Note that their agents tried to gin up "direct action", but the people of Minneapolis didn't take the bait.

None of these birds should be allowed to function in a civilized society. They are our Nazis and they should be ostracized.

Fat Clueless MoFo

He cares for the sailors and their families:

Reporter: Family members of service members are concerned about conditions on the Lincoln.

Trump: No they’re not.

Reporter: Has the deployment gone on too long?

Trump: No. Not nearly long enough.

And for working Americans:

Trump: "The economy is doing unbelievably from the standpoint of Wall Street."

Those need to go onto attack ads to demonstrate the utter fecklessness of Oue Sundowner-in-Chief.

Because It's Friday

Something you don't see every day: A Mallet tank locomotive: