Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

Boeing 720:

The 720 was a variant of the 707 that was designed for shorter range and shorter runways. It was pretty much a short-term solution to the problem of bringing jet service to airports with runways that were good for piston-engined airliners, at least until the 727s and 737s were introduced.

Caturday

You're so vain....

Warm Up the Impeachment Engines

President* Donald Trump directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, according to two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter.
...
The special counsel’s office learned about Trump’s directive for Cohen to lie to Congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents. Cohen then acknowledged those instructions during his interviews with that office.

Trump's assertion that this is nothing more than another Cohen lie is as false as they come. As the story said, it wasn't Cohen that first raised the point that Rump suborned perjury.

This is as impeachable as it gets.

Update: The Special Counsel's office says that the story "is not accurate." Which, as any decent pettifogger will point out, is a long way away from saying that "it is not true."

Because It's Friday

A documentary about the end of steam in Canada:

Delusional Donnie

House Democrats refused to participate in a Tuesday afternoon meeting with President* Donald Trump, dashing the White House’s long-shot hopes of convincing moderates to circumvent their leaders and reach a grand bargain to reopen the government.

The House Democrats know what Trump refuses to admit: That they are now the majority party in the House because Trump did his best to make the mid-term election about him and he lost, bigly. So what incentive do they have to go around their leaders to talk to Trump?

Maybe he planned to serve them room-temperature/rotting hamberders?

Here's the original tweet deleted by Donald Trump #hamberders 😂 screenshot a motherfuker ✌️ pic.twitter.com/USVXY59Ynq

— PrettyTonyGlobal (@PrettyTGlobal) January 16, 2019

On another note, the White House Mess (where the staff eats) is run by the Navy. They're not on shutdown. So Trump could have given the Clemson players some decent food. But if there has been a president wh has had less class and grace than Trump, his name eludes my mind.

Powerless King

Republican Rep. Steve King will be blocked from committee assignments for the next two years after lamenting that white supremacy and white nationalism have become offensive terms.

King is done in the House. With no committee assignments and being a member of the minority party, nobody in the House will give a cockroach-fuck what King wants. In all probability, any attempts that he makes to intervene on behalf of his constituents will be ignored.

He has, effectively, been removed from the House of Representatives. If he cared about his constituents, he'd resign.

Trump, uncharacteristically, has been keeping his mouth shut. He says that he knows nothing about it. That, of course, is a lie. Trump watches about eight hours of TV a day. He knows what are the hot stories. He’s probably the sole news junkie in the country who doesn't know what King said.

Trump's silence stems not from ignorance, but from his racism. He's been dancing with the American Nazis ever since he grabbed the reins of the "birther movement". Unlike some other Republicans, Trump uses an air horn, not a dog whistle.

Ten and One Hundred Years Ago

100 years ago, the Great Molasses Flood happened in Boston. The dead ranged from two ten year-old childen to a 78 year-old messenger.

Ten years ago, the "Miracle on the Hudson" happened when the pilots of USAir flight 1549 ditched the airplane in the Hudson River after both engines were shelled from ingesting geese. There were no fatalities, other than the geese.

I suspect that the pilot, Chesley Sullenberger, has probably been somewhat uncomfortable with the "hero pilot" appellation. For one thing, the days of "the captain is a god" have long passed for all American (and most Western) airlines. The pilots are a team. Jeffrey Skiles, the First Officer, deserves as much credit as Sullenberger. So do the flight attendants, who got everyone out alive. In fact, the person who suffered the worst injury was a flight attendant. (Sullenberger recognizes this and mentions them almost every time he can.)

The fact that nobody died also has a lot to do with the captains of the ferries and other boats that went to the floating airplane and got everyone off the airplanes wings and the rafts. It was a cold day; without those rescues, people would have died of hypothermia.

There were a lot of people who responded to save lives that day.

The Closs Case

All I have to say about the Closs case is that it's too bad that Wisconsin does not have the death penalty.

Deadlock

Trump has been, in essence, claiming that he has a mandate to build his Great Wall of Trump because he won the 2016 election.

The Democrats are claiming, in essence, that they have a mandate to block Trump's edifice complex because they took the House of Representatives in the 2018 election.

Both sides have valid points.

So, where do we go from here? Trump is going to have to back off his inflexible demand for $5.7 billion. The Democrats are going to have to give him something, but since Trump has spurned smaller offers without climbing down from his initial demand, there's little reason for Democrats to budge.

Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell has pulled his head into his shell.

And so it goes.

Yep, You Can Place a Heavy Bet: Trump Worked for Russia

President* Donald Trump avoided directly answering when asked whether he currently is or has ever worked for Russia after a published report said law enforcement officials, concerned about his behavior after he fired FBI Director James Comey in 2017, had begun investigating that possibility.

Trump said it was the “most insulting” question he’d ever been asked.

"How dare you ask me that question, I've never been so insulted in my life" is textbook evasion. It almost always seems that when someone goes down that route, the answer to the question, eventually, is "yes."

Your Sunday Morning Rotor Noise

Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane water bombers:

"Thank You, I'll Be Flying This Route All Week. Try the Peanuts and Don't Forget to Tip Your Flight Attendant."

For many, tipping workers such as waitstaff, hairdressers or taxi drivers is expected. But one airline is asking passengers to tip their individual flight attendants, too.

When passengers on budget carrier Frontier Airlines buy in-flight food or drinks, they'll now find a space on their payment tablet to leave a tip for the flight attendant that served them. This change was effective Jan. 1. Previously, any tips were pooled.

Flight attendants are, first and foremost, there for safety. The number of FAs on a flight are dictated by Federal regulations. Even private flights need FAs if there are enough people on board.

Which means, by regulation, FAs are not there primarily to serve coffee and cater to passengers. They're not supposed to be working for tips.

So, fuck Frontier and all the greed-headed boobs who are running that airline.

Caturday

Chip is content on a cold winter's eve:

"Border-Lying Personality Disorder"

Colbert's opening credits last night.

Heh. Heh. Heh.

Because It's Friday

"Tracks to the Trenches:"

Many of the trench railways used the Decauville system of prefabricated tracks in 600mm gauge. Gas-powered locomotives were preferred, as steam locomotives caught the eye of the observers in the Boche observation balloons; attention that was soon followed by artilery fire.

Is Your Area Recovering From a Natural Disaster? Trump Says: "Fuck You."

President* Donald Trump has been briefed on a plan that would use the Army Corps of Engineers and a portion of $13.9 billion of Army Corps funding to build 315 miles of barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to three U.S. officials familiar with the briefing.

The money was set aside to fund projects all over the country including storm-damaged areas of Puerto Rico through fiscal year 2020, but the checks have not been written yet and, under an emergency declaration, the president could take the money from these civil works projects and use it to build the border wall, said officials familiar with the briefing and two congressional sources.

So Trump is going to take money that has been allocated to deal with real crises so that he can deal with his fantasy crisis.

For the sake of argument, say I'm president in 2025. I declare a national health care emergency, cancel the rest of the F-35 program and reallocate the money for Medicare for all. What's to stop me? Trump would have already set the precedent that all a president has to do is declare a national emergency and he can assume near-dictatorial spending powers.

The Republicans in the Senate, presumably, are aware of this. Trump, by discussing using dictatorial powers, is slowly poisoning the jury for his impeachment trial. There may still be enough GOP senators who are more loyal to their country, to the Constitution, then they are to Trump, for a conviction. These sort of shenanigans are making that more possible.

I say this: If you are for what Trump plans to do, then you should relocate to a place where such things are the norm. Like Russia or North Korea.

By the way, consider this: It is not inconceivable that the officers who would carry out such an order may be prosecuted for obeying an illegal order. "We were just following orders" has not been a valid defense since 1945.

"They Shall Not Grow Old"

They Shall Not Grow Old is a documentary about World War One by Peter Jackson It the States, it has had a theater showing on December 17th and 27th.

It will be shown again on January 21st.

I plan to see it.

Mademoiselle from Armentieres, parlez-vous?
Mademoiselle from Armentieres, parlez-vous?
Just blow your nose, and dry your tears,
We'll all be back in a few short years,
Hinky, dinky, parlez-vous.

They were more correct than they knew.

ABC-TV: Stuck in the '90s.

So far, ABC has "news specials" on the Bobbits (happened in 1993), the death of JFK, Jr. (1999) and Linda Tripp's betrayal of Monica Lewinsky (1996).

What the fuck, ABC? Why are you guys poaching on the History Channel's turf? What's next: Two hours on the last days of Judge Crater?